Feeling pretty good these days

I know I've been sporadically blogging, mostly because I've been concentrating all my efforts in getting our work blog off the ground, but I'm still here and will be posting as often as I have time to.

So I've been feeling pretty good the last while and saw my psychiatrist again yesterday. We talked about the fact that I have this phobia of throwing up (emetophobia), especially in front of people, and especially in public. I had been thinking about it and wondered if that was causing my anxiety rather than my anxiety causing me to feel nauseated which in turn causes this phobia. Does that make sense?

Anyways, he told me that it's possible, but he also feels that certain things I've told him, whether related to emetophobia or not, are still attributes of someone who is socially anxious. Either way I don't want to be medicated forever and he told me that he doesn't think I will be, so I asked what he thought of lowering my dosage of Gabapentin, at least for the meantime to see how I would be with less. We started at 900mg/day so I've never been at a lower dose. I wanted to see how I'm able to cope without thinking my medication is a crutch, so to speak.

He had no problem with that, so as of yesterday I have been taking 600mg. I've been feeling quite a bit better on a daily basis so I figured maybe now was the time to start getting off my meds and learning to cope on my own. As my psychiatrist said, the meds have given me a jumping board and now hopefully I will be able to take a little control on my own. I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes. Please keep me in your prayers. xo

What actually happened on V-Day

Thank you for your comments on my last post. I wanted to do a quick post to let you know what actually ended up being our Valentine's Day low-key celebration. We had decided that what we wanted to do was order sushi in and stay home, watch TV and just relax. Instead, the sushi place we usually order from informs us that it'll be an hour and a half wait to get our food so we decide to forgo ordering with them. I guess because of Valentine's Day they were too busy! Anyways, it would have been fine had we known of any other places that we could order from, but pickings were slim. We were also worried that if we decided to go out to eat everywhere would be packed with premade reservations.

Anyhow, I called this local all-you-can-eat sushi place to let them know that we could be there in 10 minutes if they had a table available. At this point we were both starving and it was our last resort. They said there would be a table available for us (so I assumed they mustn't be that busy). When we got there it was packed and we didn't see any open tables. Just as I started to panic that we'd go hungry on Valentine's Day a couple of ladies finished paying their bill and left. So we got a table! The food was pretty good and for $14.99 each I think we managed to get our money's worth.

It was also the thing I dread most in this world - eating out - which ended up not being such an ordeal because when it was our only option I had no choice but to suck it up and face my fear!

Hope you all had a good one. :)

Happy Valentine's Day!

I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Valentine's Day!

I don't think my husband and I will be doing anything exciting today...probably just ordering food and maybe renting a movie. Our Valentine's Days have been pretty low-key for the past seven years or so. We don't see the point in making a big deal on February 14. We show each other how much we love each other 365 days of the year!

Have a good day with your loved one! xo

Depression may be linked to migraines

I saw this interesting article on a Global TV website today about the connection between migraines and mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety. Check out the article. It's really interesting. Upon reflection, before I was diagnosed with social anxiety in 2004 I had a migraine (my first ever) that lasted for two weeks straight. I'm amazed that this revelation has only come to light now.

35% of people who suffered migraines also suffered from a mental disorder,
ranging from depression and anxiety to phobias and substance abuse