Sertraline - please help

[Yubaa]

I’m late 30s and suffered with anxiety all my life. It’s been pretty horrendous. Somehow I’ve managed to hold down a job and on the outside it looks like I have my life together. But I have huge bouts of anxiety which tips me into anger and sadness. I’m sick of living like this.

I have always resisted meditation, I suppose because that in itself makes me anxious. I also now have a toddler and I’m a single parent and I worry that taking sertraline could give me side affects which could in some way impact my child.

Ive tried talking therapies, cbt, etc and the worry and intrusive thoughts and anxiety remained.

ive been prescribed sertraline but I just don’t know what to do, has anyone had any experience please?

I am on my second time of taking sertraline and it helps me massively. Enables me to live a life without constantly being anxious.
If you do have side effects they usually don't last that long. I was lucky not to have many or anything that affected me much.

Yes, it was a medication like any other in that it worked great for me and not as well for some other people I’m sure. Everyone I know who have been on it have really done well.

Be brave OP. The irony is that the medication that could fix your anxiety is something you are terribly anxious about! So try to override that and trust your dr.

@popandchoc thanks for replying. I’m sceptical that anything can stop my anxiety as it’s so full on. I feel totally stuck sometimes as I will obsess over and over about a thought that has come into my head, related to a worry. How can a tablet change that? I feel worried about it

The only side effects I noticed were a dry mouth and a bit of difficulty sleeping, both of which went away in about a fortnight. Give it a try if your doctor thinks it's worth a go, you don't have to stay on it.

@Yoheresthestory sorry meant to tag to too

It's really helped me. I got a headache for a couple of weeks when I first started but certainly worth it for the reduction in anxiety symptoms.

@Blueuggboots how does it feel compared with before you were on it? Are you never anxious at all? I can’t imagine not obsessing over thoughts like I do, I just can’t imagine a tablet changing that

Sertraline cured my anxiety and obsessive thinking and rumination. I stopped taking anti depressants many years ago but after about a decade of severe depression, anxiety ahd obsessive thinking sertraline worked wonders ti permanently get rid of anxiety and obsessiveness even though I still get bouts of depression

My DS (14) is on Sertraline to treat his OCD which is due to anxiety... it has helped him! Just read an article today on how antidepressants have this dual use: depression AND anxiety. I think you should give it a try. For many it really really helps to make life easier/bearable. Trust your GP. Life is too short to not take the help offered.

I don’t understand how it will stop my thoughts though? @Cluedoless @arcticpandas

i have tried literally every therapy offered to me over the years and still these intrusive thoughts and panic won’t go away

Bit of nausea which passed.

One day you wake up and realise that the anxiety has vanished. You feel normal again. It's wonderful.

I’ve been taking sertraline for around five years. Made a huge positive difference to me pretty much immediately. At first I thought it was causing me to struggle to get to sleep, but that didn’t last long.

I was always very anxious person – I was an anxious child too – and I must admit that rather than admit my anxiety, I would often lash out at people to kind of mask it. Taking the sertraline has made me so much calmer: I still feel like me, and I still worry every now and again about certain things, but nowhere near how I used to be. I feel like a more chilled version of myself.

Good luck x

My adult DS takes Sertraline. It has kept him in his job and made him more resilient, and he is much happier. You've tried all the other options, now it's time to give medication a go.

If Sertraline doesn't work, other meds may. Give it a shot.

@Piffle11 I’m in tears reading these posts as I truly wish I could rid myself of living like this but when I think about the things I am anxious about this second, I can’t imagine anything in the world making me not panic about them. I guess I’m scared to take the tablets in case it makes zero difference and then where do I go from there

I was extremely ill with panic disorder anxiety disorder and PTSD. Had a breakdown, lost my job, suicidal, couldn't eat, sleep or anything else because the panic was so severe. Tried all sorts of therapy, nothing worked.

A few days after I started taking Sertraline I was more or less back to normal. It's been like a literal miracle. I can't believe I was too stubborn for years to even try it.

