Ep 14 -Should You Take Anxiety Medication?

In Episode 14, I want to take some time to address questions I’ve had about medication, but before we begin, it’s important for me to remind you that I am not a doctor or a therapist! I am a coach who has years of personal experience with anxiety and medication, as well as some pretty amazing skills that will help you if you are anxious… Which I assume you are since you’re listening to this podcast. This is not medical advice or therapeutic advice and I absolutely am not telling you to take or not take medication! 

In this episode, I’m sharing my experience with anxiety medication based, how medication can support you in the recovery process AND how you can take decisive action with or without medication today that will start you on the road to recovery in 4 simple steps.

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Transcript

In Episode 14, I want to take some time to address some questions I've had about medication. But before we begin, it's important for me to remind you that I am not a doctor or a therapist. I'm a coach who has plenty of personal experience with anxiety and medication, as well as some pretty amazing skills that will help you if you are anxious, which I assume you are, since you're listening to This podcast. This is not medical advice or therapeutic advice. And I absolutely am not telling you to take or not take medication. Let's dive in. 
Welcome to the More than Anxiety Podcast. I'm Megan Devito. And I am the Life Coach for women and teenagers living with anxiety who want more out of life. I'm here to help you create a life you love to live where anxiety isn't holding you back, get ready for a light hearted approach to managing anxiety through actionable steps, a lot of truth talk and inspiration to take action. So you walk away feeling confident in your ability to live a life that sets your heart on fire. Let's do This. 
Welcome to Episode 14. This episode of the More Than Anxiety podcast is being recorded the last week of November 2022. I'm sitting here at my desk wrapped up in an electric blankets, freezing to death. So if I shiver during this episode, I can't help it. It's really cold in here. Today, I'm going to share my experience with taking anxiety medication, based on my experience with particular medications that I've taken. And I'm also sharing some skills that I use and that I still use to continue my recovery. Not coincidentally, these are also the same tools and processes that I share with people who I coach. And I just want to be sure to say it again for the people in the back, I am not a doctor, and I am not telling you to take medication or to not take medication. That is not what this episode is about. That is information that's between you and your doctor. I am a life coach and I can absolutely help you recover from anxiety with or without medication. All that being said and cleared up. I hope this episode is really useful to you so that you can make decisions that work best for your body and your life. 
Okay, so let's talk medication. One of the most often asked questions I see in different forum groups or maybe support groups, and definitely one of the questions I asked a lot back when I didn't know anything about anxiety or recovery was, "Will this work and how long will it take?" And my guess is you've probably asked This question as well. So you might find yourself asking for reassurance to feel better or Googling symptoms to find peace of mind. These are super common anxiety reactions and they're just an effort to help you feel normal or to feel safe right away. This is also a really common question when people start to take or consider taking anxiety medication. They want it to work like Advil or Benadryl or some other faxed acting medication, and this makes complete sense. Anxiety is this really horrible feeling. Obviously, if you're listening to this, you know that, so of course, you want it to go away fast. There are a lot of people and businesses out there that will tell you that they've got this quick fix, this magic cure to anxiety, everything from like trinkets and fidgets and to some gut-flushing super juice. They're really thriving on the sense of urgency that you have to feel better. I'm not saying those things don't help, but I am saying that quick fixes and anxiety do not often go together. And this is especially true when you're trying to feel good for the long run. You can try all the options available and possibly feel better for a short amount of time, or you can create change and long term recovery. If you want to make changes that will take you past this instant gratification, the process doesn't happen in an instant. I wish I had better news for you but stick with me. This podcast isn't meant to be a downer. There's hope here. So stick with me. 
As somebody who tried lots of quick fixes, the work is totally worth the end results and the medication, in my experience, can help make the work easier to do. So in this quest to feel back to normal or even just better, medication is often a route that people will choose. And I definitely chose that route. I took medication for a lot of years, and I don't regret it at all, but I think it's important to understand that medication is not a cure. It can help settle down your body and your brain so that you start creating habits that go beyond the medication. And those new habits or responses to anxiety, which are actually just really a lack of a response, are what creates the long term recovery and success, This is where I am. This is where you can be!
Taking anxiety medication can really allow you to not be dependent on medication for the rest of your life. This is something that I hear really often from people in different groups or from people that I work with. They think that medication might help, or they want to try it, but they don't want to have to take it forever. If you choose to use medication in your recovery process, the medication can calm down your body, you could have fewer of those anxiety inducing thoughts, and you can still allow yourself to feel anxious feelings so that you can create better responses to those feelings, or to those thoughts. Are you with me? Medication does not cure anxiety, but it can help you feel better so you can create new responses to how your body feels, or to the thoughts that you notice. Eventually, you might get to the point where you've taken the medication long enough, and you feel incredible, just because you gave yourself time to learn how to respond, instead of react. So we're trying to get rid of the reaction and create intentional responses. That's really what makes the change. 
