Anxiety Meds, Not Jesus or Willpower, Helped Me Feel Like an Okay Person
YMMV [your mileage may vary]
I’ve been in denial about having anxiety my whole life.
I mean, it’s not like there weren’t signs. The selective mutism1 when I was in kindergarten, when I made my teacher genuinely think I couldn’t talk. The separation anxiety2 that worsened after my parents’ divorce. The social anxiety3 and social awkwardness throughout…wait, did that one ever end? My intense specific phobia4 that occupies WAY too much brain space every day. And low-grade moral scrupulosity, which might also be described as moral OCD5, fully propped up by my religious indoctrination.
No offense to Jesus, but he didn’t exactly help things. In my teen years, I was plagued by the anxiety that due to my shyness, aka anxiety (oh, the ironies!) I was an ineffective evangelist, too shy to tell my peers about Jesus and therefore complicit in sending them to hell.
Then once I got to college, I adopted progressive evangelical beliefs, but the moral scrupulosity most definitely stuck with me. Instead of worrying so much about my moral sins related to purity or swearing or evangelizing, I worried about my moral sins related to poverty and injustice. I felt awful about the hypocrisy of my beliefs that said to care for the poor, while I lived a comfortable life on my college campus. I did what I could to assuage my guilt (more on that in future posts), but the moral rumination and anxiety about “doing enough” never left.
In my prayers to Jesus in those days, I never even thought about asking him to take away my anxiety, because I never thought of it as a problem (see: in denial). Feeling this way was how I was supposed to feel; it was the only logical response to a system that told me the best way to be human was to sacrifice everything for a greater cause. Instead, I asked Jesus to show me what my next step was to becoming more like him, or perhaps in my more selfish prayers, asking him to take away ‘bad’ feelings (like anger at a roommate, or a crush I’d deemed ‘inappropriate.’). Spoiler alert: those prayers tended not to work.
When Jesus and I stopped talking so much several years later, I slowly, slowly began to lose some of the scrupulosity of peak social justice warrior (lol; I am not a warrior) who also had daily quiet time and Bible study. But the low-grade anxiety never left; anxiety that also contributed to depressive states fretting about the meaning (or meaninglessness) of life.
Even with all this, I still didn’t think of myself formally as a Person Who Had Anxiety or Depression.
Then I had my second kid, and I finally – slowly! – came to accept that I most definitely had postpartum depression. I cried through my post birth 6-week follow-up with my obstetrician, who prescribed me an SSRI (anti-depressant/anxiety med). I never filled it.
That is one of my biggest regrets from my son’s first year of life.
There were ups and downs, which let me justify not filling the prescription. I was fine! Things were getting better! I would willpower my way through all of this! And I’d be okay for snippets, then something invisible would collapse and I’d be in the hole again. I was irritable, overstimulated, overwhelmed, short-fused, and just plain old sad. It was hard to see very far into the future. All I could feel was the moment I was in, which often felt hard and scary. I knew there was more beyond this, but it was like I couldn’t have access to it.
It’s perhaps a classic storyline, but dealing with my own anxiety was one thing when it was just me, harming myself. It became a whole other thing once it began hurting my kids.
I wasn’t responding to my kids how I knew I wanted to. You might recall I have a literal degree in child development, I’ve worked with kids my whole adolescent and adult life, and I do child therapy. I knew the “right” ways I should react. But I felt completely unable to respond in those ways.
I wondered what was wrong with me.
After another one of these days of being what felt like the worst version of myself, I reached out to my best friend, one of the wisest people I know. I told her how I was feeling. I told her I was considering medication, again. I basically asked if I was an awful person.
I thank my lucky stars she’s in my life. She gave me the best advice, the most gentle reassurance, the kindest listening ear. She told me what medication might be able to offer me. And she saw me better than I could see myself in identifying how anxiety had been ruling my life for so long.
I booked an appointment through Teladoc and got in pretty quickly. I talked to a kind psychiatrist, also a mom, who listened to all my symptoms and told me to also take care of myself and stop trying to do everything at the same time. (This should not have been news to me, but somehow it was). And she collaborated with me to pick the medication I wanted to try first.
I know not everyone has luck with the first med they try. I have lots of clients who struggle to find the right med or med combo to work for them! And I don’t know that this will be my last stop on the medication train. But what I can say is this:
I was so worried to try a med, but I did. And within days I noticed the impact. At first I noticed that even when I was still erupting at my kid(s), I had less fire burning inside about it – my internal experience was less explosive. Now I’ve noticed that I’m yelling at them a whole lot less. My mind is less staticky. I don’t feel a constant pressure to escape through my phone. I am not as triggered when my baby-toddler is so needy and clingy. My fuse is longer and I feel so much more level.
