I feel like my life on meds is like Groundhog Day.

I don't have a stream of thoughts. It's like my thoughts are barely there, very shallow, going nowhere. It's like this all the time. It never changes.

I don't have real emotional reactions. Just a vague sense of frustration, fear, worry, and sadness. I feel the exact same things all the time. Same vague feelings. It never changes.

When I try to think about my life, my experiences, what is going on, etc., my mind won't work. It won't give me a suitable answer. I'll ask it a very basic question, like how are you, or what is going on, and the instant response is "I don't know". I can spend 20 minutes trying to "talk" with myself, and the most frequent response is "Nothing". Like there's absolutely nothing there, no substance, no core to me. I can't get at anything, or beneath anything. It never changes.

I can't have a real conversation with anyone. They talk, I barely comprehend, I don't get interested or attached to anything. Again, this never changes. Day to day, interaction to interaction, it's all the same.

I have no interests. Nothing I say or do draws me emotionally, nothing brings out thoughts or feelings. Day after day, I suffer this.

I've felt like this ever since I've been on meds. 16 years now. No matter the meds, except when the dose was too low. Right now I'm on 2 mg risperidone, 1200 mg Trileptal, and 100 mg lamotrigine. It was worse at 3 mg risperidone - I had no thoughts at all then, and no feelings, not even frustration. I was just completely and totally shut down.

I don't know what to do about this Groundhog Day feeling. I can't seem to break past it. I'll sit for 20 minutes solid and try to "be" with myself, but nothing. No sense of development, of thoughts, of feelings. Just mental and emotional containment, like a muzzled dog. I can't seem to move on, to think, to feel, to develop, to grow. I am just stuck in the same place all the time. I feel like I am locked in a cage.

I can't deal with my fear. I can't deal with my worry. I know these are related to my health, because I still have some quiet thoughts that creep around the edges of my core being (which is empty), but lacking "loud enough" thoughts or a clear internal monologue I feel like I can't actually deal with these things, they are just sort of there in the background. I try to think about them, and I get nothing. My mind just refuses to think.

The "nothing" is really frustrating me. But again, the frustration never changes. It's the same feeling of frustration day after day - the same sensation, the same loudness. It never develops. Nothing ever shifts it. I can't even think flexibly enough to say to myself "Why are you frustrated?" and to try to argue my way out of it somehow. My brain is that floppy/lazy. My thoughts are like wet noodles. I can't get them to form into a shape, to hold, to have substance or function in any way. Even just the thought "Why are you frustrated?" is hard to form. And when I do manage it, the answer is, "I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know." Even though I am sure on some level I know very well.

Spontaneous thoughts? I try to reach for those but if I do find them it's just like I want to run away, I am back in the streets, I am back in the hospital, I run up, I run down, I am in the ER again, I am climbing the walls. Often the only "thought" I find is a gesture of my arms. And it's also the same kind of gesture all the time. Like constantly struggling to get out containment. It's my only real "experience". I don't "tune in" to anything else.

The very repetitiveness of this is killing me. I can't stand feeling so trapped, so artificially tranquillized, so impaired, so disconnected.

Is this normal on meds? Do other people feel the same sense of stuckness day after day? The same muzzling? Anyone felt this, and found a way to move past it even on meds?