Kickas.org Forums Ankylosing Spondylitis General Discussion #1 AS Web Support Group Is depression/anxiety a symptom of AS?

Here is a quote that you are sure to like Dow...

"Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours." Richard Bach

That said, and although I strive for this to be my guide, I am still, wisely, sanely, not prepared to argue with a giant semi-truck, in the rush hour of a rainy evening! Why risk my life driving in a white-out blizzard when I can simply go tomorrow, I say!!

We can teach ourselves through practice not to live white-knuckling everything but it's good to pick and choose our battles and practice on the things that we really want and value in our lives, yes? Stress can be cumulative.

Deftly you can record under pressure and turn it on it's head, making it fun and enjoyable -- not a doubt in my mind!

yes, tried that for 4 years, commuting on the baltimore washington parkway between bowie maryland and baltimore. i did go just after rush hour so i wouldn't surely die, but still it was a lot of traffic, and me in my little old mazda 323 was no match for a semi. still, i did it, tried to calm myself as much as i could. you'd think after 4 years of driving like that almost every day, it would get better. but really the only thing that calmed my stomach and then oddly me was to take mylanta before the drive. not having my stomach get all acidic helped me feel calmer. i did try, just not too successfully, other than allowing the mylanta to help me along. and i did heal my stomach greatly during this time, but still, a little red sports car right on my tail at 65 mph or a semi trying to merge with no room to do so, just the thought......

on the other hand, if i can go through the situation but in a much lower stress way, that is the way i learn to be less stressed, even when the situation becomes more potentially stressful. let me use two examples here:

1. its only been these last 7 years of being up here in upstate ny, driving on the highways in traffic, but manageable traffic that when the traffic is worse, i'm not nearly as stressed as i would have been in the past. a little, yes, but not like before.

2. i am truly phobic of snakes. even though we have one in our house, our little princess corn snake in her terrarium, if i encounter one in nature, i totally panic. this past summer, i almost ran over one on my bike at dusk. i was very stressed walking past that spot for weeks, but i still did it every day. if i had encountered a snake every day, the stress would have only gotten worse, trust me, i know myself and past experience. however, since i traveled that route every day and learned that the route was no longer threatening, after a few weeks, walking past that spot did not phase me any longer. and now, the memory of me being afraid to walk past there is gone. if i see another snake though, it will come back, and i will have to once again not encounter a snake there to relearn that it is ok.

back in my 20s, i went through some sessions to try to undo my snake phobia, as i love the out of doors. i learned that one can not be stressed if one's muscles are not tight, so learned how to consciously relax my muscles. the way to do this is to tighten them as tight as one can, then release that extreme tightness, and that makes them very relaxed. learned this again to achieve deep relaxation, in yoga class. so i've done this on occasion and it does work very well. maybe should do it more often.

though it would be nice if i could try to change things at the mental level, i seem to have more success when i try to change things at the physical level. by making these physical changes, i often can change the mental aspect as well.

however,sometimes if we have a nail in our foot (or a rib under the shoulder blade pressing on a nerve), we have to remove the nail (or the rib) to achieve pain relief. if we still have pain after the nail (or the rib is removed) then i think we have the sort of pain you have been describing, and i think i had that after my rhomboid healed but i was left with all those triggerpoints and muscle spasms back in the late 90s, early 2000s. so i kind of just assumed that was what was going on this time, but turns out, it was a nerve being compressed by bones, no wonder nothing seemed to help until the nerve was finally "released".

at least that's where i am currently on this journey. but every day is a new opportunity to learn. slowly discovering new ways of doing things.

I know all those things about you, SuzieQ, including that you had a phobia for snakes, and helped it with behavior mod techniques, by getting Princess

And that you like funny sitcoms, gentler music, non-scary movies, and avoid things that stress you out

That's what I find interesting, that you also suffer from chronically tight muscles, digestive issues and chronic pain, you clearly have a strong mind-body connection!

Don't get me wrong, I am not suggesting anywhere that you should make a choice between treating the body or the mind-

More that they are one and the same

depression is the result of inproper thinking. If you see yourself as a chronic pain ridden person then surely you will be down most of the time.

I refuse to allow anything but good thoughts and feelings to pay rent in my mind. Depression and bad thoughts can go elswhere to find employment. Not in my world.

Just curious how you explain arthritis pain. Also a result of improper thinking?

If depression results from a bad attitude, how do you explain the physical symptoms?

