Taking my meds part the third

So 2 months later (been a long time, sorry!), and here is an update. I am now on 10mg of escitalopram per day (aka Lexapro/Loxalate/Cipralex/probably several other brands). The transition from 5mg to 10mg was easier than the transition from 0 to 5mg. I didn’t experience as much dizziness or fatigue. My brain didn’t feel as fuzzy. And after taking 10mg for 1 week, I felt perfectly normal.

Has it helped? I think so.

• I am more able to recognise the little things as “little things”. When my kids are melting down, I am no longer melting down with them the majority of the time. One example: tonight one of my children is unwell, and while holding him as he was crying, crying, crying, I stepped on a corn chip (from dinner…nachos) and it crushed onto the floor, adding to the fairly substantial mess. In the past, I would have felt a wave of rage at making the mess worse/not being able to prevent it in the first place and despair at not being able to console my crying child. But tonight I was able to just brush it aside with my foot and focus on continuing to get my unwell child into bed. (Then cleaned it up later with no stress). Awesome! Such a little thing, but makes such a huge difference.
• I find myself enjoying my kids a lot more. I like playing with them, laughing with them now. Before I mostly just wanted to get out of there.
• I still feel some anxiety when my husband goes to work and I’m alone with the kids, but not as much as I used to. Usually the anticipation is worse than the actual day, rather than most days feeling awful.
• I am laughing more! Years ago, before my anxiety really kicked up a notch, I used to find humour in the absurd and ridiculous situations we all find ourselves in. Somehow I lost that, and I don’t even remember where. But I remember one day, after being on Lexapro for awhile, I suddenly found something so funny I just burst out laughing at the absurdity of it. Usually I would have found it annoying or inconvenient and it would have made me irritable. But I feel like some of my sense of humour has been freed.
• I don’t feel so angry at God anymore. I used to feel like what was the point of praying for help, when my kids would never sleep through or do what they were told. I just felt like everything was against me and he didn’t care. I can’t say I’m completely not angry about the difficulties we had, but I am now able to at least communicate those feelings to him, and trust that he understands. I think that one’s a work in progress. But at least I survived with my faith intact (although not unchanged – more on that another time maybe).

Things that haven’t been fully resolved:

• Feelings of self-doubt and uncertainty. Some days (many days) they are pretty strong and I feel unmotivated or like I am going to fail at everything anyway, so why try. Of course I still get up, care for my kids (and enjoy them), go to work, hit the gym etc. I think the self-doubt relates more to my thoughts about the future, like my work situation and how to juggle our schedules as a family. I find it really hard, and stressful.
• How I feel about changes that have happened in different relationships in my life. I don’t want to say too much about that in detail, but I need to process and deal with some things in order to move forward.

In order to deal with these things, I have gone to my GP and together we did a mental health plan which allows me access to a psychologist at a subsidised rate. I think I get 6 sessions, and my plan is to schedule an appointment soon to see if we can deal with some of the above issues.

My experience with medication so far has been positive. I know not everyone’s is, and sometimes it takes time to find the exact medication or combination of medication and therapy that suits your situation. But if you’re struggling, I encourage you to seek out the help you deserve, and if that includes taking medication under a doctor’s supervision, then I believe it is worth trying.

Thanks for reading!