I just feel flat all the time

[Energizerhoney]

You can see my meds in my siggy below. I'm able to go to work, cause I have a well paying but pretty low stress job. Even someone at work said I had a flat affect.

So how do you know if your med is just not working or it's just breakthrough depression?

I'm so sick of this shit.

[dreamcatcher14]

I know what it's like to be on AAPs like seroquel and have experienced the way they dull your affect. (Lamictal probably does the same.) I hate to say there's no getting away from it if you're on them so I won't. (But the implication is there). I have recently and slowly come down from 30mg to 15mg (yay) Abilify for this reason (cognitive dulling, mood flattening as well as brain fog). I hope to be off it completely by the end of the year. Are you stable at the moment? Is there room for you to discuss a reduction in your meds with your pdoc?? I hope things improve for you in this respect, mood dulling makes it so hard for to relate to others sometimes and sometimes it makes one feel like a vegetable

[Dusk]

I'm not sure how to tell the difference. I was on Abilify for a couple of years and during that time my cognitive skills deteriorated rapidly. I thought it was the medicine but then last year I stopped taking my pills for several months and the mental "dullness" was still there. But I think it's very hard to tell while being on the meds (of course I don't recommend stopping them).

[Phoenix_Rising]

When I have breakthrough depression, I tend to try using coping skills.  If that doesn't work, I go in for a med tweak.  For me, cognitive dulling appears most often when I am depressed.  Although I have been on meds that caused dulling, depression, for me, is usually the culprit.

[Energizerhoney]

Now I'm wondering if my "flat" feeling is just normal baseline like "normal" people are? Just even keel. If its that I hate it. I feel like I'm not myself anymore (the highs and the lows).

It's like you can't win or lose lol.

[bluechick]

Now I'm wondering if my "flat" feeling is just normal baseline like "normal" people are? Just even keel. If its that I hate it. I feel like I'm not myself anymore (the highs and the lows).

It's like you can't win or lose lol.

From my viewpoint feeling flat does not equal feeling normal. It was a side effect that I absolutely refused to tolerate. I kept having the pdoc change my meds until that effect was gone. Maybe try going back to your pdoc for a med change.

[walking_wounded]

Ironically, I was just going to post this exact topic. Instead, I started googling and found this thread. I totally feel what you're saying.

 

Lamictal seems to have this effect on me, yet it's the only thing thus far that I've managed to tolerate the physical side effects of, so...  

[Luna-]

I feel flat too. Heaven knows I am on medication that would cause it. But my pdoc says that repeated episodes of illness cause brain damage. I feel caught between a rock and a a hard place. I often teeter on the brink of just lowering my meds myself to see if it improves.

[Chaos]

I felt very very flat on AP's, including seroquel. Some of it was probably depression, it can be hard to tell. But right now I'm on depakote and lamictal, and I feel good, I feel like myself. I don't think you have to accept this is just your baseline.

[dtac]

My pdoc says that is the hard thing to avoid with psych meds. Sometimes lower dosages leave you with more ups and downs, but helps avoid that flat/dulling affect. It can be hard to tell what does it until you start adjusting things, and that always sucks. Looking at your meds, I know Klonopin will do that to me, even if my anxiety is crazy high, but I'm guessing this happens even without the Klonopin?

[bookgirl]

I am going through this right now. I know it's not normal to feel flat because I've been on med combos that don't do this to me. My pdoc's initial thought was that it was breakthrough depression, so we added on a new med. New med's not helping at all - I just left her a message saying I'm tempted to come off the Saphris but don't want to do it without her approval. In my case, the flat affect kicked in a couple weeks after I started Saphris and has stuck around. I'm pretty sure it's the med this time, because the last time this happened, it was med-related (Celexa in that instance). At any rate, numbness is NOT normal and you deserve better. 

[Alien Navel Cord]

i thought for the longest time that my flat effect/lack of emotion/numbness was just what 'normal' is supposed to feel like, but then I got tired of feeling that way, I wanted actual emotions, I didn't want to feel dulled and flat. So I spoke to my pdoc about it and got on different medications (namely being taken off the AAP) and started to actually FEEL again.. now life is different. It is  more multi-dimensional, I have more personality, and feel like a normal person. It turns out the flatness and numbness were attributed to mild depression. 

[ripley]

I've been feeling flat too and I'm not sure whether it's the lithium or whether it's just normal. I have a hard time doing anything except sitting on the couch watching shit movies. I saw Richard Dreyfuss on an interview saying that him on lithium (without the highs and lows) is just the way normal people experience life. I am not BP though, just major depression and the lithium's meant to augment my antidepressant. It does work too - stops me from crying all the time and makes it much easier to act like a normal person and not get upset about the world. It's just that when I'm by myself I have no desire to do anything. I think that the main side effect is apathy which includes loss of interest in socialising, being with friends, sex. Other than this and feeling a bit lost-for-words I haven't had the usual problems with weight gain and thyroid problems so I'm lucky really. Any advice about the motivation would be really appreciated. Thanks