i have experienced emotional "blunting" with my previous antidepressant (paroxetine aka paxil) so i'm no stranger to it, i was kind of expecting it to come back when my psychiatrist put me on lithium based on what i read about it online but to my surprise it didn't happen at all?? it made me a lot less suicidal in a span of 2-3 months which i found so crazy i actually went to read research papers about it lmao. it's a huge help for me.
one thing i've noticed however is that it definitely messed up how my mood works. whenever i'm off lithium i experience a lot of mood swings- something that didn't really happen so often before. once i'm back on it i'm okay again, so it feels like it messed up with something on my brain, as if it can only "regulate" itself while on lithium now
Rant -
Once you're on lithium you/your mind will unwittingly and naturally begin to engage with things that you couldn't before because of the emotions they pertained to, and then once the effects are off, maintaining the same course of life and mental preoccupations, as you naturally would, will mess you up because there's nothing helping your emotions now.
Lithium will only change one variable and thus alter your states, your ability to regulate hasn't changed, since you (what you think) haven't changed. And honestly, I don't think that such a thing as ability to regulate is very valid, it's only knowledge about one's own nature that will help you to not engage with what is just disturbances and instead find fulfillment and answers to the questions of the same disturbances outside of the grieving and despairing. I can't imagine the things (of my emotional states) that I was able to tolerate, I keep saying how I could never bear what I did back there, but ofc, it hasn't changed, to be better or worse, my thoughts and beliefs pertaining to my wounds themselves have the support now that they needed in significant - and thus the recovery that has been attained now. But "ability for" emotional regulation is a wrong and an extremely problematic notion, because it has come to sit in the collective's mind as this thing which is independent of one's inner reality, while once it probably meant something that was there because one had yet to learn what to think with respect to their unqiue and subjective world experience. Sadly, another thing that was mobilized into its current use by ablist actors for the purpose of invalidation.
This "state change" is just a fact of life for all humans, even the most unemotional ones, their feelings will change from moment to moment, and with the same their entire beliefs and worldview might change. It's just that, for us, we've had a history of suicidality, there's an utter unworkability to one's determination of reality, despair and dysfunction follows. And it will keep there, cycling with the states. Everyone's unique innate nature that they have, when there's a deviation from it, will result in all sorts and ranges of psychological afflictions, it will weigh down on one like that. Introducing changes to one's body's functions, external behaviors or biochemical ones, will change things. Intellectual approach is far more effective. Naturally, for that reason, humans have developed cbt/dbt things, although I despise them from what my familiarity with them has been, they are inferior, terribly unscientific works, and they messed me up for this reason, but on the good side, I was able to find the essence of things in it out in time and take up better approaches. But I digress.
The role of medication is only to change the chemicals, do not give them undue credit. You're the one who has been doing the real work. Between the despairing, or hurting the self that there may be, as it usually is, as part of grief, you're the one who's coming to better ideas about how you should be, what you should do and not do.
How you are on lithium isn't a normal that one could strive for or something, it's a mere aid, while your disability and dysfunctions concern your unique and very personal nature.
And I'm not sure if this helps but my experience with lithium was that initially it worked magic, compared to the permutations of those anti-psychotic drugs and ssri that I was put through, and it was great, I had a huge crisis and just one pill fixed it. My psychiatrist was a god and a seer. And then, after like a couple weeks, it didn't work anymore. I took that unworkability of things, in my intellect this time too, independent of my emotional episodes, since my emotions weren't literally driving me to death anymore, and so I began to philosophise and came to suicide as the right, virtuous choice (for me!). In due time however, because there was a bit of a hangup for the same, as their usually is because of physical circumstances and a lack of the same urgency that there used to be before, I was introduced to a possibility of truth of things being different from the determinations that I had arrived at, owing to my life's experience (most all of which was spent being suicidal af and unable to feel safe in the world, so...) and education (intellect was ill-equiped with inadequate education, as is the case for most all people who may as well be highly educated).
Anyway. I had wanted to engage with you since you had, fortunately, resumed posting back here again for support. But I'm not necessarily in ideal shape and therefore won't necessarily be able to say all the right, and helpful things, and so I didn't. Until now, because what the hell I should try to add something. But do forgive how off it may be, I'm still out of whack most of the time. I'm happy to read that you're much less suicidal, this is significant, regardless of what harshness you may experience on ocassions. I'm completely sure you will make the progress, including the part where it's worth it to be sure. No matter how unworkable and literally physically impossible it all may seem, you will get what you want, there's nothing I could believe in more than that.