So I told you, I would share my history with medication, but please remember that this is simply my experience, which is guaranteed absolutely NOT to be your experience. No two people have the same symptoms. No two people have the same anxiety story, they don't have the same reactions to anxiety, so it is expected that you won't have the same results that I had. Your story will be different than mine, but I do think there's a lot of power in hearing other people's experience with anxiety or with their medication and with their recovery as long as you can understand, this is not me telling you who to... like how to feel or who to be or anything else. 
My anxiety medication story started back when I was in third grade. I don't know what medication I took in the third grade, but my understanding is that it was to help me not feel nauseous, because at that point in my life I had an upset stomach a lot, especially during school. And honestly, that pill was probably just anti nausea medicine. It could have been a Tic Tac; I have no idea. I don't really know if it worked, because I still felt anxious, and feeling anxious can cause you to have an upset stomach. It's also really worth noting that kids often say they have an upset stomach when they can't find the words to describe how anxiety feels. A lot of times when people feel anxious, they feel it in their gut area, or in their solar plexus, which is exactly where I carry my anxiety. Fast forward through middle school, where I had my first panic attack, and on into high school when my anxiety really began to spiral out of control.  I was a couple of years into unintentionally developing really bad habits in order to feel better. Those habits were actually making my anxiety worse. And of course, I had no idea and those reactions were really all I knew to do. I ended up with habits like constantly checking bumps or moles or asking my parents or my friends to reassure me that I was okay, or avoiding most situations that made me feel anxious all together. Toward the end of high school, my doctor and I decided that I was going to try Zoloft. It was one of the earlier medications that came out to help with anxiety or depression. And my doctor, knowing my history, decided it was a good thing for me to try. So taking Zoloft as my first medication really gave me this glimmer of hope that I would actually feel better and it gave me a name for how I felt. (I didn't know what it was at that point.) But... it was terrible. For me, it did all of the really scary things that you don't want anxiety medication to do. I stopped taking Zoloft when I was a freshman in college after staying on it for way too long just because I had this hope that someday it would kick in and I would actually feel better. That didn't ever happen. 
So while I was away at college living in This world where mental health was still really hush hush, medication was relatively new and definitely taboo, I was away from my parents who were my security blanket. My anxiety really continued to grow and my reactions grew more necessary for me to get through most days, meaning I had to keep doing the same habits in order for me to feel safe or calm or better for really short amounts of time. After about two years of crying and coming home midweek,  constantly seeking reassurance, my mom recommended that I find someone to talk to. And again, go back to when this was - this was the 90s. So, going to therapy wasn't near as cool as it is now. It was actually kind of like the walk of shame. That's, that's how I felt anyway at that point. So what I did was, I started therapy at the Purdue School of Psychology for a really short amount of time where they taught me some breathing skills, which I thought were a joke and cognitive behavioral therapy, which I did not understand at all. And since I didn't have any working medication, I was desperate to feel better, and I had no idea what was going on inside my body, therapy just made me notice it more and made me feel worse. My thoughts were, that medication made me worse, therapy made me worse, and that I was never ever going to get better. And to the credit of the sweet Purdue psychology student who was working with me, I am sure that you were doing an amazing job, but I just was not in a place where I understood anything at all about what was going on with me. I continued to have panic attacks and to ask for reassurance, to look things up on this brand new doctor that had just come out named Google - and you can imagine how well that went. All of a sudden I had more information that was scaring me to death at my fingertip!
So as time went on, new medications were developed, and my doctor had me try Lexapro and I loved. I finally found a medication that worked for me, and I felt so good. I would take Lexapro for a while and then think I was cured, and go off the medication. I also stopped taking medication with each of my pregnancies. And after I delivered each baby, I would get really bad postpartum anxiety because when your hormones drop, your anxiety goes up. I went back on Lexapro after each of my kids was born, and took it on and off for around 20 ish years. 
This is where things started to change for me, and I want you to really understand that because the Lexapro worked, but even more because as the Lexapro worked, I learned what was going on in my brain, and how anxiety felt inside my body. Also, I learned about my reactions to feeling and thinking with anxiety. This wasn't because Lexapro took away all of my anxiety, but actually, it was because it didn't. I learned what was going on, and started viewing anxiety in a different way because I could still feel it, but I could think, and process. So yes, my medication worked. But part of the reason it worked for me was because it allowed me to still feel anxious, but not spiral out of control. I was learning to tolerate the feelings of anxiousness and not get wrapped in the scary thoughts that began to happen because of the feelings. 
This is really how things started to change for me. I've told you before that I decided I was going to start walking in the evening. And it was mostly to eat cookies and escape the chaos of my house. I had four kids at home and I needed some quiet, so that is the route I took. At some point, I started listening to audiobooks about anxiety, and learning about how my brain works, and about manifestation or whatever else distracted me and made me feel good. It was on these walks that I finally learned how anxiety felt for me specifically inside my body, and realize that my thoughts were only thoughts. It had never occurred to me that my thoughts were not attached to some truth. I assumed if I thought something, it was a warning sign of impending doom, or it had already become a thing. If I thought that I had cancer, I obviously must have it or it was a premonition. I was getting myself way too much credit. What happened was the Lexapro calmed me down enough that I could feel those surges of adrenaline and notice the thoughts that seemed to pop in out of nowhere that were directly connected to how my anxious body felt. I was observing myself, and learning what was going on without making it mean anything at all about my health, about my future or who I was in the past. 
