My Mental Health Treatment Journey

Diagnoses and Medications for Little Girls

My mental health treatment journey began before I was even capable of understanding what mental health disorders were. Mom and Dad had to make some challenging decisions as first-time parents because they had an unruly and odd child.

They decided to take me to the doctor when I was five. I really gave them good reasons to. I didn’t sleep. I had constant, dark circles underneath my eyes from the lack of it.

I would repeat certain things over and over again. Every night before I went to bed, I had to tell a ten-minute story that involved saying goodnight to every single person and animal I knew. I refused to lay quietly until my parents had listened to all of it

I couldn’t have any lumps in my socks when I put shoes on or I would freak out and scream.

I threw big, angry tantrums anytime my mom deviated from the schedule she had planned for the day. For example, if we were supposed to go to the grocery store right after lunch but instead didn’t go until later in the day, that would make me very upset. 

I craved order and routine. I could go from happy to angry very quickly. There was just something off about five-year-old me. 

The doctors seemed confused. They told my parents that I was very smart and knew how to trick them into getting my way. They said to expect me to excel in school but to suffer mentally in the future. They said it was evident I had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and a sleep disorder. They said I might have Oppositional Defiant Disorder, but not all of the symptoms quite fit into place to match that description. The same was true for the possibility of mania and mild bipolar disorder.

They said I was an anxious kid and recommended an SSRI called Zoloft and a sedative called Trazodone to combat the anxiety, OCD, manic episodes, and insomnia. My parents were seeking a way to increase the quality of my life. They wanted me to feel happy, so they followed the doctor’s instructions.

At five years old, I began taking Zoloft and Trazodone every day. Zoloft is an SSRI, which stands for Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor. This pill works precisely as it says: it inhibits the reuptake, which is the reabsorption of a neurotransmitter. This changes the levels of serotonin, the chemical and neurotransmitter associated with happiness and well-being, in the brain. So, the decrease in the absorption of serotonin causes an increase in the amount of serotonin, which makes people feel happier. Trazodone is a medication used to treat both mental illness and insomnia. Being a sedative, it knocked me out like a light. I took it every night before bed. I started to actually sleep at night. My mood and mental health were more balanced. They were working to increase the quality of my life!

Childhood Trauma and Confused Doctors

As I transformed from a little girl to a bigger little girl, I still had issues. This first chapter of treatment was from the ages of five to twelve. Though the sleep issue seemed to be solved, I still had OCD tendencies and dealt with anxiety. If I turned in a circle one way, I would always have to unwind myself by turning in a circle the opposite way. I remember going through a phase where if I hadn’t said a certain letter for a while, I would have to say it. Like, the soft “g” sound; if I recognized I hadn’t spoken it aloud in a while, I would have to say “giraffe” or “gymnastics.” If I didn’t adhere to the OCD by unwinding myself and speaking the letter I felt I needed to speak, I would feel a very uncomfortable, sharp, achy pain in my chest and the urge to scream. I don’t really know how else to explain that.

I started running track in sixth grade and developed athletic-induced asthma, or so I thought. I didn’t find out until many years later that my inhaler was actually a placebo, as the asthma was something I made up in my own anxious head.

I occasionally had panic attacks that would pop up out of nowhere. Some were so intense that they would lead to visiting the hospital. A few snapshots of panic attacks from childhood still come to my mind very clearly. I remember one happening on a very fun vacation in Wisconsin for no particular reason. One occurred in the comfort of my own home while watching one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. I remember sitting in Urgent Care during one. They were horrible. Out of thin air, a feeling of impending doom would hit me with a force like a slap across the face. It felt like a wall of water would just wash over me, but instead of water, I felt panic. I felt hot and sweaty, couldn’t sit still, and started hyperventilating.

In those moments, I genuinely believed that I was going to die right then and there in my parents’ arms as they held me while I shook and sobbed. But they always passed and left me feeling a mix of immense relief and overbearing exhaustion.

During this chapter of life, I was also going to therapy, which I didn’t take seriously at all. I was very rude to my psychiatrists for many years until I grew up enough to behave better. 

Counseling was required for adolescents who took medication for mental illnesses. I had to check in with the doctor and therapist often so they could make sure I wasn’t abusing the medication, that it was still working for me, and to teach me cognitive behavioral therapy that I could apply to the times when anxious thoughts would dance in my head. 

