Going Back On Sertraline .... when does it end ??

[ShellyTai]

Hi everyone,
How's everyone doing ????

can honestly say that this Health Anxiety is ruining my life .... does anyone else ever feel like this ??? DO you ever feel that it's robbing you of living.....
I know I do this to myself .... but I don't know how to break the cycle .

I'm so far gone with it ..... it's having a massive effect on my family ... my daughter sat crying in my arms last night....she said to me "I know you're going to die - I don't know what I'm going to do without you to look after me".....I'm heartbroken.....(dd is 10), she's obviously heard me talking, or is sensing something.
I came off Sertraline in July .... it didn't go well coming off them ... I was kind of doing ok at the beginning of October .... we had a family holiday booked in Orlando in October.....
All was kind of ok....until 2 days before we went on holiday ... I found a small "pimple" is what i'll call it.....under my left arm .... OMG ... trigger, massive panic attack .... obviously it was breast cancer (I had a mammogram back in June due to breast pain....of course, all was clear) .... and the mammogram had missed it etc..etc..(you know how it goes), so off I goes to the dr before hols, who assured me that it was no more than a pimple and to "away and enjoy my holiday" ....
Well, I had 2 weeks of hell in Florida .... I couldn't enjoy my holiday - I panicked and cried most of the time ..... once I got over the breast cancer fear and decided that it was a pimple, I went from one thing to another in 2 weeks.
My family are very supportive of me and try to understand as best they can .... but even they were starting to ask every morning "so, what do we have today???".
Then I started thinking "I'd better try and enjoy this holiday - I'm going to die soon, this will be the last holiday I get with my family".
I'm so overwhelmed by all this health anxiety, that I'll tell anyone who'll listen, it's getting embarrassing. My neighbour is a nurse at the local psychiatric hospital, I've nearly been banging on her door a few times begging for help.
Back on Sertraline I go ..... took my 1st 25mg today. I'm dreading the side effects - I have a hell of a time with them.....but it has to be done. I can't live like this any longer.....
I'm planning on staying on them for a good while this time .... instead of coming off them after just a couple of months .... I'll need to stick it out and give them a chance. They give me really bad alcohol cravings - I'll have to deal with them aswell.

So sorry if this is long & winded - just had to vent.....

[yenool]

I hope the sertraline helps for you.... I'm not a fan of antidepressants (I've tried loads) but sertraline is one of the ones I found to have least side-effects.

It can help with your anxiety if you can hang tough for a few weeks while it starts to work.

I don't have much experience of health anxiety but I can see from what you have written that you are asking yourself lots of "WHAT IF" questions. What if questions are so dangerous because they lead us to speculate, negatively, about things we have no control over that might happen in the future. This kind of thinking leads us to over exaggerate any risk and under estimate our potential to cope with a problem should it occur.

It is easier said than done but I think one tactic is to always try and stay in the moment - try not to let your brain drag you off into thinking about 'what if ....'.

25mg is a fairly low dose as well... are you planning to built it up over time?

[FeelLikeNeo]

Hey!

I can't say I'm as bad as you've been, but health anxiety has taken the last 6 months from me - not so much the last 1 or 2 but definitely the previous 4. Looking back it feels like a dream. It absolutely robs you of living.

I too started Setraline on Friday and it destroyed me... never felt so bad... I didn't take another one after, and will speak to the doctors again tomorrow. I hope you have a better experience! The problem was I didn't know about side effects (never had pills before) and my doctor just said 'some people get a bad stomach'. I feel this was poor advice, and I should have been prepared for what lay ahead.

[helena8888]

Hi, Shelly I can relate very well to your suffering as I also have health anxiety and I know how it can ruin your life. I am also back on sert (for the 3rd time) and the beginning stage is definitely not a nice phase. I started really slowly to try to avoid as much as possible the side effects (and still experienced a bit of insomnia / nausea / loss of appetite / heightened anxiety) but manageable overall. I started to feel steadily good again at 6 weeks and at a dosage of 25mg. I did not increase to 50mg (my doc asked me to) because I wanted to see how I would react at 25mg knowing I could be wasting my time. Now after 2.5 months I am still at 25mg and doing well. I am not anxiety free but the level is manageable.
This time my anxiety was not as bad as the previous time when I started sert and I had to go to 75mg. It is definitely on a case to case basis but I think the docs are very quick to ask to increase the dosage without spending enough time at a particular dosage to see if it works or not.

[Phill2]

Hi, Shelly I can relate very well to your suffering as I also have health anxiety and I know how it can ruin your life. I am also back on sert (for the 3rd time) and the beginning stage is definitely not a nice phase. I started really slowly to try to avoid as much as possible the side effects (and still experienced a bit of insomnia / nausea / loss of appetite / heightened anxiety) but manageable overall. I started to feel steadily good again at 6 weeks and at a dosage of 25mg. I did not increase to 50mg (my doc asked me to) because I wanted to see how I would react at 25mg knowing I could be wasting my time. Now after 2.5 months I am still at 25mg and doing well. I am not anxiety free but the level is manageable.
This time my anxiety was not as bad as the previous time when I started sert and I had to go to 75mg. It is definitely on a case to case basis but I think the docs are very quick to ask to increase the dosage without spending enough time at a particular dosage to see if it works or not.

My thoughts exactly Helena.
I've been on 50mg for about 7 months now and doing well despite my Dr trying to get me to increase it.

[ShellyTai]

Thanks everyone for your replies.

My doc has changed my meds to Fluoxetine....I'm on day 3 ... settling in period is supposed to be hell.....but I'm hoping they won't give me the long term side effects that I had.
The long term side effects, were terrible cravings .... for food & alcohol. It was awful .... I didn't have a drink problem until I was on Sertraline .... don't know what happened or how it effected me the way it did.
Thanks again everyone.
xxx

[MRS STRESS ED]

Thanks everyone for your replies.

My doc has changed my meds to Fluoxetine....I'm on day 3 ... settling in period is supposed to be hell.....but I'm hoping they won't give me the long term side effects that I had.
The long term side effects, were terrible cravings .... for food & alcohol. It was awful .... I didn't have a drink problem until I was on Sertraline .... don't know what happened or how it effected me the way it did.
Thanks again everyone.
xxx

Shelly keep going you can get there its a long road ahead but keep on it carry on with your meds don't look back whats happened has happened ,you need to move forward ask yourself are you going up or down that's what I did I too came off my sertraline and what I have realised if I need to go back on them I can its not a step back its a helping hand towards us getting better ,I have got lots of issues at the moment but I am not letting THAT ANXIETY DRAGON BACK IN ,OH NO he trys believe me but I KEEP PUSHING AND PUSHING IT AWAY ,BELIEVE IN YOURSELF STAY POSITIVE AND KICK HIS ASS