Dear Paul,

I know exactly where you are. I am in an almost identical place, but for different reasons.

I can tell you with no uncertainty the following:

You are still depressed. Ending medication is never a great idea unless told so by your doctor. And counseling is not a one and done thing for those of us suffering from depression. It is work. It is painful. It seems to me that you have sort of switched off your emotions in an effort to assure yourself that you are no longer depressed. This is what I did for a long time. But there are a few problems with that. First of all, the negative emotions you are burying, and that IS all you are doing to them right now, will come back. And they will be POWERFUL because you have allowed them to fester like a wound. I am talking anger, depression, rage, sadness. They’re all still there, you’re just ignoring them. Second, is that you cannot just pick and choose which emotions to “turn off”. You either turn them all off, or none. This is likely why you feel empty. That joy and happiness are fleeting. Because every so often, something will happen and in the immediacy of the action, you feel those emotions, but since you have switched them off, they flutter away just as fast. Same thing with sadness and rage and the like. In the immediate moment of such feelings, it’s there. But it dissipates quickly.

So I would suggest a few things.

1. Get back on some sort of medication. If the medication you were taking had some undesired side effect or didn’t make you feel right, tell your doctor. This is the crappy part about psych meds. They are very hit an miss. Many solutions are “off label”, meaning that you end up taking adderall for something that has nothing to do with ADD because of how it interacts with certain chemicals in the brain. Basically, the medicine meant directly to take care of X might also help with Y, so it takes awhile to find the right ones.

2. Get back to counseling. It doesn’t have to be a daily thing, or even weekly. Maybe go twice a month. Having someone you can talk to with no judgments and who won’t blab to everyone is invaluable. Think of it like a pressure release valve on a water heater. When you use the hot water, steam starts to fill the empty portions of the tank, even with the new water going in. Without that valve, the water heater would explode every time you took a shower.

3. This one is probably going to suck at first, because you remind me of me, but……

Get out there. Go walk around a park. Be out and about in public. Don’t pick some out of the way park where no one goes to. Pick the one that is busy all times of the day. Interact with other human beings. It is fostering even these chance encounters that “kick starts” all those emotions again. And for a few days, you will feel like crap. Because all of those negative emotions you have been ignoring are gonna come soaring back in. But that too shall pass. I wish the same could be said about all of the positive feelings you ignored, but alas, those are gone forever.  Not to fret, you will make new ones.  And that is what makes life worth living, my friend. Stay strong. Chin up. I believe in you, because I believe in me.

That is also pretty important. Believe in yourself.