Dear Tiana,
You ask me the following questions ? Here is my answers.
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Have you been diagnosed with depression by a doctor? Or would you say that these are swings in your outlook on life, or perhaps related to life events?
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I went to doctors for diagnosis. They confirm my own diagnosis as bipolar and depression. My own guess for my mood swing probably has 3 factors, the 3 Ps:
1. Predisposing factors - My genetic makeup, my personality and outlook on life, my upbringing, my cultural and family influence, my attitude, my orientation to life, my assumptions about the world and myself. The key aspects is I have period sof days of strong and fortitude , followed by periods days of loss of motivations & anxiety.
2. Precipating factors: My immediate triggiering events. e.g. have a exhausting day, some ache and pain, disappointment, rejections. My hunch is the " I am a person waiting to be triggered". If I am in a strong day , this event won't bother me. Since most of these triggering events are unavoidable. I just have to accept them and work on the other two factors.
3. Perpetuating factors: How I respond to my anxiety sypmtoms, How I react to my depression. My avoidance pattern. My withdrawal pattern. My non-experimental and negative reactions due to past unhelpful assumptions and strong negative synapse connections. I want helpful assumptions & reactions, replacing the strong bad synapse connections with growing helpful synapse connections. The perpetuating factors maintain and deepen depression.
The depression is going to come back. I want to get ready for it. I want to shorten its stay. I want to work on the 3 Ps of depression,. In addtion, I need to build helpful behavioural patterns. Examples are "getting up early, getting to the support group here when I am depressed(not withdrawal pattern), experimentwith new behaviour, identifying helpful and unhelpful behaviours".
I am waiting for depression to come to do my behavioural experiments.
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