At one point, my doctor added a third drug to my regimen to help quell the anxiety. It was a medicine called Abilify, which rebalances the levels of dopamine and serotonin in the brain. I was on this medication temporarily, maybe a year or two? But one day, my doctor very concernedly asked my mom why I was taking Abilify.

“Well, because you prescribed it to her.” She had said. But the doctor said he would have never, ever prescribed that for me and that I should get off of it immediately. So, I got off of it right away, regardless of the confusion as to why I was even on it. Now I know that Abilify is a medication that commonly treats Schizophrenia and is known as a second-generation antipsychotic.

I am about to contradict the painful picture I’ve just painted in your mind with another truth. Despite everything I’ve just explained, I was most often a very happy, energetic child with a very loving family, many friends, and many successes in school and sports. As I look back on my childhood and analyze my mental illnesses more in depth as an adult, I know I never realized the seriousness of it. The debilitating times I experienced on occasion would come and go quickly. I was always, through it all, a naive child who thought the biggest issue in my life was a boy who didn’t like me back or a bad race. I was very excitable and exuded self confidence. People described me as a happy person, and I truly was! But just like everyone else on earth, I experienced hardships, too.

Teenage Mood Swings

Becoming a teenager led me into the next chapter of life. Let’s talk about junior high and high school. I absolutely adored school, always. I loved junior high and high school. I’m filled with happy memories when I think of those seven years.

I was diagnosed with scoliosis when I was twelve and spent junior high in a plastic brace around my torso. Being the absolute obnoxious imbecile that I was, I made a show of this hard, plastic encasement. I refused to let scoliosis drag me down, and I coped with it by placing myself at the center of attention. I would literally show off my brace at school like it was something to be proud of, and I somehow made it normal.

I got a spinal fusion in high school, which added much hardship and complication to my mental health, but I got through it just fine. The physical illnesses that I went through with my back are important to mention because I believe they are the main ingredient in the trauma that has made me the hypochondriac that I am today. And childhood trauma plays a huge role in mental illnesses later in life.

Right before I became a teenager, I stopped taking Trazodone. I didn’t have trouble sleeping anymore. But right after I became a teenager, I started having the opposite problem. I couldn’t stop sleeping. I was suddenly a teen who liked to stay up late and sleep in late. Normal, right? Well, no, it wasn’t.

I fell asleep in almost every single class from seventh grade through graduating college. I was voted in high school as Most Likely To Fall Asleep Between Classes, and my teacher told me that not one other girl was voted for. I fell asleep so often that it was blatantly obvious and obnoxious. The doctors were confused as to why I was so tired. I was healthy in every other way. My blood results were normal.

My teachers would sometimes pull me aside after particularly sleepy days to ask me if I did drugs. But I didn’t take illegal drugs ever (besides alcohol very occasionally) because I was obsessed with maintaining good health (trauma-induced). The doctors believed that my excessive sleepiness was a result of taking antidepressants that sedated me and because I was bored in school. They suggested that my mindset was as follows: since I was still able to get A’s in honors classes, what was the point in staying awake? Touché. But no matter how bored you are, your body has to have the capability of sleeping that much. The reasoning was simply unknown throughout my years of schooling. 

As a teenager, the doctors and psychiatrists nailed down my exact mental illness diagnosis and were no longer confused as to what was troubling me. It couldn’t be more clear that I had Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I no longer had OCD; I had apparently grown out of it. I could twist in a circle one way and never unwind!

I continued seeing a counselor until I was eighteen. I took therapy more seriously during my teenage years. Zoloft was the only medication I took, in varying doses depending on my age and life stresses, between the ages of twelve and twenty-two.

I occasionally forgot to take my pill, and the next day I’d experience extreme mood swings. One second I would be in high spirits, and the next second, my friend would do something annoying that would send me into an angry, aggressive, and reactive spiral. I would say mean things and sometimes even shove or hit people. But then a switch would occur immediately after and I would feel awful, apologizing profusely.

When this happened, I believed that I would be a horrible person off of Zoloft. I believed that I would have no friends. I would be angry, unlikable, anxious, and out of control if I ever stopped taking the medication. So I took extra care to remember to take it.

I didn’t know then that the mood swings I experienced after forgetting to take the pill one day were not my personality off drugs. They were withdrawals.

