Anyone recovery on fluoxetine?

Hi Nicole and Chris,

 

I've also been on flouxetine for almost 8 months and feel like I'm in a set back. I was slowly progressing amidst ups and downs of depression and anxiety, but this last week or two I feel like I've gone backwards. Having a hard time with anxiety. Not sure what to do.

 

Hi Karen,

It seems to be the cruel way anxiety and depression work, in that you can be going along quite nicely and then all of a sudden, and for no reason, you are knocked back again.  I contact my Doctor today for advice on if I should up my doseage.  He has suggested psychological therapy rather than upping the dose.  Not sure what this will involve, as I've tried various things over the years including hypnotherapy, CBT and EFT.

This very well could be a side effect of the medication.  If you look at the insert that is included, anxiety is one of the side effects!  We tend to not make the connection and blame it on our "illness."  I'd been on antidepressents for 19 years, the last 12 on Effexor, and I just assumed that I needed to be on meds because I had a "chemical imbalance," but now that I look back, I see that I was still depressed and not handling stress well, would have terrible anger problems, and never could really feel joy and pleasure.  My memory is horrible, too.  We were never meant to be on these drugs for the long haul and no studies have been done beyond 6 weeks on these meds for the most part!  Better to identify the causes of our depression and anxiety and learn ways to deal with troubling thoughts via cognitive behavior therapy which actually has a better success rate than antidepressents!  

chris1965, do your episodes of anxiety or depression have triggers?  I also tried things over the years that seemed to not help, but I think in hindsight that the medication makes therapy difficult or less effective, due to emotional blunting.  I am tapering and in the midst of this I have been doing a method of CBT that focuses on checking in with oneself to identify what brain state you are at (super stressed to doing great), doing a little meditation while checking in, and depending on where you are, there are tools that can be used to improve your state.  I'd say the crux of it is 1) identifying the trigger, what's causing you distress, 2) expressing emotions pertaining to that, from anger, sadness, fear to guilt - Many of us with depression or anxiety were raised whereby we weren't allowed to feel our feelings, or at least that's how I was raised - no one expressed negative emotions. Next, identify an unreasonable expectation.  "Of course I would feel this way because I expect...."  You then try to find a more reasonable expectation that the brain is happy to accept.  So, if the unreasonable is "I must be perfect at everything I do," then the reasonable would be "Nobody is perfect; it is not true that I must be perfect at everything I do."    You then repeat this statement over and over again, fifty times if needed.  The idea is that you have circuits that are triggered and lead to faulty thoughts/responses, but you can break the stress circuits and rewire new ones.  You've heard people say "just think positively," and if you are like me, you'd say "Ya, sure, easier said than done..." You can't just switch circuits like that - it takes time to break them down and replace them with more healthy ones.   I never thought I'd be able to get rid of negative thinking, but through this process I have actually really weakened some troubling thought processes that caused me a lot of pain.  For the first time in my life I feel like I've made a shift in the right direction.  So, it's a matter of finding the right therapy.  I do feel it has been harder to do this work being on the drugs, like I'm still unable to feel true joy and pleasure, but I am hopeful that once I am off, I'll be able to feel real feelings.

If depression/anxiety pop up without any reason why, then I'd expect it is a drug side effect.