Anxiety controlled my life. Therapy was not helping.
If you are reading this blog, chances are you are a worrier. Chances are you have a child, sibling and/or a parent who is also a worrier. Furthermore, if you are reading this blog, chances are that you have not found relief from this often paralyzing condition. I’ve been there. I am still there some of the time. I want to tell you about the help I found for my debilitating anxiety.
I am 58 years old and I have been in psychotherapy for about 30 years! Without this, I know that I would have fallen apart a long time ago. However, the therapy was not enough. In 1993, I found myself sitting in the therapist’s office, crying as usual. I was worrying about this, I was worrying about that. What if … this? What if … that? It was always the same story, different slant. On this day, something shifted in me. I guess you could say I had an epiphany. My sister, a fellow worrier, had been taking antidepressants for a few years. She’d been urging me to see a psychiatrist, but I had been unwilling to discuss it. After all, I wasn’t crazy. Only crazy people took medication for emotional issues, right?
On this day I asked my therapist (who was a PHD psychologist) what she thought about the idea of my taking anti-anxiety/anti-depressant medication.
“Oh, I don’t believe in taking medication for emotional problems when psychotherapy can make you feel better,” she replied.
But I am not getting better. I never feel better for long once I walk out of your office, I screamed inside my head.
We discussed my sister and the fact that she has many more emotional issues than I do (poor girl) and that medication, for me, was not the way to go. I accepted this for only a few more weeks. And then I got the name of my sister’s psychiatrist and I went to see him. That appointment was what I consider in many ways to be the beginning of my life.
Tags: psychiatrists, psychotherapy, psychotherapist, worry
- Posted in : generalized anxiety disorder, anxiety symptoms, psychotherapy, anti-depressants, anti-anxiety medication, worry
- Author : freebird
Comments»
Good. Some people really have a chemical imbalance. and therapy doesnt do anything for those people. Follow your instinct!!