How Anti-Depressants Gave Me Back My Life

I had my first anxiety attack when I was ten-years-old. I had just eaten a piece of cake and gone to bed. My mom wasn’t home, but my dad was downstairs watching television, and both my older siblings were asleep. All of a sudden, my stomach churned, and I felt like I was going to throw up. I immediately sat up, fear and nausea pulsing through me with equal force. Eventually the wave of nausea quieted, but the fear I had experienced with the nausea did not. The act of throwing up had always upset me (as it does many people), but for some reason, on this night, that one wave of nausea triggered something inside of me that would change my relationship to the world forever. I went downstairs to my dad and sat on the couch watching television with him until my mom came home, my whole body paralyzed with fear at the thought of throwing up.

I slept that night propped up on pillows, because it made me feel nauseous. The next morning, I woke up, and to my horror, the fear and tension I had felt the night before came flooding back the second I opened my eyes. I could barely put food in my mouth without feeling like I was going to vomit. My whole body felt shaky and tense. I remember I was able to force myself to drink half a glass of chocolate milk before going to my softball match. I didn’t really know what was going on, so both I and my mom assumed I simply had a stomach bug.

This utter terror at the thought of throwing up didn’t go away, however; it kept getting worse. I lived in terror of my mom calling me to dinner, of the prospect of having to sit with my whole family while they stared at me and wondered why I wasn’t eating. Any bite of food that went into my mouth was a danger, because it was something that I might throw up. Food didn’t taste good, and it literally terrified me. I spent weeks trying to make myself eat “safe” foods that wouldn’t be too harsh on my stomach, wanting to break down and cry and scream with frustration and fear every time my mom asked me what was wrong, or urged me to eat just a few for bites.

My sister had been going through some mental health problems of her own around this time, struggling with severe depression and manic episodes, and my brother was battling ADHD, barely passing his classes and exhibiting some very disruptive behavior. They both hated each other during this time, as my sister blamed my brother’s hyper antics as the reason she was having so many problems. (Note: this was not the case. My brother’s behavior may have exacerbated her situation or served as a trigger sometimes, but it was not the cause.) As the youngest child, I had taken the back seat in terms of priority. This is not something I blame my parents for, especially in retrospect. At the time, it was confusing and infuriating, but I still understood that taking care of my sister’s mental health and protecting my brother were the most important goals.

I felt guilty to be struggling so much with my own issues. I didn’t want to be another added problem for my parents, whose whole lives now revolved around my sister’s well-being and trying to keep my brother in check so as not to set her off. I was rapidly and noticeably losing weight, not being able to eat more than a few bites of food at a time, and living in anticipatory fear of when I would be expected to eat next. I didn’t understand what was going on, why I felt this way, and why I had this irrational and all-consuming terror of throwing up. I knew it wasn’t normal, and I knew other people didn’t obsess this way, but I could not for the life of me figure out how to stop it. One morning my mom asked me point-blank what was wrong, expressing that she was worried I might have an eating disorder. I completely broke down, and explained to her to the best of my ability what I had be struggling with.

This was a huge turning point in my life, and I owe it all to my mom. Because she had been educating herself so much on mental illness due to my brother and sister’s issues, my mom leapt into action and got me to a psychiatrist. She didn’t make me feel like my feelings were my fault, or that I should be ashamed. She was there for me every step of the way, and even though she couldn’t completely understand what I was going through, she was always there for me when I needed to cry, talk, or simply sit there on the couch shaking with anxiety.

Going into therapy was one of the scariest things I have ever done. Having to walk into the office of a total stranger at the age of eleven, and explain to them what I knew to be “irrational” fears and thoughts, was both terrifying and embarrassing. What I didn’t expect for the psychiatrist to tell me, however, was that I was not the only one who had these thoughts and fears that wouldn’t leave my head. My specific fear of throwing up might be more individual, but the inability to shake this crippling fear was not.