When I started working on my health coaching certification, and then my life coaching certification, I dove deeper into learning how to regulate my nervous system. It was fascinating to me! It was everything that I needed to know my entire life that was all of a sudden staring at me like face to face. I also learned how food, and stress, and sleep, and self talk, were contributing to my anxiety and if you add these with slowly changing or unknotting all of those bad habits that I created, I finally started to be able to choose new responses,instead of reacting using the same habits that I used for my entire life. I want to pause here because I want to let you know along with that, even though I am well into recovery and feeling amazing, I still feel anxious sometimes because anxiety is normal. The difference is that I have created a lot of really fantastic responses so that when my immediate thought is to call my parents, or to check the bump again, or to Google something, I can ignore that old habit. Think of it like quitting smoking, picking up a cigarette, there's going to be times when you're like, "I could really use a cigarette!" but you have a new skill or a new response that you choose, so that you don't go back to that old habits. That doesn't mean that anybody is perfect with this either. It doesn't mean that I'm not like, Oh, God, that bump is still there. It just means that I'm able to let it go because I don't get all wrapped up in the feelings and the thoughts; that I can think them and feel the anxiety and be like, "Oh, well. That is not fun at all" and move on. That was not my story for a very long time. 
And clearly, this did not happen overnight. It took me 30 years. But please know, this does not have to be the case for you. I want you to use my experience to your benefit, so that you don't have to spend 30 years in trial and error. I want you to learn to make decisions to calm your body down and understand your brain so that you're able to choose helpful responses when you feel anxious instead of taking every other route imaginable to feel safe. I am not downplaying the intensity of your anxiety or of mine. None of my anxiety happened on purpose, for any reason at all that I can put a finger on, nor was it my fault. Except it totally was! What I mean is, I didn't make myself anxious, and you have not made yourself anxious, BUT you are keeping yourself anxious. All of the time that you spend seeking reassurance and Googling or checking is keeping you spiraling in this fight or flight, react, repeat habit. Yikes! Catch your breath, because that's a big one. You didn't make yourself anxious, but you are keeping yourself anxious.. I know that might feel really hard to hear. 
Here's how you can start your recovery journey for a long lasting anxiety relief. 
Bfore you do anything, you have to make a decision to commit to the process. I help people through these steps and keep them moving forward when things feel really scary and uncertain and they just want to quit. Even though the steps that I'm going to share are simple, the process takes dedication, and it takes perseverance.  I'll tell you right now you are going to be uncomfortable. And that is a very GOOD thing, because it means you're challenging your brain to see the truth, and to think differently. 
So first, understand exactly how anxiety shows up in your body. Your body gives you a heads up every time you're about to feel anxious. So maybe you feel it in your chest or your stomach like I do. Maybe you hold that in your jaw, or your back or your knees, wherever it is find that spot and get really familiar with how it feels. This spot is your alarm. And when you learn this alarm is a false alarm, you can choose an intentional response. So when I'm coaching an anxious person, we always circle back to this spot for comfort, but also for truth. 
Next, take a look at the things that you say to yourself. If you're always talking about how anxious you are, or how badly things are going, or the things that you fear and on, and on, and onm, you're just reinforcing your anxiety story and causing your brain to believe something is actually wrong. Making tiny little subtle shifts in what you allow your mind to say about who you are, and what's going on in your life changes your focus. When your focus shifts from anxiety to what's going well, and you continue to intentionally shift your thoughts over and over, your brain starts to catch on. 
Next, decide what area of your life you'd like to improve. Please notice that I did not say to decide what area of your life is an absolute mess. What could use some attention. Get really honest with yourself here. Are you sleeping enough? Are you eating foods that are healthy? Are you moving your body every single day even when it feels like too much and you just don't want to because all of these things play into how your body feels, and when your brain is sensitive to your body, if something doesn't feel right, or well, your brain will search for a reason why and it will create the scariest story imaginable. 
And finally, you have to create intentional responses for when you feel anxious instead of using your habitual reactions. And this might be the most challenging part because it requires you to feel anxious dnd to choose to do something different, or nothing at all, because doing nothing shows your brain, there's nothing wrong. 
So if you came here, hoping that I was going to tell you what medication will work best for you, I can't do that because that's between you and your doctor and everybody is different. But my hope for you is that you will consider committing to yourself and to your recovery for the long haul, even when the temptation to really hurry up and make it go away quickly sounds a lot better. I also hope that you feel solid about your decision to either take medication or not, but even more, I want you to know that you have everything you need right now, to change your life. Because it starts with a decision. And you can do that just right now. Anxiety is not a life sentence, and you can recover. I can help. You can schedule time to talk with me about coaching if you go to the show notes, and I'll be back next week to share more with you about how you can start to recover. Take care. 
I hope you've enjoyed This episode of The More Than Anxiety podcast. Be sure to subscribe and leave a review so others can easily find this resource as well. And of course, when you're ready to explore coaching with me, jump to the show notes. Click the link and schedule time for us to talk. See you soon.