Anxiety Adventures: Part 5: Side Effects

It's been a couple of weeks now on my new anxiety meds, and I've done the step-up to the normal dose for someone my size (my doctor tells me I'm "petite", did I mention that? Yeah. She does. So I guess I must be!! Take that, scale!!) which is 75 or something mg. each day.

Three Cool Things 1/20/14

Did you miss a weekly dose of three cool things? I sure didn't. I've been so busy with the holidays and recovering from the holidays and reading books and watching TV and washing laundry and reading other books that I hardly noticed I was neglecting my regular blog posts. I wanted to keep up on them, but somehow it just fell apart. 

Anxiety Adventures: Part 4: Attention, Please!

Anxiety is a funny beast, especially when mixed together with my personality, which craves attention and interaction. I am torn between wanting people to pay attention to me and wanting to melt into the back of the room. I hate it when no one comes to sit by me, but sometimes I like to be alone. Often I want to say something important, but I also want to keep my mouth shut so no one will look at me. 

Anxiety Adventures: Part 3: The First Week

Well, I've had a full week on 37.5mg of Effexor and I've experienced no major adverse side effects. I have had some mild headaches, but it's hard to tell if they're my normal headaches or due to the meds. I have had some mild nausea when my stomach gets empty, and also a little taste of insomnia the last two nights, though. I'm hopeful it won't last. Because today started the 75mg pills.

Other than that, I have nothing to report. No real positive effects yet, but I understand it can take 4-6 weeks to really feel a difference. 

I got an appointment with a Rheumatologist, but they can't get me in until July(!) which is ridiculous, so it will be a long time before we find out if I have an autoimmune disorder/disease/issue,  I guess. Which is annoying. There doesn't seem to be much I can do about that, though.

So the first week is past and life is about the same as it has been. 

Anxiety Adventures: Part 2: Medication

Dear Friends: If your considered opinion is that I am wrong for taking medication to help with my anxiety symptoms, kindly skip this entry. Even well-meaning comments telling me that I'm making the wrong choice are not helpful at this point. My treatment decisions are between me, my doctor, my husband and my God. :)

This is the first time I've ever tried medicating my anxiety, so I think blogging about it to chronicle my experiences might be of value, not only to me, but to others considering medication.

Anxiety Adventures: Part 1: Background

I have been considering writing on this blog about my anxiety and my efforts to master it for a while now. However, because mine is social anxiety, I'm terrified of people distancing themselves from me, or confronting and/or lecturing me if I "go public" with this struggle. My primary worry is that there is a heavy-duty stigma attached to medicating anxiety, so I hesitate to talk about what I'm trying, since it involves medication. (THIS is a good article about that- #3 is my biggest thing, I think.)

However, writing helps me cope, helps me sort things out and clean out my brain, so to speak. It's therapeutic for me and I always feel better after I write things out. So here I go.