Adjustment

September 30, 2015 marked that day when Doctor told me he's liberating me from my meds. Of course, I looked forward to that day when I could be happy naturally - you know without the help of any medication. Freeing me from medicines after three years is a huge victory on my part! I know that even if with medication and I still wouldn't help myself, I wouldn't be a-okay. But I did help myself. My family did help me - not in the way though that I hoped :) Their help, I would call falls under tough love. All that knows me well - friends from work, friends since birth, my boyfriend, helped me in one way or another.

But what Doctor probably forgot to tell me was that my body and its entire system would also adjust without the help of Fluoxetine. For the first two weeks without any medication, I found myself, crying so hard, getting too emotional, and just really having a difficult time controlling my emotion called sadness. Victims of this adjustment included my mother and my boyfriend. Details not important in the discussion. The point is that I had a terrible terrible terrible time adjusting. Since then, I resolved to help myself even harder. How?

by exercising

I would need to exercise more often! So, to help myself motivate to exercise, I signed up for a 10K run! Committing myself to that 10K run would serve as my motivation to train regularly. 

And yes, I finished the 10K run! It's another victory! It was not fast but I finished it. I did not give up and that is what mattered and still matters.

by helping others

Another thing that has been helping me is being more conscious of going beyond myself - this means that I would need to see and think logically that the world is not about me and my bouts of depression. I started to give regularly to the Church through the seminary where my brother is a spiritual director. Aside from that, I helped the seminary by asking my colleagues to donate their books for the seminary because a lot of their things were damaged because of the Typhoon Lando that hit my hometown.

These two things: exercising and helping others were very helpful as I continue to live without any medication.

Other ways to help me be happier and more positive would include:

keeping myself away from people who are so negative
sleeping for 6-7 hours a day
praying wholeheartedly (through meditation)

Those three, I need to work on since lately I have been surrounded with people who are too negative and so stressful to be with, I have been sleeping irregularly, and have not been praying religiously.