A MEDICAL SOLUTION TO A NON-MEDICAL PROBLEM...

Let’s be absolutely clear here. I’m well aware there are people alive today who simply wouldn’t be alive right now if they hadn’t received the right anti-anxiety medication at the right time.

I’m not knocking meds wholesale, and I’m aware that psychiatrists know their stuff and do some great work to help people.

However, sometimes we get so lost in the search for a fast and effective solution that we miss the point of the medication.

Medication doesn’t solve a psychological or emotional issue. It just gives us (hopefully) some respite from the symptoms.

To fully get control of our anxiety response we still have to do the emotional work to stop that part of our mind from attempting to fire the unpleasant, excessive response.

It’s like the man who suffers from erectile dysfunction...he might be able to take a blue pill to make his body work the way he wants it to, but if the cause is a psychological one, unless that is addressed and the necessary patterns of thought updated then he will always NEED to take a blue pill.

The reasons why we feel a certain way don’t change by taking a pill, and if the only reason we feel better is because we have those pills than we might expect to foster a need for them.

If we suddenly realise we have forgotten to take our meds today we might feel anxious about that, causing the very response we are trying to move away from.
If we go long enough without excessive anxiety we might contemplate phasing out the meds...and that thought causes anxiety.

The thing we might refer to as an anxiety disorder is not a medical ailment. It’s an emotional issue that is always best dealt with on an emotional level.

The good news is that this can make recovery much simpler then it would otherwise be if, on top of all the things we are concerned about, we now have to manage our exit strategy from a drug dependency.

You are stronger than you realise.
The way you feel now is temporary.
You will never lose the ability to get control of you.