(Written in February 2009)
Saw Dr. Seigle yesterday. I liked him, he’s meticulous and careful, also willing to use intuition. I came out feeling overwhelmed & went to Karen and cried & cried. She held me, curled up on the bed, until I was able to calm down. On the one hand I feel totally lost — I have no idea what’s going on with me any more — on the other hand I think I’m in good hands, I can just surrender to his program.
Took 25mg imipramine last night. Dr. Seigle thinks the fear I had with it was a “red herring” and plans to have me raise the dose very slowly. He is going to Puerto Rico next week. That scares me a little. Especially since it’s a complicated week medically: I have an elaborate program for raising some meds and lowering others.
Saw Dr. Seigle yesterday. He thinks I’m very courageous to keep going in the face of such severe depression. With Karen I did the same posture I did with Caryn: curled up on the couch around Karen who was protecting my stomach. I cried a little and then relaxed a lot. Karen talked to Dr. Seigle last week and said she thought he had a good sense of who I am. That comforts me.
I was extremely lucky to be connected with Dr. Seigle in Montpelier. I learned a lot from him, specifically how to be really patient and build the medication up slowly. My biggest difficulty as someone with PTSD, was that I could be triggered into despair or terror by some outside event. It’s too easy to try to address this by raising or adding medication. Really what I needed was a platform that kept me stable enough so I could live my life and do the needed healing work. I now am on three different medications. I know they work because I’ve tried to modify each one, and found it didn’t work. There’s no logical reason why taking a tranquillizer would give me more energy than not taking it, but that’s my experience.