Yesterday, after an 11.5 year battle with extreme anxiety I decided to explore a new possibility. I had my feet dug pretty well into the ground about going on meds. As a control freak, I do not like drugs/medicine. Not knowing what the side effects will be, what it will do to my body and how it will make me feel freaks me out so much I just choose not to try.
Being controlling is part of my anxiety. Have a one track mind about what is best for myself and having a difficult time veering from that. I have done therapy twice, both for years at a time with different therapists. It helped for a time, but then we get to the point where we have navigated the current waters and then there is a stand still. So, I put therapy on hold.
I have a very hard time seeing in the moment how I am reacting to people. Even when they try to tell me, show me or remind me, I will still implode. My husband and my children are amazing at being supportive of me and trying so hard to help me recognize, but they take the brunt of the misfire and they don’t deserve it.
This weekend everything came to a head. When I saw the look on my husband’s face and my children’s face, I knew something different had to be done. I just wasn’t sure what that looked like yet. I slept on it for a few days and really thought about what could be done differently. I did sign up for therapy again, which I think has it’s value, but I am not sure it is enough long term.
After doing some research and talking with friends and family that I trust, I decided to make an appointment with a doctor to discuss my anxiety. Tell someone professional, other than a therapist that I suffer from extreme anxiety and control issues. Ask for help in a different way than I ever have before.
So, after 11.5 years of saying no, yesterday I took a chance at saying “yes” to medicine that could help me. I have enlisted my husband to be brutally honest with me about how he notices it effecting me and I have assured him that I will be honest too. I am supposed to take my dose at bedtime. So, I did last night for the first time.
This morning, I woke up a little groggy, but other than that feel the same. I know it can take months to see the full effects and I am going to practice something else I am not good at, patience!
A good friend said this quote to me yesterday “Jesus loves me this I know. For he gave me lexapro.” Glennon Doyle
Making Time For Me 