the answer for me was cognitive behavioral therapy (cbt). I was on meds for many years before I found cbt and it cured me and got me off meds in a remarkably short period of time. Cbt is not like other talk therapy. A good cbt therapist does not care much about your past or why you think you feel the way you do etc. A good cbt therapist knows they cannot change what's already happened to you but they can help you change how you deal with what happens in your life from here on out. It's all about using the tools to learn to think more clearly and accurately about things and once you do your anxiety, panic and depression will miraculously begin to lift before your eyes. My favorite starter book on cbt is "been there, done that? Do this! By sam obitz based on what I have seen with the people I know who used cbt the more dedicated you are to the tools the faster and deeper the recovery regardless of how bad their anxiety was when they got started.
Hope this is helpful

q

Thanks for the reply - I tried cbt just after I got out of hospital but it didn't seem to work - I think I was too ill if that makes any sense - I couldn't understand how basically thinking 'it might never happen' would help me when it clearly had already happend - I also has a psychologist who was training and also use to not turn up when I really needed to talk to her - so I am a bit sceptical of cbt now -
what I don't get is how can you pretend the past hasn't happend when it is usually the past that is making you ill. I think i'm missing the point of cbt.
Feeling ok now but that is the problem really I know that this will last for a couple of days and then depression will come back and hit me like a brick wall - it's a waiting game and i'm tired of this, tired of the ups and downs and having no control.
Again, thanks for the reply.

I can understand why you would be skeptical of cbt because it does sound like the help you got was rubbish. It has nothing to do with pretending the past didn't happen. Cbt teaches you coping skills that help you deal from this day forward and has saved my life and gotten ridden of my panic attacks to. It is difficult to get going on and you really have to do the exercises everyday to get them to work but the results are priceless if you do in my humble opinion I love the obitz book and mastery of your anxiety and panic-third edition by michelle craske and david barlow. They were the two books we used in my group.

Well, I know it sounds all "new age" but i'm a very critical person, and from personal experience I can say that yoga will help with your depression and physical health a lot. Also, though i'm not signing up till september,from what i've studied tai chi sounds like an excellent form for clearing the fog in your mind and seeing life more clearly and feeling overal better.

Would it really be so bad to go back on the med's? Sometimes people need help, and you know what? It's ok to ask for and accept help. Take the medications and see how you do. Why get back to that black bottomless pit if you don't have to? People with depression usually can't just wish themselves well, I know, I have tried for years. Give the med's another chance. Perhaps a different therapist might be more helpful to you.

Xoxo
kitty

Please check out ces machines & also sound & light machines (alpha-stim.Com or dynamind.Com) these machines have almost stopped my migraines & instead of feeling constantly suicidal - well that feeling has gone too!!

I still take some meds but these are not for depression - I would take meds for depression again if my situation altered & I needed them for a time but I think all I need now is these 2 machines - after 35 or so years of searching.

Dear imp,

the reason why rcbt may not work is that depression is due to some underlying metabolic disorder that does not respond to talk therapy.



The best advice that I can give is to test yourself for hypoglycemia with the nbi at our web site.

Please search our web site for "nbi".



This is paper-and-pencil test consisting of 50 questions. If you score high you are likely to be hypoglycemic. You can have this confirmed by a doctor with a special glucose tolerance test for hypoglycemia (gtth), also described at our web site. Most doctors are not yet familiar with this test.



Hypoglycemia, is unfortunately a misnomer, as it means low blood sugar concentration, whereas in fact we are dealing with unstable blood sugar levels, with peaks and falls of glucose in the blood. This is due to insulin resistance, where the body responds poorly to insulin, that is supposed to push glucose across membranes of cells, including brain cells. Glucose is the source of energy to the brain, and if there is an unstable supply of glucose to the brain, then the brain cannot operate properly. With an unstable source of energy to the brain we will experience �psychological� symptoms, that are often mistaken for causes of mental illness.



Hypoglycemia can be treated without recourse to drugs by adopting the hypoglycemic diet, which is high protein, low carbohydrates diet consumed in frequent small snacks accompanied with vitamins and minerals. It is similar to the diabetic diet.



Glucose is the source of energy the brain uses, and is broken down by about 12 biochemical reactions to become energy (atp). Anywhere along this biochemical pathway there may be a blockage, for various reasons, the major one being a deficiency of a coenzyme such as zinc or chromium, that can be obtained from food. Thus a gtth may show normal blood sugar levels, but still produce signs similar to hypoglycemic symptoms, such as depression and anxiety attacks.



