Support for Weaning off of an Antidepressant
This might feel like a strange topic to bring up during a pandemic—shouldn’t we actually all be getting onto an antidepressant medication right now because of all of the hardship and worry that is happening in the world? The answer is, no, not as a first resort. We can learn from this time. We are being asked to understand ourselves in new ways and not just go back to the way things were, once outside circumstances make that possible. We are changing, and change can be very good. Consider it a kind of healing crisis.
Conventional antidepressants do have their role. They stabilize our nervous system and our emotional life and they can wonderful, life-saving medicines in the right situation. I prescribe them when needed and appreciate their support, but reserve them for when life is truly too overwhelming and there just needs to be some quiet pause….
Spring Cleaning, for the Body, Heart, and Mind
If you listen very carefully you can hear that the earth is beginning to wake up, with bulbs pushing out of the soil and new buds on the trees. What had become brown, dry, frozen and mineralized over the winter is now enlivened and reinvigorated. Sometimes we are right there with this process and have already started clearing out the garage, or our sock drawer, and maybe even made a trip to the goodwill to give away what we don’t need. Sometimes, however, we feel more like molasses, and getting started is very, very hard. What to do? In Anthroposophic Medicine there is clear recognition that a part of our own physiology works to continually lift physical substance into a living state; and, reciprocally, that living substance eventually falls back into a gravity, mineral state. We are therefore beings of constant lifting and releasing. We feel sluggish if we aren’t lifting enough substance into living activity, and/or when what has been released back to a mineral state can’t be adequately shed or gotten rid of. So here are some suggestions for helping this process find renewed strength on the levels of body, heart and mind. Consider it a small springtime primer.