Msquared
06-04-2012, 01:21 AM
Hi everyone - new here (posted a short intro in the appropriate subforum).
I'm 26 and have suffered from anxiety since infancy, literally. I was a sad, fussy baby, a shy child, and grew up depressed and anxious. As a teen, I moved a lot and suffered from feeling left out of existing cliques. I often dreamt of killing myself or at least dying in my sleep. All the while, I focused all my time and energy onto getting perfect grades and excelling at sports (I graduated second in my class behind the principal's son).
Then, during my college years, I let go of much of my perfectionism and came into my own. I became more comfortable and confident in myself and truly began lightening up and making more friends. At times, however, I still suffered from severe anxiety attacks, as I have my entire life. I decided to try Paxil after an extremely rough patch in my life, but only stayed on it a few months, as it made me feel cloudy, apathetic, and not disconnected from reality.
Now, I am happily married and working a full-time job, where I have mostly favorable relationships with my fellow employees. However, my current work location has been more challenging than at other locations I've worked (for the same company). The managers at this particular location are more condescending and micromanaging, which stirred up much frustration and anxiety, as I am someone who prefers to work with more independence.
I was bringing home my anxiety to my husband and taking it out on him, as well. While I wouldn't say our marriage was jeopardized, it certainly wasn't fair to him that I was giving him the short end of the stick.
So, I decided to take the proverbial bull by the horns and visit the doctor, even though I don't prefer to be medicated. I ended up being prescribed Trivora (birth control pill) to help alleviate severe PMDD which resulted in me acting demon-possessed and having extreme anxiety attacks. I had taken Yaz for a few yrs. but then stopped because of all the warnings, plus my husband has a vasectomy so I don't necessarily need a pill. I thought I would give no birth control a try, but after a few months of it working out of my system, I was back to my irregular, moody self.
The doc also prescribed 20 mg. of generic Prozac, which I had some ambivalence about after my Paxil nightmare, but he assured me that this would not be the same. And luckily, he was right. Since taking the Prozac, I've felt much less down and more energized, more organized, more positive at resilient at work, etc. I have had very few anxiety attacks at work or at home, whereas before it was normal for me to have an embarrassing meltdown due to aggregated stress and mistreatment.
However, this past week it seems that some of the past anxiety has been coming back. Part of it may be that I am about to start my period, but a few days ago one of my dogs escaped and ran off, and I had some major hypertension when I couldn't find him. Luckily, even though he favors me, he tends to obey my husband more, and he eventually listened to his voice and came out of hiding.
Then, today at work an odd situation occurred when I was actually clocked out for the day but was shopping at my place of work. Coming out of the fitting room, I encountered a customer letting herself in (they're supposed to count customers' items in for loss prevention purposes). I kindly explained to her that she needed to be counted in, but she breezed past me anyway, so I tried to verbally alert an employee, but no one seemed to be around. After leaving the fitting room, the lady and her sister started yelling at me and getting in my face, and instead of just lying down and taking it, I tried to calmly stand my ground.
Anyway, let's just say that my assistant manager got involved and unfortunately made me feel as if the customer was absolutely right and I had no right to stand up for myself. I suppose the lesson I learned is, once I'm off the clock, I shouldn't care about rules. Which, I suppose she was right, but I'm human and it's sometimes difficult to instantly switch from caring about work to not caring.
This isn't the first time something like this has happened. Once some guys were harassing myself and other women at my work (blocking my path, saying inappropriate things) and in a moment of nervousness I said something sort of silly to break the tension, but it ended up pissing a manager off to a point where he blew it out of proportion. And he didn't even seem to care that the guys were bothering me, he just cared about my silly comment.
So, let's just say during today's episode, I had to walk off the floor and after somewhat calming down, talked to my manager, which made me even more anxious because she was trying to advocate for the bitchy customer. So, I went home and had hypertension and cried for over an hour before I finally went to sleep.
During the harassment episode (before taking Prozac) I lost sleep and felt terrible for days on end.
