My story

[Emmarich22]

When I was 8 years old I was diagnosed with severe generalized anxiety and OCD. I was immediately put on countless different medications to reduce the chance of self harm. I was going to therapy 2-3 days a week taking meds twice a day. This persisted for 5 years. When I was about 13 I told my parents I was ready to get off of my meds and start new because I didn’t feel like I needed them. I held steady for about two years and then everything started back up again. I was so out of control of my mind and my body. I started having panic attacks once or twice a week and thats when I realized I needed to go back to therapy and possibly start on medication again. I was hesitant to start back up on medication because I knew how I felt before when I was younger. Terrible.

And here we are today.

A few months ago I started on a very low dosage of Prozac. It made me feel incredible for a short amount of time and then I started feeling terrible cycles of depression. I went up on my Prozac and that did literally nothing. I didn’t want to get out of bed, face the day, all I wanted to do was sleep and wait for the next day to come. Next week I see a new psychiatrist and I am so hopeful for the possibility of me feeling like myself again.

[kenster1]

hi.lets hope being hopeful spreads positivity around your life and you come through it being happy again.fingers crossed your appointment goes well.

[metalminded]

Our son was diagnosed with severe anxiety and possibly minor ADD. He is 8 years old. He sees a psychologist once a week and a psychiatrist once a month. They started him on Prozac and he actually got a lot more angry with it. We asked to switch to Zoloft and thus far he's doing pretty well. He's definitely got separation anxiety from his Mom and tells us that he doesn't want to go to school or be without her (or us) because he's afraid we won't come back for him.

It really started to get bad last summer, and we found that it was about a year prior that we had to move my wife's Mom into a home because of her Dementia. We've discussed with his psychologist this incident and she had thought it might be something like PTSD.

He will still have issues from time to time, like last week, he started crying and trying to run in our yard from the school bus (mini-van) because of the separation issue. My wife got him in and by the time he got to school, his teacher said he was his sweet smiling self. He also helped a new student, who is Autistic, when he was having trouble reading in their group. He sat by him and helped him calm down, they each read a page in their book. So he's a really sweet caring 8 year old. We just want to figure out the right way to get rid of this irrational fears he has.

How old are you now? How are you doing now?

[Emmarich22 in reply to metalminded]

I’m 16 almost 17 and it is a constant struggle. I was on Zoloft when I was younger and absolutely hated it as it made me feel nothing. Happiness, sadness, anger, nothing. When I was his age I also struggled with separation anxiety and was always in fear that if I wasn’t around my mom, something terrible would happen to me. In terms of getting rid of irrational fears, that is such a hard thing to do that I’m not sure parents can help with at that age. It’s definitely a self determination type of deal and you kind of have to accept it as you go on with your life. Just be there to support him and never judge for something irrational because in the moment, it feels like the end of the world.

[metalminded in reply to Emmarich22]

Thank you. We hope Zoloft will continue to work, and ideally eventually would like to see him off meds completely.

Normally he is happy, but he's only been in the need for maybe 6 months. I guess we'll see how his mood and behavior does over time.