What is atypical depression? Tumblr Tuesday! #KatiFAQ

Hey everybody.

Happy Tuesday, and since it's Tuesday, as always, I am on Tumblr.

So if any of you find Tumblr to be amazing,

and that's where you hang out then Tuesday is your day.

So you can find me on there.

You can follow my blog.

I don't tend to post a ton of stuff, but I do sometimes I reblog some fun things.

And I answer a lot of your questions.

So I've already been on answering questions.

And unless you … just for some people who are new,

unless you ask a question anonymously I don't post it.

So I will always answer privately.

So if any of you are like 'I don't want it coming up on my blog. It makes me really anxious.'

Don't worry, because I don't post things publicly unless it's anonymous

because then it automatically forces you to.

Because who else are you going to send it to, because it's anonymous.

So I just share it. But the others I answer privately.

So I've already been on, and I've answered a lot of your questions.

And I know it's a little earlier than usual, but I have to go to a clinic meeting this afternoon.

And then I'm meeting some friends at lucky strike for some bowling,

so I'm very excited about that.

So I don't really have any time to come home and do it another time.

So that's why I told you guys, "just ask your questions on the day of as early as you can"

And then I go through quite a few anyways, so yeah.

Okay. Are you ready?

I have a journal topic as well,

and uh, I didn't write down the person's name.

Dang it! I'm sorry.

But anyway, I have 3 questions today and a journal topic, so let's get going.

First question: " Hello Kati."

Hello!

"What is atypical depression and how is it different from other types of depression?"

Now I haven't actually talked about atypical depression mostly because it's my belief,

and this has nothing to do with diagnosis or anything,

but it's my belief that everyone's depression, everyone's mental illness

is expressed and felt differently from person to person.

We're all very different and unique in the way that we feel things,

the way that we deal with things, the way that different things affect us.

So atypical depression, I pulled I made some notes so I don't forget,

'cause there's different types of symptoms that you tend

to find more in atypical depression versus regular depression.

Wow, that's a mouthful.

And so often times people with regular depression,

like I've talked about in my depression video.

If you want to know more about depression, I have a couple videos on it so check it out.

But the symptoms of atypical depression are sleeping too much,

when you have what they call hypersomnia,

increased appetite or weigh gain, and having more intense reactions

or increased sensitivity to rejection resulting in problems with social and work relationships.

And a lot of people say they feel really weighted down, like they really can't do anything.

They're like paralyzed with maybe fear or with their sadness, feeling so heavy with everything.

So it's the same… atypical depression,

they still believe it's the same thing in our brain that's causing it to happen.

If that makes sense.

It's a chemical imbalance, and a lot of it can do with …

there are some things like I was just commenting to the person who I think asked this question or another question.

There are a lot of things that we can do to help with the chemical imbalance in our brain.

One being adding certain things into our diets.

Another being certain yoga poses or stretches or exercises that will help.

And the third obviously being medications.

There are tons of SSRIs, SNRIs, all sorts of antidepressants and medications out there

to help with that chemical imbalance that we're feeling.

So that's really, the way that atypical depression is different from regular depression

is that regular depression will have kind of like the opposite of the things I was talking about.

Like sleeping too much,

a lot of people with depression have these ruminating thoughts at night and they struggle to sleep.

Even though they are tired all day, they have a hard time actually sleeping through the night.

And then increased appetite or weight gain.

In regular depression, in major depressive disorder,

we find that people tend to not have as much of an appetite.

Now in my depression video, the characteristics of depression are

sleeping too much or sleeping too little, eating too much or eating too little.

Because major depressive disorder is major depressive disorder.

Atypical or not, we're all in the same boat.

We're all feeling really down. Our symptoms may be just a little different.

So a lot of people feel really blunted with the regular depression

versus feeling really sensitive to certain things,

feeling really emotional and struggling in relationships.

So you can see how it's almost of the flip of something,

so some of us may feel like we wanna sleep a lot more.

Some of us may sleep a lot less.

Some of us may want to eat more, some want to eat less.

And it just honesty depends on how depression affects us.

At the end of the day, it's still depression.

We just have a few different symptoms.

Almost the flip side of the same coin. Okay.

And if any of you have gone through it,

and things you've been told about it that better help you understand

why they call it atypical depression.

Or if you have anything you want to input, as always leave your comments below.

But I think overall I just want everyone to know that depression is depression.

We all experience it differently

and that's technically what they call atypical depression. Okay.

Question number 2: "Hey Kati. They are thinking of stopping all my medication

to see how my body will react while without them.

What do you think? I'm a bit concerned.

Wouldn't I withdraw or something?"

Now this really scared me, and its something that I don't,

I don't talk about medication that much other than letting you know that it's an option.

And that's because it's out of my standard of care.

I am not a psychiatrist. I'm not a medical doctor, therefore I'm not…

I don't prescribe medication. It's not legal. I can't do that.

That's wrong, so if your therapist is telling you you should get X medication

that's just bullshit.

They should just shut their mouth.

I get really frustrated with that, 'cause that's not what my training is.

I understand medication, so that if you have a reaction

I can let your psychiatrist know or call your doctor, whatever.

But I don't prescribe it, so why would I tell my patients what to take or not take.

So, sorry, that's my soapbox moment.

But to stop medication all of a sudden, to go off everything…

If we're not monitored.

I don't know if this person's in the hospital or not.

