I’m new to this, but seeing where I am now I figured I’d give this a shot.
So, I suffer from depression and anxiety. The former has been new as of a little over a year now, but I’ve always been a deep worrier. (Worry till the point where I cry and can’t breathe and panic.) After about a year of Cognitive Behavorial Therapy, I was prescribed Lexapro by my doctor. It’s only been a couple of weeks, but I’m extremely disappointed that I haven’t felt a change. The first two days I thought I did, but I think it was more of the hype of actually trying something to help my depression and anxiety.
Throughout all of this, I’ve had a lot of guilt. I don’t have a bad life. I have great parents, a great church family, and a great life in general. I shouldn’t feel sad. I shouldn’t feel heavy all the time. I shouldn’t have suicidal thoughts. It takes a lot to remind myself that it’s okay for me to feel like this, but a lot of the time I just feel bad for feeling bad, which in turn makes me spiral even deeper into this depression.
I also have a hard time opening up to my family. I could talk for hours to a complete stranger about how lousy I feel all the time, but can’t even tell my mom when I’m having a bad day.
So I ended up texting in to the Crisis Text alone about a week ago only because I was feeling extremely overwhelmed and my anxiety levels were through the roof. That’s what brought me here, after they suggested online support groups.
I don’t know if this will work. But I just want to try something. Therapy helped a little, and I honestly thought medication would too, but I still feel the same. I don’t think about it all the time, but when I do have moments like that, they’re intense.
I just don’t want to feel like this forever.
1. My therapists have told me several times that saying “should” or “shouldn’t” in the manner you are using it, is a bad thing. The statements aren’t really true, and they weigh you down with added negativity. Try to remove it from your vocabulary when you talk about how your life is going.
2. Medication for me did not work the first time. I had to try a second medication. Then a third. Then a forth, and finally a fifth, before I found one that had a noticeable effect. And don’t ask what the fifth was, because the first, which actually made me sick, worked amazingly for other people. My fifth might be useless for you.
There’s no happy pill, the medication doesn’t make me feel wonderful, but I can tell that it is quite reliable in blocking depression from going down deep and dark. So ‘antidepressant’ is a good name.