Anxiety and depression remission period

The core essence of the remission period of anxiety and depression has never been "completely eradicating all negative emotions and never feeling sad or anxious again." It is a dynamic balance stage in which you can finally coexist with the remaining emotional symptoms, your social functions have basically returned to the level before the onset of the disease, and you are no longer carried away by your emotions. There is no universal recovery standard, and your feelings and actual living conditions are the only basis for judgment.

I once visited a girl who was reading materials in 985. When she was suffering from severe anxiety and moderate depression, she lay in bed and cried for seven days. She was unable to enter the laboratory, and her roommate had to bring her meals to her bedside. After taking medicine for ten months, she was able to do experiments with the group normally. She could also go to the botanical garden with friends on weekends. However, whenever she saw the message "come to my office" from her instructor, her palms would still break out in cold sweat and her heartbeat would beat two minutes faster. She specifically went to the outpatient clinic to ask the doctor if she was still feeling better. The doctor checked her three consecutive scale results and said with a smile that she had been in remission for almost three months. It was then that she realized: It turns out that it does not mean that she has no negative emotions at all to be considered "completely better."

There is no unified standard for judging the remission period in the industry, and the judgment standards of practitioners with different orientations are quite different. The hard indicators of psychiatrists are the clearest: SAS, SDS, and Hamilton Anxiety and Depression Scale scores have fallen back to the normal range, there are no extreme thoughts of self-injury or suicide, eating and sleeping have basically returned to normal, and the person can undertake basic social functions such as work, study, and social interaction. If these are met, it is considered to be in remission. Consultants who often practice cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) will pay more attention to your "emotional frustration threshold": before, you would break down and lie down for three days when encountering something trivial. Now, if you encounter the same thing, you can get back on track in half a day. Even if you are still a little stuck in your heart, you can still finish the things at hand. This is enough. If you are looking for a counselor who adopts the orientation of Commitment Therapy (ACT), he will even think that "should you eliminate symptoms" itself is a false proposition. As long as what you are doing now is what you really want to do, even if you are a little anxious and depressed when doing it, you have already entered the remission period. To put it bluntly, the core of all judgment criteria is "can you live a good life", never "do you have negative emotions".

Speaking of this, I remembered that an old visitor asked me last week, can I stop taking medicine when I enter the remission period? There is still no unified answer to this question in the clinical field. Most of the psychiatrists I have contacted will repeatedly advise: for the first attack, it is best to take the medication for 6-9 months after the symptoms completely disappear, and then gradually reduce the dose according to the dosage, otherwise the probability of recurrence will be much higher. ； However, some scholars who study clinical psychology believe that if you have become proficient in using emotion regulation methods and your social function has been stable for more than 3 months, you can slowly reduce the medication under the full evaluation of the doctor, and you do not have to stick to a fixed time. To be honest, there is really no standard answer to this kind of thing. Just don't park randomly on your own. Asking the attending doctor who knows your situation best for evaluation is more useful than asking ten netizens.

The easiest pitfall during the remission period is actually "anti-anxiety anxiety". Many people finally get through it without crying every day, but suddenly one day they are so anxious that they can't sleep all night because of working overtime or having a conflict with a friend. Their first reaction is, "Am I having a relapse?" Have all the previous efforts been in vain? ”The more I thought about it, the more panicked I became. What should have been something that could have been relieved in half a day, I frightened myself and put it off for several days. In fact, it’s really not necessary. I often compare it to my clients. The mood swings during the remission period are like sneezing after blowing a cold wind after getting over a cold. It’s not that you have become positive again, it’s just that your emotional system is still adapting to the normal rhythm of life. It’s so normal.

Last month, a visitor who worked in Internet operations came to me for review. He said that he had changed the 8-version activity plan the day before but was still rejected by the customer. When he got sick half a year ago, he would have been hiding in the stairwell of the company crying until he couldn't breathe. He had to take leave and go home and lie down for three days to recover. As a result, that day he just went downstairs to buy a glass of iced Americano, stood on the roadside and cursed the customer as an idiot, then turned around and changed the 9th version. After get off work, he even picked up his girlfriend on the way to eat the Chongqing hot pot they had been talking about for a long time. While eating, he was still complaining about the customer's weird request. He said, "I was still a little annoyed when I changed my plan, but I know that I still have to go to work and eat hot pot, and that's enough." You see, this is the best state of remission. There is no perfect recovery. It's just that you have finally become the master of your emotions. You can live your life when it makes trouble.

Many people ask me what they should do during the remission period to get "completely well" as soon as possible. I usually don't give a one-, two- or three-item check-in list. Some people are comfortable running five kilometers every day, some are comfortable sitting on the sofa and watching Crayon Shin-Chan for half an hour every day, some are comfortable complaining to friends twice a week, and some people just want to be comfortable by themselves and not see anyone. You don't need to follow the "healing guide" on the Internet to force yourself to be positive and have positive energy. As long as you can live your life calmly and be able to catch the occasional emotional upswing, that's already great. Oh, by the way, it doesn’t matter if you really can’t handle it one day. Talk to your doctor, your counselor, or a friend you trust. The sky will never fall.