High insulin production, called hyperinsulinism, in an attempt to overcome insulin resistance, may cause sudden falls in blood sugar. The brain will than send a message to the adrenal gland to secrete massive doses of adrenaline to raise these levels again and to feed the brain again. But adrenaline is also a stress hormone, that is seen as being responsible for the various symptoms of hypoglycemia, including depression.



In most cases the hypoglycemic diet will supply body with all the precursors for it to produce the right amounts of neurotransmitters, enzymes and coenzymes. This will eliminate the physical causes of depression, but not necessarily the psychological factors. It is always good to stick and try out psychotherapy again, provided you are on a hypoglycemic diet.



Depression, being a physical illness of long standing, maybe dating back to childhood, naturally affects your personality and your social skills. Poor social skills may produce stressful social situations that can in turn produce stress hormones. These may interfere with the synthesis of serotonin and other beneficial neuro chemicals. Here we could have a vicious circle.



Please adopt the hypoglycemic diet and then return to psychotherapy.



Please discuss this with your doctor or counsellor.



Most of the above has been explained at our web site.



Jurriaan plesman

The last post whilst very close to advertising is also an informative & useful site, so could be worth checking out.

"the last post whilst very close to advertising is also an informative & useful site, so could be worth checking out."

it may sound like advertising and if so, it would be commercial activity with something to sell and make a profit on it.


You need to demonstrate what profits are being made and how.


Our hypoglycemic health association is a charitable educational association informing professionals, and members of the public of a different form of treatment not very well known among the general public. It is an treatment approach to mental illness, supported by independent research findings, and forms an alternative or complementary modality to the narrow drug and/or psychotherapy modality prevalent today. Our members have been or are in the same boat as many readers here in this forum.


It is an approach that requires direct involvement and understanding by the patient an allows him/her to participate in treatment with a professional, placing more control in the hands of the patient.


Please note that our web site is an educational web site and nothing more or less.


Jurriaan plesman

If you are going to be pedantic please also be accurate your web site lists books written by yourself & other committee members (which I suggest that people might be more likely to purchase having been to the site - which I did before posting my last post I might add) & it also enables people to join the association (for $20) & so forth. As a committee member & author etc you have a personal interest & could benefit from people going to the site.

None of which did I state earlier, I merely acknowledged that it was & is close to advertising - something which is not allowed on ehealth & also something which many people find most annoying & do complain about - so I was acknowledging what might be said , denying it & saying that the site was informative & useful!! hmmmm let me see in my world which as I did the same job as you in the same country & city!! Should be the same world as yours means that I think people could benefit from checking it out & not worry about any issues re advertising.

You however seem intent on taking offense - I wonder why

I wondered whether your promotion of the ‘ces machine’ falls in the same category.

I don't know whether you have any experience in publishing books. I wrote the book "getting off the hook" in 1986 on the topic of treatment for drug addiction. Commercial publishers will tell you that books on mental illness and drug addiction etc. Are not very profitable. But any book on recipes and cooking sell like hot cakes,(excuse the pun). So I published my book at my own expense, and I can tell you I got just even. Besides I did not publish it for commercial reasons, I was more interested helping people overcome their drug addiction by a self-help book.

I have still a few copies left and I am always willing to donate a book to any library any where in the world free of charge. Besides most of it is on the web site. My book is available at most libraries in australia. If I sell any book, any profit goes to the association. Any profit from dr george samra’s books also goes to the association. I can understand that in this world of profits profits profits, it is difficult to believe that there are still samaritans around. But in the world of grass root organisations - voluntary organisations such as ours and many others - there still are samaritans, and I suggest that if you want to participate in our society, you should join any voluntary organisations to preserve your faith in humanity and to keep in touch of what civilization is all about.

You might wonder what my real motivation is in getting involved with alternative medicine. I was the victim of the psychiatric, and psychological profession, when I fell prey to mental illness myself and was drugged to the eye balls for about ten years. I dragged myself out of this hole, by going to the university and study psychology (whilst a druggie) - in which I believed very much at the time - and then became a counsellor myself. Working in prisons, I discovered that all the mental patients are now in prisons. 75% of prisoners are drug addicts or people with a ‘personality disorder’, another 10% are simply people with a psychiatric illness. There are very few professional criminals in jail. The real crazy people are on the outside.