I know that she was in the hospital before,

but if you're being monitored don't worry.

If you're in the hospital or in inpatient,

and they want to ween you off your medications, stop some medications.

That's fine.

Stopping things drastically without titrating down can be really dangerous,

because we can go through withdrawal.

Not all medications have withdrawal, but a lot of them do.

So you want to ask your doctor, are there withdrawal symptoms from these medications?

What side effects, if there is withdrawal, can I expect?

Because some of it may just be like oh, hot flashes of some sort or difficulty sleeping,

but others could be like emotional volatility.

And if we're suicidal already or if we're already feeling emotionally volatile

it can make things a lot worse.

And that's where I get worried.

That's why I don't like people to stop medication at all without talking to their doctor.

Without titrating down.

Because withdrawal can be really dangerous.

We may not have not even been suicidal,

but doing that could make us suicidal.

And I just really worry in general,

because our body becomes used to having certain kinds of medication.

And so we have to titrate down, so that our body can compensate

and do what it was doing before we took the medication at all.

So if any of you out there are like 'I hate my medication. It's making me worse.'

Talk to your doctor, have them titrate you off.

Do not stop on your own.

Please, please, please if you're worried,

if you have already call your doctor now and let them know.

Because I just really worry and it makes me stressed out,

because it could make us worse before we get better.

And there's ways that we can avoid that. Okay?

And I hope you're being monitored.

So let me know how things are going. Okay.

Question number 3: "Hey Kati. I was told by a psychiatrist that DBT can actually be harmful

for a person with autism spectrum disorder and make the self harm worse.

What do you think about that? Is it true?

They used to say I had Borderline as well as ASD."

ASD is Autism Spectrum Disorder. That's what they are calling it.

It's all on a spectrum right now, in the DSM-V.

"And I asked about DBT as a treatment for BPD."

If you're wondering what BPD is, I have a video on that as well.

Borderline Personality Disorder. You can search it on YouTube.

"But was denied because of the ASD and then all of a sudden I no longer have BPD."

So pretty much she's saying is DBT actually harmful

for someone with Autism Spectrum Disorder or is it not?

Because they said that she had borderline as well as autism spectrum disorder,

so how do you treat it if one's harmful to the other?

Now I actually had to do a little research on this.

And I've spent a little bit of time, and so I'm going to look here

because I pulled up a couple different research studies and the abstracts on them.

Abstracts are just a kind of summary of what the research study is talking about,

and then there's some specifics that I'll get into.

But Autism Spectrum Disorder is … it really causes us a lot of time to self harm.

We have difficulty with making eye contact,

certain social things that go on in our lives that's really difficult for people.

It can be. Everybody's different, and everyone falls different on the spectrum.

But the most important thing that DBT can help with,

and that's why it sounds to me like a modified DBT helps

people with autism spectrum disorder or ASD.

So I don't think DBT makes your ASD worse,

but I do think it's important to have a physician or a clinician, whoever you're seeing,

to understand that it has to be modified.

Now in the study that I read about, they said that the components of DBT:

mindfulness, emotion regulation, interpersonal effectiveness, and distress tolerance

could be modified to treat older adolescent and adult population people with ASD.

Now it says older adolescent and adult population,

because we can work more on emotion regulation and stuff like that,

which is really difficult for people with ASD.

Where when they're younger… I actually did this.

It was one of my first jobs in grad school, was doing ABA treatment with children with autism.

So this is when they're young.

We do applied behavioral analysis, because that's best with people who are young.

Is this making sense?

It's kind of difficult to completely answer this in a short video,

but definitely you can do DBT if you have autism spectrum disorder.

It's not gonna harm you.

Just make sure the person you see has the knowledge of both autism spectrum disorder and BPD.

Because it needs to be modified a little bit.

There are certain things that will be more difficult for you because of your ASD.

And so those will be some of the tools that they will skip,

and they'll replace with other things to help you

regulate your emotion and work on your interpersonal effectiveness.

So that you can build relationships healthfully and regulate your emotions.

And that really is helpful for all of us.

And that's really how it works when you have ASD as well as BPD.

Okay. I know that's a lot of acronyms, and it might be confusing.

You might have to rewind it, and watch it again.

But you can definitely get help for your BPD through using DBT therapy.

It just has to be modified a little bit.

Okay, journal topic suggestion. This is a quote from Mitch Albom.

If anybody hasn't read any of his books, or this particular book, For One More Day, he has great books.

Okay, this one says "Have you ever lost someone you love and wanted one more conversation.

One more chance to make up for the time when you thought that they would be here forever.

If so then you know you can go your whole life collecting days

and none will outweigh the one that you wish you had back."

'If you could have one more conversation with someone dead or alive, who would it be and what would you say?'

I think that this is really powerful.

Often times we forget how fleeting life is and how important it is to touch base with people.

And to make amends and to reach out and

have those conversations that may be a little uncomfortable.

Or maybe we wish we had spoken up and told them how much we love them.

It's important to remember it while we can do something about it.

So get out and let's do something about it.

Yeah, and Mitch Albom he wrote, I think it's called

Weekends with Morrie, or Tuesdays with Morrie. That's what it is.

And that's a really good book too.

Anyways, I hope you all have a wonderful day.

Tomorrow I'll be on the website and YouTube, so ask your questions below today's video

as well as on katimorton.com.

And I will see you all tomorrow. Love you! Bye!