I tried just talking for a while with my psychiatrist who also did talk therapy, and we covered everything from my family history to the history of my anxiety. There were some days where I would feel a little better, but overall, I was still living every day in fear. I started to actually throw up sometimes after eating because the anxiety was so bad. I didn’t want to throw up, in fact there was nothing I wanted to do more than to eat. I was starving, but my anxiety wouldn’t let me relax enough to eat a proper meal. I started to avoid social situations where I might have to eat, because I felt like everyone was always staring at me and judging me and wondering what was wrong. I stopped going over to my friends’ houses for sleepovers, because what if I threw up when I was there? Every aspect of my life became an opportunity for potential embarrassment and anxiety attacks. No matter where I went or what I did, I always felt like I was exposed, like another wave of anxiety was just around the corner, ready to debilitate me whenever it felt like it.

Finally, my mom and my psychiatrist decided to try giving me some medication. I vividly remember the day this happened. I had been especially struggling, and my ability to live life had basically started to shut down due to how incapable I felt. I sat in my psychiatrist’s office, sobbing with relief, when she told me we were going to try medication. I felt that, finally, just maybe, I might start to feel some respite. I remember the first time I ever took a pill, how terrified I was to swallow it, but how determined I was. There was nothing I wanted more than to not feel the way I did.

Medication didn’t work right away, and I spent the next year or so on several different medications. Some helped calm me down a little bit, for a short while, but after a few months I would have a particularly bad anxiety attack and would be back to square one. I could eat more regularly now, but the threat of nausea still haunted me. I saw several different therapists and tried a couple different medications during this time, and while some of these meds gave me temporary relief, nothing ever really changed long-term. My anxiety was also starting to morph, giving me new things to worry about and obsess over. While I was still very sensitive about feeling nauseous, I also had trouble sleeping (sometimes because I was so hungry), and was now having obsessive and intrusive thoughts about other topics.

When I was about 12, I was watching a TV show that mentioned one of the characters having sex with a bunch of women. This triggered something in me again, and from there on out I was terrified of anything relating to sex or intimate relationships. My friend had told me about sex when I was nine, but for some reason hearing it stated so blatantly years later affected me very strongly. I couldn’t listen to friends joking about sexual topics. I couldn’t watch television shows or movies or read anything that might mention something sexual of any sort. I felt dirty and scared, and I started having intrusive thoughts relating to sex that wouldn’t get out of my head. These thoughts petrified me, not only because they were genuinely upsetting, but because I felt perverted for the fact that they simply occurred to me. I would have nightly confession sessions with my mom, during which I would tell her every thought that had popped into my head that day, because if I didn’t the thoughts, and the guilt associated with them, would keep me up all night.

When I was 13, my mom finally got me an appointment with a top-tier psychiatrist who my sister saw to treat her depression and mania. I was so worn down by this point, having dealt with three years of anxiety and subsequent depression as a result of the anxiety, that I was willing to try anything, including explaining to an old man all of my fears, from throwing up to intrusive sexual thoughts. My mom helped me as much as she could, giving the psychiatrist an overview of what I struggled with before I went in to talk to him myself. At the end of that very first session, I was given a prescription for 10 milligrams of Prozac, which was actually an anti-depressant and not an anti-anxiety medication. I had heard of Prozac before, but my mom had been tentative to put me on an anti-depressant for fear that it might induce mood swings in me similar to my sister’s. At this point, however, we were both willing to put our faith in a professional who specialized in Prozac and its treatment of anxiety and depression.

Within a week of taking just those 10 milligrams of Prozac, I started to feel just a little better. Maybe it was a combined result of the Prozac and the placebo effect of feeling that I was finally in the right doctor’s hands, but for the first time I truly began to feel like something was working. Over the next couple months we slowly increased my dosage, and I began to feel more and more like myself. I almost couldn’t remember what it was like to live without anxiety constantly plaguing me, but on the Prozac, I started to find myself again. I began to actually enjoy eating, and I was able to start participating in social situations again. I found myself able to really delve into theater, which had been a passion of mine over the years but had always taken a back seat to my anxiety. For the first time in many years, I was actually functioning in a livable way and finding joy in life.

My anxiety wasn’t completely gone. I would still have the occasional panic attack, usually triggered by some offhand comment or new situation, and the residual feelings would linger for weeks. They weren’t as frequent, and I experienced relief between the attacks, but I still wasn’t completely happy. More than anything, I wasn’t able to entertain the concept of having an intimate relationship, because I was still occasionally upset over inappropriate thoughts (although they didn’t plague me the way they used to). In an attempt to address this persistent issue, my psychiatrist put me in touch with a therapist who specialized in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (known as exposure therapy, or CBT for short).

