Thanks...

Anthea,

Thanks for the response, that was pretty much what I was looking for.

While I do agree with you that people are very suggestable and undue worry about something can cause the worst to come to pass, I feel that the amounts of worry both my wife and I are experiencing are within the normal range ;) Heck, you lived with this, I'm pretty sure you were worried too! I don't want to go back to the violent outburst thing again! In other words, I think a little caution is certainly called for in dealing with this problem.

What I am trying to avoid is a situation where she gets discouraged, doesn't stick with it and we're back at square one, which has been a pattern with her medical treatments through the years, as well as therapy, things like that. I expect setbacks, I think they are normal and if she knows what may happen, I think that she will be more inclined to see things through.

She has been experiencing most of the side effects that you mention, she has been a little tired, has had an upset stomach at times, and has had a slight headache for the past few days. All that sounds pretty normal, though, so I won't worry about it.

I do have a final question though - you say that you don't take tryptophan anymore regularly. What has happened that you are able to not take it and not have any problems with re-occurance? I understand that there may have been untold numbers of stress-management classes in there, or whatever, but how is it that you no longer take this and feel normal? How is it that to get an initial benefit, you need to spend months taking tryptophan, but it can then be taken only once in a while for "maintainence"? I don't quite get how that is going to work, maybe its just that the medical solution is "maintainence for life" and I have an inate trust of western medicaine, I dunno, I just dont get it.

Thanks for your help in general, and this particularly valuable post.