lizamiller95
11-10-17, 04:12
Hi there, first time posting to this forum.
I suffer from severe GAD.
I also experience moderate health and social anxiety, as well as mild OCD and mild agoraphobia (related to the physical anxiety symptoms I experience with GAD. I do not suffer from panic attacks alongside this, just unpleasant high levels of anxiety and discomfort.)
I have been taking Citalopram for 9 weeks.
I took 20mg for 8 weeks and my only side effect other than an initial increase in anxiety and a few intrusive thoughts on the first week a case of the yawns.
It has greatly improved my overall mood, but once the initial anxiety increase died down - it did not improve my anxiety from where it was before I started taking it whatsoever. So after 8 weeks I decided to raise it to 25mg.
For some reason since raising it this past week, I have begun constantly reliving past memories. They are mostly negative memories and pop up out of the blue, whether it ex bfs, embarrassing situations, or a negative conversation I had with someone two years ago. More often than not these are memories that I haven't even thought about it a long time.
This is highly distracting, as I will be at a lecture and suddenly I will have an irrelevant memory occur completely out of the blue and zone out thinking about it and miss part of the lecture, and then dwell upon it and then not concentrate for the rest of the lecture. I have had no desire to study and instead spend my nights dwelling on these negative memories that I've thought about, viewing all of the people involved social media profiles and so on. If I'm not reliving past memories I am busy creating/ imagining problems, thinking my friends or family are slighting me, and imagining in my mind that they are very angry or upset or secretly hate me.
This past week has been torturous because of this. I am unable to study at all and I'm meant to be studying for exams and can't focus on any other activity other than having random memories pop into my head and dwelling on things. I have tried to stop so many times but I just can't control it whatsoever, it's all I can think about, and in the moment of doing it it feels like on some level that I'm actually enjoying the little bit of past drama my mind is reliving too. I have always been a bit of an over thinker but I have never experienced whatever this is that I am experiencing at the moment, and it has coincided directly with raising the medication. I have even deactivated social media because of this but alas my mind is still having a field day coming up with random material at any time of day.
Does anyone know what this sort of thing I'm experiencing is?
Should I reduce the medication or push through and hope this weirdness dies down and I can start to find relief for my anxiety.
I have taken a different SSRI at the same dose before and experienced some level of reduction in my anxiety after a while so I know that it is possible.
I suffer from severe GAD.
I also experience moderate health and social anxiety, as well as mild OCD and mild agoraphobia (related to the physical anxiety symptoms I experience with GAD. I do not suffer from panic attacks alongside this, just unpleasant high levels of anxiety and discomfort.)
I have been taking Citalopram for 9 weeks.
I took 20mg for 8 weeks and my only side effect other than an initial increase in anxiety and a few intrusive thoughts on the first week a case of the yawns.
It has greatly improved my overall mood, but once the initial anxiety increase died down - it did not improve my anxiety from where it was before I started taking it whatsoever. So after 8 weeks I decided to raise it to 25mg.
For some reason since raising it this past week, I have begun constantly reliving past memories. They are mostly negative memories and pop up out of the blue, whether it ex bfs, embarrassing situations, or a negative conversation I had with someone two years ago. More often than not these are memories that I haven't even thought about it a long time.
This is highly distracting, as I will be at a lecture and suddenly I will have an irrelevant memory occur completely out of the blue and zone out thinking about it and miss part of the lecture, and then dwell upon it and then not concentrate for the rest of the lecture. I have had no desire to study and instead spend my nights dwelling on these negative memories that I've thought about, viewing all of the people involved social media profiles and so on. If I'm not reliving past memories I am busy creating/ imagining problems, thinking my friends or family are slighting me, and imagining in my mind that they are very angry or upset or secretly hate me.
This past week has been torturous because of this. I am unable to study at all and I'm meant to be studying for exams and can't focus on any other activity other than having random memories pop into my head and dwelling on things. I have tried to stop so many times but I just can't control it whatsoever, it's all I can think about, and in the moment of doing it it feels like on some level that I'm actually enjoying the little bit of past drama my mind is reliving too. I have always been a bit of an over thinker but I have never experienced whatever this is that I am experiencing at the moment, and it has coincided directly with raising the medication. I have even deactivated social media because of this but alas my mind is still having a field day coming up with random material at any time of day.
Does anyone know what this sort of thing I'm experiencing is?
Should I reduce the medication or push through and hope this weirdness dies down and I can start to find relief for my anxiety.
I have taken a different SSRI at the same dose before and experienced some level of reduction in my anxiety after a while so I know that it is possible.