Going through Cognitive Behavior Therapy was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. It involved laying out all of my various anxieties in front of myself, rating them from least troublesome to most troublesome, and systematically attacking them by deliberately putting myself in situations that would trigger anxiety. Before I knew as much about psychotherapy as I do now, this seemed like a counter-intuitive and downright horrible approach. What, I was supposed to treat my anxiety by actively making myself more anxious? No, thank you. It took me a long time to realize that so much of my anxiety stemmed from avoidance, and that by avoiding situations that made me anxious, I never really learned that these feared situations weren’t actually a threat to me at all. By gradually exposing myself to “dangerous” situations (such as eating foods that might not be so mild on my stomach, going on a date with a boy, or letting an upsetting thought play itself out to the end without trying to suppress it), my body and mind slowly stopped being so up-in-arms all the time.

I don’t pretend to be an expert on the complexities of CBT, but I can tell you it absolutely works. It can be terrible, and involves being brutally honest with yourself about your own fears and insecurities. At one point, my therapist asked me why I didn’t want to put myself in a certain situation and I said, “Because I’m genuinely not interested. I’m a generally confident person, and maybe I just don’t feel like it.” He looked me square in the eyes and said, “Well, no. You are actually insecure, and scared to do it.” I was so offended and angry, I left his office not wanting to come back. If I didn’t know myself better than anyone, what was the point? Who was he to tell me that I was insecure? He’d only known me for a few months. Looking back, I know now how right he was. I was insecure; I was scared; and by refusing to see this and acknowledge my own shortcomings, I was standing in my own way of coming to terms with and taking control of my anxiety.

This conversation with my therapist was another major turning point for me. I had never had someone be so blatantly honest with me about my issues. It was hard to accept, but I’ve learned that accepting myself and understanding both my strengths and weaknesses is the key to living with anxiety. I now see that while my anxiety is and always will be a part of me, it does not define me and it does not control my life.

My struggle with anxiety was a year-long battle, filled with massive ups and downs. What I want to stress most is that the utmost important step was for me to first get on the right medication. This step took me a few years, but because I had a wonderful support system from my family, and because I was lucky enough to have the resources and means, I finally landed on a medication that made me feel like I had the strength and desire to take further steps in dealing with my anxiety. Without being on the right medication, I would not have been able to handle the Cognitive Behavior Therapy; I simply would have shut down. Being on my Prozac, however, gave me the edge I needed to start seeing what my life could be like, and gave me the power to actually start actively challenging myself and my anxiety.

I am now in charge of my life. I still have an “anxious” personality, but my anxieties have a more positive impact on my life, such as helping me stay organized and keep proactive and motived. I will never be “anxiety free,” because anxiety is chronic, just like any other recurring physical ailment. I still get nervous, and I still feel all the emotions that a “normal” person feels, but these feelings no longer cripple me. I absolutely love food, and I actually enjoy, and get a great deal of satisfaction, out of taking risks and putting myself in situations that make me a little uncomfortable (within reason, of course). I have never experienced any highly noticeably side effects from being on my medication, because I am on the right kind of meds and the right dosage. Being on medication allows me to be me. I can’t be myself, and live my life to the fullest, when I am crippled by anxiety. Recently, I have actually been working with my same psychiatrist to lower my dosage, and I think there is a chance that one day I might be completely off of medication altogether. One step at a time, however. The only reason I might one day be medicine free, however, is because I got on the right meds at a crucial time, and this in turn enabled me to enter therapy and develop a tool kit of skills that I will use for the rest of my life to manage my anxieties.

I’m not making the claim that medication is for everyone. I’m not making the claim that CBT is for everyone. I do encourage everyone who is struggling, however, to reach out, and find the right treatment that works for them. For me, it was a combination of medication and behavior therapy, but I give my meds the credit for giving me the hope and power to take back my life for myself. I am so grateful for the life I lead now. I want to share my story so that every person knows that they, too, deserve the opportunity to live life to the fullest, unencumbered by mental illness.