# Treat your anxiety first!



## every single night (Nov 9, 2014)

I experienced extremely difficult derealization on and off for 10 months (it never completely went away, but some times were better than others) - I felt like I was in a dream, I had no emotions or reactions towards anything, I didn't recognize my family. I would get upset about having no feelings of love towards my own family, even though I knew I loved them deep down. In October, my derealization became 100% constantly and I felt like I was trapped in a nightmare.

On October 29, I admitted myself to the psychiatric unit because I was having suicidal thoughts. It is November 9 and I am fully recovered.

It is my opinion that the single most important thing I did was *get help for my underlying anxiety*. I have read a lot of posts here where people shrug this off because they say they don't have any anxiety, that this was only triggered by a period of anxiety. That's what I thought as well. I had a traumatic experience (health scare) and I thought that I no longer had anxiety because I came out on the other side of tests perfectly healthy. I was wrong. Trauma doesn't just go away because the immediate threat goes away. You can be experiencing clinical anxiety without even feeling how you would normally describe anxious.

I have read a lot here that you shouldn't be on any medications if you want to get rid of derealization. In my opinion, this isn't true. You need to do what you need to do to treat your anxiety. If medications help you, you need to be willing to take medications. If they make things worse for you, then by all means, don't. But I do not believe derealization sufferers should be afraid of medication. After 8 days on Prozac and 2 day on BuSpar, I felt like my old self again. It took a lot of cycling in and out of the DR and I thought I'd never hold onto sanity permanently. Well, I woke up on Monday and everything just started getting better as the day went on, and this time, it didn't go away. The derealization is gone. I am receiving therapy (ACT). I got out of the ward on November 3 and was back to work on November 7.

I don't have some magic list of things to do like other people. My main point is that you need to get help. I have seen a lot of negativity here about medication and doctors. Forget that. Let people help you! No, they don't understand how you feel. They don't understand your symptoms. But I promise, psych doctors know how to treat anxiety.

Maybe "ignoring it" or "confronting it" works for some people. But that's because their anxiety went away. They weren't afraid, regardless of how they got there. You need to find a way to get there, and in my opinion, you shouldn't shy away from working with professionals. That's just my story, and I wanted to add it after seeing so many "get off all medications!" and "doctors know nothing!" posts.


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## dpdrguy (Aug 11, 2015)

Hey thank you for the post - Just wanted to ask, are you still on the medication, or did you taper off it? Thanks -


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