It took quieting the frenetic buzz, the constant need to be busy, the ever-present low-grade worry, to realize that wasn’t a feature of my personality: it was just anxiety. And when I don’t have the anxiety occupying so much space in my brain, my depression – the postpartum variety in particular – can fade back too. I can see today for being the phase that it is. I can see the tomorrows more clearly and they feel more accessible.
I’m only a couple weeks in so I know this is all subject to change, which also made me a little hesitant to share already. But it also feels so important! If I had known I could have felt this way a year ago – that an SSRI actually can address the irritability and short fuse as well as the more classic symptoms of anxiety and depression – I could have saved myself a lot of grief.
I thought it was just me, being broken in some way. Being broken, after all, is the original evangelical narrative! Jesus, for me, made me more anxious. Willpower seemed to give me nothing in the heat of the moment. But some extra serotonin…wow.
I don’t feel so broken anymore. Now it feels like I’m an okay person – a good person, even! – who happens to have some issues with chemical balance in her brain. It feels like I have the capacity to be the person I want to be now.
As a mental health therapist, I have lots of clients who are on meds, and lots of others who are afraid to try them. There’s no one right answer for everyone, but I hope that if we can be open about what we’re going through and what is helping us, we can all find our way out a little easier.
If you would, don’t leave me hanging – you know I love a good conversation in the comments. If you care to share your experiences, or how my post today has affected you, I’m all ears. I’m so grateful to all of you for being here. And hey, if you want to be Insta-friends, find me on Instagram!
The first anxiety disorder listed in the DSM (psychology’s diagnostic manual), which is usually for younger kids who are able to speak but do not speak in selective situations due to anxiety. Fun fact: for my psychopathology class in grad school, my professor assigned ME to present on the anxiety disorder section. It was like he just KNEW. This was one of the first times I was like “….oh. It’s me.”
Also in the DSM, regarding excessive fears about separation from one’s caregivers.
Also in the DSM! Persistent, intense fear about social situations because you fear being judged, embarrassed, or humiliated. Avoiding such situations due to anxiety or enduring them with great anxiety.
Why yes, also in the DSM! My phobia is emetophobia (fear of me or others throwing up), which I talk about briefly in my post on EMDR.
In the DSM-IV (we’re now on the DSM V), OCD was categorized as an anxiety disorder, which I think is fitting. For a great Substack blog about OCD and religious OCD particularly, check out A Glitch in the Good Enough by
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I am so glad you got help. I spent years in religious spaces denying the anxiety I struggled with and thought I just wasn’t faithful enough for Jesus to give me relief. After all, the Bible tells you not to be anxious about anything, and to lay all your anxieties on him and they will be relieved if you just believe. I spent so many years beating myself up before I ended up in the ER twice in a 2 week period in the Fall of 2019 for what turned out to be severe panic attacks. My husband looked at me and very lovingly but directly said “It’s time for you to get some help & quit trying to do this all yourself”. It clearly wasn’t working. I started with therapy and a year into that realized I needed some more help, and I ranked in the highest category for anxiety when my GP had me do the in office test. I’ve been on an SSRi for over 2 years, and it’s not perfect and has had to be tweaked a time or two, but has definitely taken the edge off. I’ve also worked through a lot of unprocessed trauma and been able to trace back to where the hyper vigilance and OCD like behavior started and how the religious dogma with a very emotionally traumatic home life growing up exasperated so many of my behaviors & symptoms. It’s been very eye opening and I finally have the tools and healing, along with the medication & dietary knowledge, and importance of movement and breathing exercises to help me each day. Stay patient but diligent and know you’re not alone ♥️
I'm so sorry you suffered for so long, and so glad you're feeling better! The power of medication is truly amazing, and I identify as a medication evangelist. I've seen it make so much difference for so many people. And like you, I have many patients who don't want to try it, and many others who are in different stages of their journeys with medication. I often think of generations past who didn't have access to medication. They didn't have the opportunity to feel better, for the most part, but we do. I'd like to reach back and give medication to my great-grandmother, who died in what passed for a mental health facility in her day; to my grandmother, who suffered such debilitating anxiety that she couldn't ride in a car; to my mother, whose untreated anxiety drove her in ways large and small. I'm thankful for the trazodone I've been on for many years, which will be pried out of my cold, dead hand. Yep . . . I think medication is what I hoped and prayed for Jesus to feel like.