I'm wondering if I should up my dosage of Prozac.
I'm 26 and have suffered from anxiety since infancy, literally. I was a sad, fussy baby, a shy child, and grew up depressed and anxious. As a teen, I moved a lot and suffered from feeling left out of existing cliques. I often dreamt of killing myself or at least dying in my sleep. All the while, I focused all my time and energy onto getting perfect grades and excelling at sports (I graduated second in my class behind the principal's son).
Then, during my college years, I let go of much of my perfectionism and came into my own. I became more comfortable and confident in myself and truly began lightening up and making more friends. At times, however, I still suffered from severe anxiety attacks, as I have my entire life. I decided to try Paxil after an extremely rough patch in my life, but only stayed on it a few months, as it made me feel cloudy, apathetic, and not disconnected from reality.
Now, I am happily married and working a full-time job, where I have mostly favorable relationships with my fellow employees. However, my current work location has been more challenging than at other locations I've worked (for the same company). The managers at this particular location are more condescending and micromanaging, which stirred up much frustration and anxiety, as I am someone who prefers to work with more independence.
I was bringing home my anxiety to my husband and taking it out on him, as well. While I wouldn't say our marriage was jeopardized, it certainly wasn't fair to him that I was giving him the short end of the stick.
So, I decided to take the proverbial bull by the horns and visit the doctor, even though I don't prefer to be medicated. I ended up being prescribed Trivora (birth control pill) to help alleviate severe PMDD which resulted in me acting demon-possessed and having extreme anxiety attacks. I had taken Yaz for a few yrs. but then stopped because of all the warnings, plus my husband has a vasectomy so I don't necessarily need a pill. I thought I would give no birth control a try, but after a few months of it working out of my system, I was back to my irregular, moody self.
The doc also prescribed 20 mg. of generic Prozac, which I had some ambivalence about after my Paxil nightmare, but he assured me that this would not be the same. And luckily, he was right. Since taking the Prozac, I've felt much less down and more energized, more organized, more positive at resilient at work, etc. I have had very few anxiety attacks at work or at home, whereas before it was normal for me to have an embarrassing meltdown due to aggregated stress and mistreatment.
However, this past week it seems that some of the past anxiety has been coming back. Part of it may be that I am about to start my period, but a few days ago one of my dogs escaped and ran off, and I had some major hypertension when I couldn't find him. Luckily, even though he favors me, he tends to obey my husband more, and he eventually listened to his voice and came out of hiding.
Then, today at work an odd situation occurred when I was actually clocked out for the day but was shopping at my place of work. Coming out of the fitting room, I encountered a customer letting herself in (they're supposed to count customers' items in for loss prevention purposes). I kindly explained to her that she needed to be counted in, but she breezed past me anyway, so I tried to verbally alert an employee, but no one seemed to be around. After leaving the fitting room, the lady and her sister started yelling at me and getting in my face, and instead of just lying down and taking it, I tried to calmly stand my ground.
Anyway, let's just say that my assistant manager got involved and unfortunately made me feel as if the customer was absolutely right and I had no right to stand up for myself. I suppose the lesson I learned is, once I'm off the clock, I shouldn't care about rules. Which, I suppose she was right, but I'm human and it's sometimes difficult to instantly switch from caring about work to not caring.
This isn't the first time something like this has happened. Once some guys were harassing myself and other women at my work (blocking my path, saying inappropriate things) and in a moment of nervousness I said something sort of silly to break the tension, but it ended up pissing a manager off to a point where he blew it out of proportion. And he didn't even seem to care that the guys were bothering me, he just cared about my silly comment.
So, let's just say during today's episode, I had to walk off the floor and after somewhat calming down, talked to my manager, which made me even more anxious because she was trying to advocate for the bitchy customer. So, I went home and had hypertension and cried for over an hour before I finally went to sleep.
During the harassment episode (before taking Prozac) I lost sleep and felt terrible for days on end.
I'm wondering if I should up my dosage of Prozac.