Social Awkwardness

[Guest]

Thanks wanderlust, and I agree 100% with everything you said!
It really is comforting to read through everyone else's stories and typical thought processes on here and see that they're so similar to mine. It just makes me want to do a virtual group hug with everyone because I feel their pain, and now I know I'm not alone! *half-sad, half-happy tear*

[Chantel]

Thanks wanderlust, and I agree 100% with everything you said!
It really is comforting to read through everyone else's stories and typical thought processes on here and see that they're so similar to mine. It just makes me want to do a virtual group hug with everyone because I feel their pain, and now I know I'm not alone! *half-sad, half-happy tear*

I'm not alone too!!
I feel better now
*Hugs*

[incognito]

Have any of you taken any medications that have helped with social anxiety? I'm currently seeing a therapist for body dysmorphic disorder and we're also starting to work on my social anxiety, but she's really against medication. She said that I can take small steps that put me slightly out of my comfort zone and gradually work up to more difficult social situations, but I really don't feel like doing that. I'm already 25, I'm not interested in wasting even more months/years of my life as a socially inept loser while I try to work up to being a normal person. So yeah, anyone have any luck with medication?

[HattieChaos]

I really want to but my therapist is being a bitch about it.

[Guest]

I was on Lexapro for about a year and a half in high school, though my doctor prescribed it primarily to treat my depression (which I no longer suffer from) as that was our main concern at the time. The fact that it also helped with anxiety was just an added bonus, basically. It did what it was supposed to do well enough, but I never felt like myself while I was on it. I was hyper all the time (think 24/7 sugar rush) so I ended up losing a lot of friends because of how obnoxious and attention-hungry I became. Besides that, it gave me migraines almost every day (and if I remember correctly I think you're not allowed to take any sort of headache medicine along with it), so that was why I eventually had to give it up. :/

[wanderlust]

That's the thing about meds...they always have some kind of negative side effect. The ADHD meds I used to be on made me feel like a shell of a person. I've never taken anything for anxiety. When a friend of mine was on medication to help with her bipolar disorder, she said she was suddenly thinking about suicide all the time and had never thought about it so much. Medication scares me to be honest.

[Affi]

I'm too scared to take anything anymore. I went on Sertraline to apparently help with both depression & anxiety, and it was hell. First of all, it turned out to be the only medication I've ever been on, that has given me severe side effects. I had all the common ones, half the uncommon ones, and one or two of the rares. Side effects settle after a while, but my psychiatrist kept increasing the dosage as soon as I settled, and that would start up all the effects again.
Not to mention that I didn't even realise at the time, but once I was weaned off them, I noticed that I'd essentially spent the entire year with a weird kind of mental block in my mind. I couldn't think properly. Sure, I was content enough, I nearly managed to enrol in college before my dosage was increased again, but I also couldn't form long sentences or think about anything more complicated than what to have for dinner.
Now, medications aren't bad, they can help, but my experience has really terrified me so I don't know if I'll be taking anything more than cough medicine again.

[Guest]

Wow Affi, I'd be scared too if anything like that had happened to me. I'm just glad you're okay after all that!