A Passenger in My Body…

Hi again all! Louisa here. Thanks for all the great feedback about my previous blog post! I'm going to start off where I left off last time and dive into what it was like starting on antidepressants at such a young age, including navigating long term side effects, how going on medication during puberty affected me and my general relationship with medication at that point in my life.  

We left off with my psychiatrist giving me a pretty brutal ultimatum: go on antidepressants or get admitted to the hospital to be essentially force fed. Super chill decision for an 11 year old to make! That was my first taste of feeling really trapped in my mental illness. The choices presented to me were overwhelming and I felt cornered and confused. I have absolutely nothing against antidepressants, in fact I would go as far as to say I might not be alive without them. At the very least I think that given the limited resources presented to me in the 90’s my life would have turned out very differently, and not in a good way.

I remember the choice to go on medication feeling absolutely terrifying because I had no idea what being medicated really meant. What were the side effects? My biggest fear was of course throwing up! Will they make me a zombie? Will they change my personality? I had to jump into the deep end and hope for the best. Needless to say, I agreed to take the medication for lack of any other non-terrifying options. I remember the first time I was going to swallow the pills and how completely out of control everything felt. I was giving my brain over to this foreign substance and had absolutely no idea where this journey would take me, let alone if they would work. I think anyone that has taken antidepressants knows that its basically a guessing game in regards to what will work and what will not work.

They say it takes 4-6 weeks to know if a medication will have any positive effect and to what degree. Weeks of side effects, weeks of hoping that it will not be all be for nothing, weeks of constantly mentally scanning your mind and body searching for any evidence that its working or not. I was once again just a passenger in my body. The experience of such a loss of control at such a young age can really haunt you in your life going forward and, in retrospect, I can see why I developed such huge anxiety issues later in adulthood. It really wrote on the script of the inner dialog I would take with me. The continuous narrative of “you need to be taken care of” or “you need medication in order to function.” A constant cycle of feeling like I could not trust my brain or myself. Spoiler alert: that does not set you up for an independent adult life! 

Now, all these experiences sucked, for lack of a better word. Surprisingly though, the medication was very effective and I was able to live my life without being constantly suffocated by obsessive thoughts and overwhelming anxiety. It was such a relief to feel like I was back in the driver's seat in my life. Or at least as much as possible as a 12/13 year old. Then puberty hit. 

I think we can all agree that puberty makes everyone a bit unhinged. I mean, navigating life as a teenager is a cringy nightmare I think most people would not want to relive again. Everything is just so very awkward! This is where my medication would affect me in ways that are not necessarily obvious in the moment but in hindsight I can now think “ooh that's why I was like that.” You see, a lot of antidepressants help with social anxiety but if you do not have social anxiety (which as I have said before I did not…I loved me a bit of attention!) and if you have missed out on some important life lessons like learning boundaries because you were too busy being paralyzed by mental health struggles, you can end up being a little TOO comfortable in social settings. My goodness, I still cringe at how over-the-top open I was with people. Telling my entire life story, getting motor-mouth (i.e. never shutting up) and generally not having a “STOP TALKING” button.

I was extremely immature in how I interacted with people sometimes. It was not super noticeable and I'm sure any school mates who may be reading this probably won't remember me being THAT awkward but it was more a general feeling of just being “too much” in certain situations. For example, my first ever boyfriend that I was sooo excited about only lasted a whopping 2 weeks because I would call him way too often and suffocate him. I was so confused and heartbroken when he dumped me, but now I obviously laugh at myself thinking back at my well meaning but slightly unhinged behavior. I just want to hug my younger self and say “slow your role girl, you`re being a creep.”

So basically, the filter between my feelings and whatever would pop out of my mouth or the actions I would take was non-existent, and if there is anything a young teenager desperately needs it is a filter. It did teach me a very important lesson though, and that was to not take myself too seriously and to laugh in the face of embarrassment. I've been incredibly lucky that I learned early on to not even bother feeling shame about my sometimes weird behavior. I could choose to shrink away when someone called me a weirdo or I could laugh and say “yeah accurate.” Self deprecating humor became my superpower.  

