Depression

Thoughts and experiences during the depression-treatment with rTMS For 10 years I have been treated with psychotherapy and anti-depressants and learned of this new method via internet. Psychotherapy couldn´t ease my suffering. I was sitting in front of the psychologist and searched for immediate help and an explanation why I feel so badly off. I just wanted to get out of this condition. The psychologists searched in my past and tried to help me. The cause was discovered quickly but this didn´t make me feel better. Everything inside of me screamed: Please help me I can´t stand it any longer. And he wanted to talk. At that time this caused a short-termed ease which lasted only a few hours. Looking at it afterwards consciously or unconsciously) somebody threw a bone to me and I rushed to it thinking: Yes that´s it – exactly. I just have to come-to-terms with my experience(s) and finally I will feel better. I´ll manage. At night I went to bed and made plans: Tomorrow I will do this and that and all the other things that remained undone. But at the next morning again everything was like each day being in a depression. Terrible. Nothing worked. Perhaps it is another experience which is jointly responsible for this condition? The psychologist should know. After all he is a doctor. The psychologists kept on trying to decode my disease. I put he keys into the lock but they don´t fit. I just can´t get out of there. What is it that keeps me so captured? I have no explanation. What suddenly is up now? This is no longer me. Before everything worked out. Why doesn´t anything work now? I pondered and pondered but had no explanation. Medication was applied – there was no alternative. Even this doesn´t have a mentionable improvement on my condition. The years rush by aside of me and today I ask myself how I survived all this. During stays in clinics I get the impression that the motto there is: If you don´t recover healthy here then it´s your own fault. But I can´t help it. Why doesn´t somebody help me? Why do I fail with therapy and medication? Am I the only one whose situation is like that? Is it perhaps my own fault? I read books about the disease, I inform myself. Perhaps there are or were other cases that are just the same as mine. How had these people been helped? But everything I find only applies partly to me. Although only reports and articles which issue my disease have access to my mind I do not know how to continue. Everything else doesn´t reach me any longer – it´s unimportant. The disease rules every second of my life. It doesn´t let me loose. I haven´t harmed anybody why do I have to suffer so badly? Somehow I manage to install an access to the internet. I am searching for information. Someday I discover a forum where people suffering from this disease exchange themselves and I realize that I´m not the only one who is tortured by it. And all of them feel the same. So after all I am not the only one on this world who is so badly off. Continuously I experiment with medication and other aids and appliances. One of them helps me to look further than my nose. With restrictions I have a little overview again. I can act. But why does everything take so long? So many years. On the internet I discover a report dealing with a new treatment method called rTMS. Some descriptions I consider lurid and think: Is it possible? Moneymaking? Yes, studies take place at universities but only on the context of stationary treatments. But I get a hint on doctors who apply this method ambulant in their practice. I do not expect anything und reflect: Either it helps or it does not. If I don´t try it out I might blame me not even having tried. The first rTMS treatment I did not perceive as unpleasant. If feels as if someone ticks his fingernail slighty on my head where the spool is positioned. The spool is placed non-contacted above my head. The magnetic field I notice as a light wave-like “something” During the treatment the spool is placed at different positions, that proved to be effective. After the treatment I leave the practice a little irritated because I can´t explain to myself what actually had been made now. I am sceptic and do not expect an immediate change because at least 10 treatments are necessary. The second treatment takes place the next day at 19:00 hours. During this second treatment again nothing positive or negative is to be realized. At most a simple relaxation of the legs but this can be imagination. I leave the medical practice and have the impression that the air smells more intensive. Today – based on experience – it´s my weaker day. Since taking a biological preparation for one year a rhythm – one day better, the next day worse, the following it´s better again – has developed. Deep in thoughts I am walking on the street to my car. The roller coaster in my mind strangely enough is standing still. It really feels as if it has been lashed. At the position where the spool had been placed two pegs seem to be which prevent the mind-treadmill from turning. I am irritated. The night