Evening all, quick post before bed.
Justlynn, it's difficult to separate what could be sertraline and what could be anxiety caused. With acute anxiety it can cause all sorts of physical symptoms and with healthy anxiety too, it becomes a viscious circle. You have anxiety, it makes you unwell, which increases your anxiety, which makes you unwell and so on.
I definitely think you should see your gp, I am hopeful that provided the gp assesses you, sertraline could break that cycle once it kicks in, but I do think it's very important to see the gp as so much vomiting could be causing dehydration which makes you feel terrible too.
MrGrumpy, I'm glad things were resolved at work. I taught myself some CBT as the waiting list can be so long. When you messed up at work (as we all do from time to time) it sounds like you began catastrophizing. So your thoughts make things worse and worse till it's like the world has almost ended. Very common in people with anxiety and OCD thought patterns.
Self help for it is challenging those thoughts. You ended up thinking you might lose your job. There's your catastrophic thought. So next we look for the actual evidence to support that thought. Are you on a final warning? Has someone else been fired for that before? Do you generally do a good job?
What you are basically doing, is investigating your own thoughts. We think hundreds of thoughts a day. That doesn't make them all true and rational. Thoughts are just that. When we hunt for evidence for our thoughts, we more often than not, discover that there is very little, if none at all, so we then know that thought is irrational and we can ignore it. The process of exploring your thought also leads to a drop in anxiety as you realise with each finding, that you are being irrational.
I also take sertraline last thing before I sleep at night, always have. Anniemac, you have noticed an improvement, you are more organised. It's funny, we dismiss such things as not noteworthy, but it really is. When struggling with depression and/or anxiety, little improvements such as becoming more organised, is an indication that things are changing. We often don't notice the improvements ourselves first, so I always say ask people close to you. They usually see it first.
To anyone I've missed, I hope you are all doing well, keep going, sertraline is worth it when it's fully kicked in.