As to charging a fee of $20 for joining our association, again you don't seem o have experience in participating in a registered non-profit charitable association. The government is watching over us like a hawk to make sure that we are not a commercial organisation. For instance, we have to declare our raffles. In fact, the association has great financial problems, because of the cost of publishing a newsletters, hiring a conference room for public lectures given by doctors - who also donate their free time - and sending out newsletters to doctors (free of charge). Because of financial constraints we had to reduce our public meetings from four to three per year. Two years ago we decided to wind up the association for financial reasons, when we were saved by a big donation from an unknown donor ( I believe it was a company) and some doctors also have donated. (donations to charitable associations are tax-deductible). Again our web site is helped by voluntary work by our web mistress.

As an educational organisation the information about alternative treatment for mental illness, was all very new in the 1970’s. Our members who are all sufferers of the hypoglycemic syndrome - an important factor in most degenerative diseases as well mental illness - banded together with the express aim of educating professionals and patients on this aspect of ill health. Nowadays this message has become 'mainstream' in australia, and we now hear of many patients being diagnosed 'hypoglycemic' by all sorts of doctors. Because clinical nutritional is not a cash cow for doctors, there is still much resistance.

With the advent of the internet, most of the information on alternative treatments are on the internet, and hence people can get the information from that medium. Potentially people can treat themselves without the assistance of any professional. This is not what I would recommend, because clinical nutrition is far more complex that meets the eye.

The new problem is that because so many patients are now visiting “alternative and complementary” doctors - 57% by the latest survey (bensoussan) - that medical associations in cohort with the powerful world-wide pharmaceutical corporation have started a campaign to prosecute any doctor who practises ‘unproven and unconventional medicine’ and threaten them with deregistration. Some health practitioners are now being sued in australia. Google search “jenny bourke”

about two years ago one company - pan pharmaceuticals - producing nutritional supplements was closed down by the government - by the tga, similar to the us fda.

Read:
http://www.Rense.Com/general37/deathblow.H tm

in europe you cannot buy some nutritional supplements, except with doctor’s prescription. These deals are made at the who by governments under free trade agreements, where health benefits are being traded off for other commercial interest. Just recently australia has signed a ‘free trade agreement’ with the usa, and guess what; pharmaceutical prices have to be increased under that deal. This at a time when the conventional health system - hospitals, medical costs etc - are collapsing around you.

People should also be educated on the economics and politics of drug manufacturing to find out what motivates the elites in medical health industry.

Read:
http://www.Rense.Com/general54/preco.Htm
http://rhinoed.Com/drug money chart.Ht m

i do not want to become involved with the politics and economics of mental health. I simply believe that people with mental illness can educate themselves out of their illness with the help of appropriate health care practitioners. There are a lot of doctors around who have embraced a more modern psychotherapeutic model, but they may be difficult to find. It is very difficult to get off drugs, either as a patient of doctor.

First my recommending ces machines (& elsewhere such things as: cbt, walking, relaxation, vitamins, other natural supplements, yoga, pilates, checking things on search engines, questioning drs etc, etc) is totally different simply because 1) I recommend a variety of things depending on the person & situation - not just one "holy" solution to all problems & 2) because I have absolutely no personal interest in any of these sites/companies/products etc whatsoever

second, a degree & long work history involving writing reports has obviously done nothing to help your comprehension - I support your site & it's usefulness to people a fact you seem incapable of understanding.

as much as I hate having to take sides... Sometimes that is necessary and this is a perfect example. Purple was nothing but respectful in her first reply to you and you got defensive with her. She pointed out what was obvious and then went on to endorse your site's potential usefullness. Purple is this particular boards mvp and spends countless hours giving the best advice she can for no compensation. If I were you rather than trying to attack her motives I would thank her for endorsing your site!

Q

im going to have to agree with that, too.

Just for your added information I actually worked in the same job (probation & parole officer) in the same city - same government department as jur at an overlapping time & have discussed hypoglyceamia with him & heard him talk on the subject & know the treatment/attitude doled out to him by some people here because of his views.

I posted here without any of that detail because what I post here has nothing to do with any personal knowledge etc I have of the person posting it has only to do with what I feel should be said in relation to the topic & discussion.

It is nice though to see that there are some people out there who understood what I said etc. So again thanks.

Cheri

Wow you ended up getting a lot of different advice here imp. I hope you find something that is helping you
as for the guy attacking purple. I agree with qt3 and babygurl. You rock purple!