My first SSRI for aaages. Like it says, I’ve just finished 20 weeks of therapy at Strathclyde, for social anxiety, but dealing with broader issues too. And it’s been a real uphill journey – each time I’ve thought I was getting somewhere, along would come some family issue or another to throw a spanner in the works.
But generally, my anxiety’s improved. The only thing is that right at the end of the course, I realised that underneath it all, I have bad depression. I’ve had it pretty much unbroken since I was 14, but I think in my mid-20s I found a way to just ignore it, and pretend it wasn’t an issue. But it is an issue – it leaves me without motivation, willpower, and makes small problems seem big, it encourages prevarication, and when it’s at its worst, I basically become comatose and can’t really do anything.
But all that said, I’m glad I know. I think the anxiety is the sort of outward manifestation of it – it’s the part of me that gets nervous that people will know underneath that I’m depressed. The part of me that is depressed, and wants to stay at home, screaming inside my head that the world is a bad, fearful place. It’s all inextricably linked. And now that the screaming has died down, I’ve had an opportunity to look this place inside me head on, and recognised it as something I’ve had for twenty (TWENTY!) years, and never dealt with…
Suddenly Something Really Interesting 