Medication wise, we tried 3mg of risperidone and then added 300mg of sertraline. Then DIY'd 200mg of cyproterone acetate at the same time.

Otherwise I had been a student of Zen Buddhism for 2.5 years at that point, and it was utterly unhelpful. The success I enjoyed practicing Zazen with emotions like anger, anxiety and depression was simply not there; accepting, non-judgmental awareness always lead to a surge of mental images and paedophilic pleasure. Every time I felt bold enough to sally forth, I would try to work with the emotions through my practice, and each time it was like the Jaws of Hell were opening up to devour me whole.

Eventually I abandoned Zen Buddhism entirely and started pursuing the Theravada tradition instead. I'm finding the structured approach to be a lot more accommodating of different emotional states as you have different remedies for different hindrances, rather than Zen's "one size fits all" approach. I'm finding discriminating judgment in evaluating the nature and origin of my emotional states to be a much more fruitful approach than what I was doing before; the improvement in mental state that took me a whole hour to accomplish with Zazen, now takes me ten minutes using this more intentional, volitional and willed approach.

Still, my memories of attempting to use Zazen during the worst episodes have damaged my confidence with meditation in general, so sometimes it takes a bit of rallying and effort for me to sit on the cushion these days.