Taking antidepressant medication does not mean you will not feel bad. It’s important to have reasonable expectations of how you should feel on an antidepressant medication. Depression medication corrects a chemical imbalance responsible for the typical depressed symptoms. Some of these symptoms include a depressed mood, appetite changes, poor sleep (too much or too little), anxiety and poor energy and concentration.
Not everyone who is clinically depressed feels sad. But let’s say you take depression medication and notice improvement in your level of anxiety, your sleep problems resolve and you feel less irritable and hopeless. What then happens when you lose your job? You will be upset and experience the emotions you would have felt if you were not on medication. In other words, the depression medication does not protect you from grieving a loss or responding to hardships with emotional upset.
Some people expect to sail through a difficult situation unscathed if they are on depression medication. If a crisis hits and they have a dip in their mood, they fear they are having a relapse. You may be having breakthrough symptoms, but you may be having the usual and expected response to a difficult situation.
I often say having your depression treated with an antidepressant medication helps give you a stronger foundation to weather the storm more effectively than you could if you were depressed. It’s like kicking an athlete in top form versus kicking a sick man who’s already down.
Let me know what you think