I suffered with anxiety and intrusive thoughts that were impacting on my life. Sertraline really helps. My advice is take the tablet in the morning, standing up with a large glass of water, otherwise the heartburn is quite unpleasant. Try it for a few months. Keep a journal and see if your mood lifts.

If it doesn't work you can try a different medication. One of them will work.

I have OCD particularly with intrusive thoughts. Fluoxetine really helped me

@Yubaa I used to obsess over things, especially horrible stories in the press and worrying about my children. It went on for days, weeks sometimes. obviously, I can still read distressing things and worry about my children, but I have perspective now. I no longer obsess over them and it doesn’t ruin my day to day life.

if this medication doesn’t work for you, you try something else. You don’t give up.

See that's the thing.. for some cognitive therapy will help. For my son definitely not. What Sertraline does for him is it makes his anxiety less intense. So he will still have OCD and anxiety but it will be manageable. I was opposed to the idea of Sertraline for a child at first. Until one day when he screamed at me "help me mum, I can't bear it any longer" after washing his hands and repeating certain patterns for the millionth time. I realised he was in so much suffering that anything that might work was worth trying.

Honestly, I thought the same. Mine manifested itself in health anxiety. Every twinge of pain or odd feeling in my body caused a full on panic attack. I couldn't sleep in case I died. I couldn't eat alone in case I choked. I was convinced I was going to have a heart attack or stoke. I spend hours a day googling symptoms and I checked my pulse hundreds of times a day, to the point I made the lymph nodes in my neck swell up and become painful, which I then thought was cancer.

I couldn't go out. I was constantly on edge waiting for phone calls to tell me someone in my family had died. Every little noise outside was a bomb or a plane crashing. It was utter hell.

Now I barely think about any of that stuff and I haven't had a panic attack for over a year. I would never, ever have believed it possible.

Sertraline changed my life. I was on 50mg and have recently come off, but have stockpiled so I know I can put myself back on it without waiting for a GP if things change.

I don't think it changed or blocked my personality, if anything I felt that it stripped away the layer of anxiety that I hadn't realised was covering me so that I could be the real me underneath that didn't spend all day crushed with anxiety and intrusive thoughts. It made me realise that my anxiety must have been a genuine chemical imbalance in my brain because taking a pill took it away. It didn't remove it completely from my life, but it shrank the size of it relative to everything else until I found myself thinking 'Ah this must be how non-anxious people live'. You do feel worries and anxiety, but they are feelings that you can live with alongside others and they don't cloud everything else to the point that you can't enjoy nice moments and carry a constant weight in your stomach, or intrusive thoughts in your head and second guessing yourself the whole time.

Take the tablets and, I can't stress this enough - GIVE THEM PROPER TIME TO WORK as the change will be gradual. If they don't work, then your life is no worse than now and you can absolutely try other drugs that may work better for you. But as things stand you're not happy as you are, and they offer a possibility of that changing, so what have you got to lose?

If you do nothing, you’re going to feel the same as you do now. If you try medication, you’ll either feel the same or better (and honestly, it’s VERY likely you’ll feel better). Take the plunge OP, it is totally worth it.

I found the greatest impact from the medication was that it quietened my thoughts and let the flow calmly and naturally again. This is my own non medical opinion! But I think my anxiety/breakdown was an adrenaline disorder. The adrenaline made me very physically ill but also had my head and thoughts racing. It made thinking so heavy. Instead of gentle thoughts like ‘I’ll just grab a shower’ I had to think loudly each word and then it would repeat and repeat in my head till my thoughts moved to the next thing to fix on. I remember after a week or so on the medication I’d get moments where my thoughts were quiet and natural, those moments turned to minutes then hours and then days. I think the medication counteracted the adrenaline that was sending all my nerves screaming constantly. It replaced the serotonin in my body that had been totally depleted and that protected me from the adrenaline taking over.

That’s how I think it happened for me. Might not be scientifically accurate!

If it makes no difference, just stop taking it. You have to give it a month or so but if you really feel it's doing nothing you can stop.

My advice is to take it in the morning. It affected my sleep in the beginning and taking it in the morning rather than the evening helped.