Sertraline 100mg causing issues

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Hey all.

I’ve recently started having horrific intrusive thoughts, I was attacked last year and thought I had processed it all. I left my job, started a new one, and had a lot of stress. Anyway, I woke up one morning and I wanted to jump off my balcony. Never had them feelings before and the urge to do it was so strong. Suicidal thoughts filled me with terror and urges to harm others around me was taking every moment of my day up.

Doctor started me on 50mg sertraline, was on for 4 weeks and seemed to be levelling out a little, the thoughts stopped being so intense. They upped me to 100mg and I’ve been completely detached from myself, don’t know who I am anymore and 3 weeks in the thoughts have come back. Is this normal? Has anyone experienced this and come through it? My therapist is telling me I need to accept the thoughts are there rather than fight them, but it’s difficult when your mind is telling you you want to die when you know you don’t.

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3 Replies

  • Edited

    hi there,

    I'm so sorry for what you have been through. I have dealt with those same intrusive thoughts and they are awful. I'm sorry your doctor is saying to deal with it. My therapist said that the thoughts are there and to remember they are thoughts and said to look up thought action fusion and it helped to read a bit on it. I went on sertraline for depression and anxiety and those awful intrusive thoughts. I found they came back the first few wks on a dose increase. I went up to 150mg and it seemed to help a bit but still had weird side effects so I am now lowering my dose and it's been better. If you find the suicidal thoughts keep increasing you should mention it to the doctor as AD can increase those thoughts and it can be a severe side effect. why did he increase your dose if you felt good on 50mg?

    • Edited

      hey!

      thanks for the reply 😃

      my therapist says the same, we have a million thoughts a day so i need to accept that these thoughts are there and i am not going to act on them. its very difficult to put these thoughts out of my mind. i literally woke up with them one day, never been suicidal before and now its all i think of. i am not actively planning and i really dont want to die so why does my mind tell me i do?

      she increased my dose as i still had a few lingering thoughts and it was still bothering me a lot. i do have some ocd tendancies too.

    • Edited

      wow that sounds like me. I was fine one day. Normal stress life stuff but nothing unusual and woke up feeling dread and hopeless about life and what's the point. it's awful. never used to think those things. I knew it was bad when suicidal ideation appeared. I am now on 50mg of sertraline. might be switched as these meds cause my eyes to be so sore all the time. I agree it is so hard to put those awful thoughts aside. life is amazing so these thoughts shouldn't happen so we think. weird that they randomly appear and we can't just push them away like all our other thoughts.

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