Finnari, what you say is true of "reactive" depression, and that's not what we are discussing.

Endogenous clinical depression is physical, just like AS.Your neurochemistry, for one reason or another, is all screwed up. For some reason our bodies leave excess serotonin bouncing around our brains, and that causes depression. It doesn't matter if you think good thoughts. It won't be fixed without the appropriate medication.

John

About 10 years ago, my mind was trying to kill me. But I worked hard on having good thoughts and set out to self-medicate using my mind and my actions, determined never to be forced to take anti-depressants.

In that spirit - I climbed the highest mountain in our nearby park (I'm terrified of heights), I started the CGA program (and came first in BC in my first exam), I built a cedar strip canoe (and developed a cedar allergy so needed some help from my hubby to finish it). Wow - if that isn't using good thoughts and feelings.

But still my mind was determined to kill me. EVERY DAY, I thought about dying. I didn't want to commit suicide because of the effect on my family so I went around hoping for some nasty accident to do the deed.

Eventually, after a couple of years, I gave in and went to a psychiatrist. I was diagnosed with PTSD, major clinical depression and generalized anxiety disorder. I began to take meds and to do some serious work using the various therapies she suggested. I uncovered my early childhood trauma (that I thought was normal).

I slowly became well - it took more than a year. I've been well ever since (and continue to take very low doses of anti-depressants).

I look back and cannot understand why my mind was in that black hole. The world is wonderful - my husband, children and grandchildren are wonderful.

I am the same person - I continue to have good thoughts and feelings as I tried to do then.

Depression is not the result of improper thinking. My experience tells me this.

Well, my second depression in my late 30's came on so fast it was astonishing. I was standing in my living room talking to my family, and it looked as if all the lights in the house went out. My vision dimmed, my legs and back were constantly exhausted, and I completely lost my appetite. It never occurred to me to die, I just felt so beat - both mentally and physically. It was hard to concentrate and hold a conversation. It had nothing to do with attitude, it came on like a bad fever. After about 6 months it just lifted. Then I had another one come on about 4 months before the serious pain started in my sacrum. It too was extremely physical with no particular thought process preceding the onset. My basic personality is optimistic and hopeful, I exercise, pray, and meditate routinely. I grow most of my own organic vegetable, do not eat food with chemicals, and buy locally grown and processed meat, poultry, and fish. So, what's my point? Oh yeah, I don't see how depression/anxiety in connection with spondylitis could possibly stem from a negative attitude.

Being determined to maintain a positive outlook is worthy and something I think a lot of people need to do, but it's far too pat to blame depression on improper thinking.

It has been proved that there is a close link between pain and depression: longterm of either causes the other. This article touches on that:
Harvard Article

Also, this article:

Hopkins Article

I don't know how I missed this article, as it seems to support my theory that biologics could be used to treat chronic depression:

Enbrel & Depression

And then there's this:

Annals of General Psychiatry

My point is, that while you are right we need to combat the lure of seeing ourselves as ill and pain-ridden, there is much more to it than that. I admire your drive to rid yourself of negative thought, and that is most certainly a tool that people living with chronic pain and chronic depression could do well to work with, but you cannot just generalize and assume that all people who are depressed, or pain ridden, are just thinking incorrectly. There is an actual, physical connection between pain and depression.

Situational depression is a different thing altogether, and very often will resolve as the situation that causes it resolves. In this case, positive thought, sometimes paired with anti-depressant medication, will help.

Hugs,

Wow, we need some smarty-pants Harvard kids to tell us that!

Don't mind me, I was the teenager in the back of the room who was laughing in junior high when they used to show us those science films on a 16mm projector. They always had some guy with a white lab coat going to great lengths to "prove" something that seemed completely obvious already

Later when I was at film school, and in one class, we were required to make three short silent films. I had finished one three minute one, and one 22 minute film WITH sound, and I thought for sure my teacher would accept the long film as two assignments.

When he didn't, I quickly made a third film called "Effects Of Hammer On Human Development"

This was my "scientypical" film parody, complete with gerbil cages, charts and graphs, truly awful warbly music and a deep-voiced over-the top narrator, saying things like "Science marches on!"

Needless to say, it was controversial, while half the class was laughing quite a bit, a few others were upset, and I had to explain, that no, what I had done was borrow some baby dolls from one of my sisters, I did not actually put real human babies in those little gerbil cages!