after my 2nd treatment I slept very well. As well as long time ago. Dreamless – calm – just sleeping. I think I did not even turn over all night long. On my way to breakfast I pass the reception but then turn around again to wish the Lady at the counter a good morning. Normally I would have taken place at a quiet table and let the world be world. I reflect why I slept so calmly the previous night. May this come from the treatment? I don´t think about it anymore – it´s the way it is. But if it would have been an effect from the treatment it would have lasted until the morning hours. During the 3rd treatment I feel my body relaxing. The musculature in my legs and thighs relaxes. Gently but noticeably. I notice it as pleasant and even during the treatment I feel a little eased. Leaving the practice it strikes me again that everything smells more intensive and it´s brighter in comparison to the time I entered the practice – emotionally. Now I am going to pay attention consciously. On my way t a pharmacy I have to cross a crowd at a bus stop. Having a bad day I probably would have chosen the other side of the street. But this thought doesn´t even appear. I am going right through the middle. No problem. I would like to walk through again. Is this one of the better or the less well days? My rhythm is deranged. I enter the pharmacy and it doesn´t mind me how many people are standing there. The pharmacist questions me and I answer. I actually have a conversation with her. I don´t have to think of what I´m saying I simply do it. Yesterday morning treatment number 4. Meanwhile I really look forward to every treatment. The effect is considerably appreciable. I want more. The 5th treatment does me good again. After the treatments I am definitely easier and more relaxed. This day treatments number 6 and 7. The 6th one was pure bliss. I absolutely bathed in it. My eyes fell shut and I thought: “Dear Doctor please forget me in here.” I have never experienced something that set me up mentally so intense. It was the absolute relaxation and I almost slipped from the chair. Simply tranquillity was inside of me. I would love to go there again right now. I´m not “high” or drunk or under drugs or something like that. One becomes realist from the disease. Inevitably. Either something changes or it doesn´t. I´m not in a different world. What irritates me totally is – I almost want to say “naturalness” concerning the effect and in particular its immediate occurrence after every treatment. This really wondered me already after the first treatment. I don´t understand this. I am not bouncing around yelling “whoowhoo” or doing somersaults. I am calm and consciously stay down to earth. No euphoria. I don´t like it. What will be tomorrow I don´t know either. I do what the doctor tells me: Just wait. I purposely write this only now. The placebo effect I also know too well. And I don´t want to toddle into this trap. The disillusion later is even more painful. And I don´t want anybody to think I just wanted to put myself on airs. This is very very important to me. Tomorrow I uncompromisingly can be in depression. Who knows? I just can observe myself. I want more of these treatments. After the treatment tomorrow I will decide whether I am going to halve the medication. But then it must be assured whether my treatments will continue. No risk. After all I am the one who gets stuck if it doesn´t work out. But then vehemently. This is what I am going to discuss with the doctor tomorrow. As a study only ten treatments and no more. This is a joke. If I consult a dentist and he tells me “I will treat you only ten times and no more” then I decide to go to another from begin with. During the further treatments I try to locate the site where the blissful well being is Induced. I blindly find the point but it is no longer the same delight. It probably results from the fact that the magnetic field strength had been changed for the treatment of another patient. Meanwhile I am convinced that a depression is nothing else that a cramp of the brain (in the forehead area). Just like a muscle cramp. Using the impulses the cramp is loosened up and is massaged by the magnetic field until the convulsion disappears. Just like loosening a muscle cramp by hand-massage. If I terminate the massage respectively the treatments too early and prematurely strain the muscle “brain” it will cramp suddenly again. People with depressions literally are cramped. Their facial features are totally hardened. Nothing works anymore. One does not feel pain like having a muscle-cramp because the sensitivity to pain is blocked or cramped as well. One can only “think” with the eyes. I can say with confidence that the cramp starts to loose. Could this cramp perhaps be loosened with only one massage if the impulse frequency and the magnetic field strength are set exactly for the intensity of the cramp? This seems logical. Perhaps even better might be a second spool positioned opposite that massages the other point simultaneously. Best of all operated synchronously.