The very end of this life chapter was at the age of twenty-one. My mental health status was good. But I was experiencing two symptoms that were complicating my life. For one, my sleeping issue was being noticed at my internships. And secondly, my sex drive was shot! My doctor confirmed my suspicion that my Zoloft was likely adding to my excessive sleepiness and suppressing my interest in sex. So, she switched me from Zoloft to Lexapro, which was another SSRI known not to cause as much drowsiness and sex drive suppression as my current medication. This switch happened quickly in one day with no withdrawals or complications. I believe both my sex drive and sleepiness benefited slightly from the change, but other than that, everything remained the same.

Deep Mental Health Ups and Downs During Adulthood 

I call the age of twenty-two the start of the next chapter in my journey. I was about to start the last semester of college when my mental health took a sudden turn for the worse. I’d been emotionally stable and doing very well for a long, long time. But then I realized that I soon wouldn’t be in school, the thing I loved so much, anymore.

The transition out of college and into working full-time in the corporate world was very, very challenging for me. Throw in some complications in the romance department, the fact that I would be taking my unknown sleep disorder with me to work, and the fact that I didn’t really love the field I was getting my degree in into the mix, and allow me to introduce you to the most anxious chapter of my life.

I hadn’t had panic attacks since I was a young teenager, but they started happening again. They were less intense than they used to be since I had gained so much knowledge on how to prevent and combat them through my many years of therapy. But they happened more often at this stage in life. The same wash of panic would splash over me. The heat and sweats and impending doom would devour me. But I didn’t hyperventilate anymore, and I could control them and make them seep away on my own. 

They would happen in the middle of class, and no one would know. They would happen while I hung out with the boy I liked, but he couldn’t possibly know that my temporary silence meant I temporarily felt like I was about to die. I am not exaggerating that part; that is what a panic attack does to a person. I had to constantly take a huge step back and find tangible reasons that proved I was safe. I woke up every morning with a pit of doom in my stomach and went to bed every night feeling panicky. I welcomed the fact that sleep meant I wouldn’t have to feel.

I started going to therapy again, and I took it more seriously than I ever had before. I developed an obsession with the world of mental health and soaked in every detail I could that would teach me how to feel happy again. I also decided to switch from Lexapro back to Zoloft since it had worked well for me for so many years.

I jumped into a slightly larger dose than I had previously taken, but this proved to be a mistake. The best way I can describe how I felt on this large dose of Zoloft was like a stuffed mushroom that was about to explode and yet didn’t have access to all of her feelings. It’s like my brain really, really wanted to be anxious but just couldn’t feel anything at all. All I wanted to do was sleep. So, I dropped the dosage down to a more tolerable level, which ended up feeling exactly the same as Lexapro did.

After months and months of still feeling bad, I was a twenty-three-year-old with an elephant on my chest that wouldn’t get his fat ass off. The anxiety was always present; it never left.

More health complications added to the weight on my chest. My back was suffering. I had Degenerative Disc Disease that caused intense and painful flare-ups that left me bed-ridden for weeks and hobbling crookedly for months. I was having frequent, terrifying heart palpitations (later determined to be anxiety-induced and not serious). I was having muscle spasms, headaches, and electrical shocks through my body (all determined to be caused by DDD).

In addition to the rest, one last health issue needed to be solved. My sleepiness was affecting me at work. I scheduled a sleep study where electrodes were connected to my body and head. After completing the study and then later returning to my sleep doctor, he said the results were inconclusive. Wow, what a waste of time.

So, I decided to get a second opinion. The next sleep doctor said the previous doctor overlooked something very significant. Being on antidepressants results in inconclusive sleep study results. Oh. So I had to get off of them…

I had been taking antidepressants for eighteen years. I didn’t know what I was like off of them. I was scared of who I would be off of them. But if I didn’t get off of them, I would never solve my sleep issue.

So I went to my primary doctor and explained the situation. She told me I would have to wean off them because my mind and body had developed a dependency on them. We had a plan in place. Weekly, I would go down in dosage. She told me to expect a number of withdrawal symptoms. I bravely moved forward. As I decreased my medication, I noticed an increase in clarity. I did not experience withdrawal symptoms during the weeks I weaned off; I only experienced an increase in well-being. I was shocked.

Then the week began where I would be taking zero milligrams of Zoloft. For the first few days, nothing happened. I felt totally fine. But then the symptoms began. Brain fog, dizziness, muscle spasms everywhere in my body, anxiety, panic, sadness, headaches, unfocused eyes, short temper, snappy irritability, fatigue. You name it; I experienced it.