Another massive life lesson I was forced to learn was to advocate for myself. My drive and desperation to not feel so mentally out of control all the time pushed me to constantly search for relief through whatever therapy or medication was available, and unfortunately, it's often up to the patient to take the initiative and research what there is in regards to resources out there, especially if its therapy outside of the “norm” like hypnotherapy or biofeedback. I had to develop the language to describe my thoughts and feelings accurately so my doctors and therapists could help me as best possible.

There was this very clear juxtaposition between how helpless I felt and how stunted my maturity was and how in-tune I was with myself and how beyond my years I was emotionally. I could not get a job because of my anxiety but I could tell you the difference between an SSRI or an antipsychotic medication and name every different brand name or what their side effects are. I was too scared to go on sleepovers but I could tell you all about what happens in your brain during a panic attack. A negative side effect of this has been that I have always felt like I have to prove or defend myself.  I think a lot of people that suffer from anxiety disorders develop this desperation to have their feelings or experiences validated because we are often met with either disbelief in regards to how overwhelming our anxiety is or we are dismissed as overly sensitive and lacking willpower. Being constantly met by society in this way teaches you to always be prepared to explain why you are the way you are. Why it is not as simple as just facing your fears. Why you`re not actually weak, you just do not know how to show how strong you actually are on the inside. Because trust me, moving through life with overwhelming anxiety is the very opposite of weak.

Still to this day if I am standing in line at the grocery store and I feel terrified, I have sweat pouring down my back and I have to keep reminding myself that I'm not in any actual danger, my knee jerk reaction can sometimes me “my goodness this is ridiculous, why are you scared of something so simple!” But the reality is, I am strong as hell because despite having my whole nervous system screaming at me to RUN, I still stand in that line, I still put my food on the counter and smile at the cashier. I pay for my things and walk out on shaky legs that I hope do not collapse. And I go back and do it again and again, knowing how uncomfortable I will be.  

So many important things happen between the ages of around 10 until 18 that form who you are as a person, and spending such a large amount of that time in emotional turmoil and uncertainty stunted not only my maturity but also my opportunity to get to know myself and who I wanted to be. I couldn't think about what I wanted to be when I grew up because sometimes, I wasn't sure if I would grow up, or if I even wanted to.

My whole identity was “patient”. There was not a lot of room for much else, like gaining the small amount of independence you start experiencing as a pre-teen. My lack of shyness thankfully gave me some very important friendships that I am still so thankful for to this day, but everything I did still had a tinge of anxiety to it. Which is fine really, but it blurred the lines between what was a natural part of my personality and what was my anxiety disorder. I`m still not sure where one ends and the other begins to be honest! No pre-teen or teenager really knows who they are or what they want but I think the mix of feeling like I constantly needed to defend or explain myself and the feeling of being so incapable of simple things without having a panic attack planted the seed for the intense self loathing that would slowly poison me up until very recently.

I was so used to giving all of my attention to my anxiety that any other feelings were just pushed to the side, so I had no idea that I was emotionally rotting from the inside. It was around this time (14 y/old) that I started developing self destructive behavior like cutting myself. At the time I thought I was doing so to take the edge off of the emotional pressure I felt was building, and I'm sure that was a component but now I think an even bigger component was that I was punishing myself for not being able to just stop being anxious. It was not deep or “serious” cutting, but more just a bit of a “you`re an idiot and here is your little punishment”. It only happened a couple of times at that point but it was something I would return to on and off throughout my 20`s. I think I was also trying to self soothe also in a way. Desperately grasping for things I could control, even if they were bad things and even if it was a form of punishment.

I honestly think that if I hadn't have been so terrified of throwing up I would have started experimenting with drugs too at that point. A story you hear time and time again is of teenagers experiencing trauma or overwhelming emotions desperate to find an escape hatch from their feelings so they start trying drugs to take the edge off, but my vomit phobia was thankfully super dominant and I could never take the chance of potentially barfing. So at least it was good for something! During all of this, from the moment my medication started working at 12 years old, I was not in therapy. The medication had done its job and I was just trying to get through my teens like everyone else. I would not say I was thriving, but I was surviving. I had the best friends, I felt like I was finding my place at school even though my grades still sucked. 

Then we had to sell the only home I had even known and we moved not only to a new home, but a completely new country. How did that go? Tune in next time! 

With gratitude,

Louisa Sherlock