This went on for weeks, even as I got the second sleep study done. My sleep doctor told me it was evident in the study that I was still experiencing withdrawals; my brain waves proved it. Therefore, guess what? An inconclusive study. He told me that my study showed it took an abnormally short amount of time for me to fall asleep. He said that my results indicated textbook narcolepsy, but that I did not suffer from cataplexy, which is extremely common for narcolepsy patients. He said that there was a good chance the results were incorrect because the antidepressant withdrawals had skewed them and because I don’t display many of the typical narcoleptic symptoms. I’d either have to wait longer to have a third sleep study or he could just go ahead and prescribe me medication that would help if I did indeed have narcolepsy.

He prescribed me a stimulant called Modafinil, commonly used to treat sleep disorders. I tried it. It made me fidgety, jumpy, too awake, and incredibly anxious. It was evidently way too strong for me. I stopped taking it. I still didn’t have an answer to what had caused my sleepiness all of these years. So I did my own research and experimentation. I have self-diagnosed myself with a possible Circadian Rhythm Disorder and simply the fact that I require nine to eleven hours of sleep every night. 

Nowadays, I am usually quite sleepy before eight or nine in the morning, but when I get my average of ten hours of sleep at night, I’m not sleepy at all during the day. Why is it that doctors couldn’t figure this out? Why couldn’t they figure out the fact that literally all I needed was a consistent ten hours of sleep every night? What a fuckin’ journey. The answer was so. SO. Simple.

But what happened after all of those awful withdrawals from my antidepressants? My primary doctor told me they wouldn’t last more than a few weeks. They lasted a few months.

I believe it’s hard to determine what is normal person-to-person. Everyone has a different experience with medication. My body had only known antidepressants since the age of five; nothing else. It must have been an enormous shock to the system to get off of them. Nevertheless, I stayed unyielding, not willing to just hop back on the antidepressant train. I was determined to wait for the day my body adjusted so I could see what the hell I was like not on antidepressants.

It was an incredibly slow transformation, but after months and months, the last of the symptoms ebbed away, and the heavy sheet of anxiety lifted. The elephant finally got bored and left. I noticed this change when I turned twenty-four last December. It has almost been a full year of the most recent chapter of my mental health journey: the best yet.

The Latest Life Chapter

When I say the best, I don’t mean the easiest. I just feel the most growth in the past year. It is hard to explain. I feel a deeper and more raw range of emotions being off of antidepressants. I still have ups and downs, but they all feel healthy, controlled, and normal. I can analyze how I feel much deeper. I feel sad more often off of antidepressants, but rarely any extreme negative emotions.

I have been much less anxious this year than the two years prior. I feel good about the current treatment of my mental health, which is different than ever before: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with myself. I simply apply all the tools I’ve gained from therapy and experience over the years to my situation anytime I feel a negative emotion.

At age twenty-four, going on twenty-five, I don’t currently see a therapist or take any medication to treat anxiety. I’m living with generalized anxiety disorder and am taking a natural mental health treatment approach that consists of occasional meditation, deep breathing, CBT, and a combination of healthy practices like exercise and a healthy diet.

I have absolutely no doubt that this chapter will end one day, and another will begin that will involve an entirely different approach to my mental health disorder treatment. I am not against any form of treatment and feel very open-minded to all options.

I don’t want to give you the impression that my life is really hard and awful, because it absolutely is not! The purpose of this blog post was to share my treatment for the health disorders I experience, so I maintained focus on a lot of the negative. But amongst the obstacles, my life is filled with so much joy! There is always happiness, fulfillment, love, and excitement laced in with the negative emotions. Much, much more often than not, I am a happy person.

I’ve learned that sometimes things have to get a lot worse before they can get better, and I can never reiterate enough how temporary every emotion truly is. I share this extraordinarily honest and raw piece of my life with you because I do not feel ashamed and I know how many people out there can relate in some way or another. Connecting with others while we suffer reminds us that we are never alone. It gives us a greater acceptance of what we are going through. Sending lots of love to all the mental illness sufferers out there!

Mental Health Blog Disclaimer

I am not a medical professional, therapist, or mental healthcare professional. The information provided on this website is for informational purposes only, comes from my own personal experiences, and may be read, interpreted, and practiced at your own risk. Do not rely on this information as a substitute to medical advice or treatment from a healthcare professional.