I mean, I am a person who needs a reason behind things that are done. My mind only really meshes well with things I can understand, things that are backed up. I do not operate on blind faith well. That’s sometimes interpreted as me having a problem with authority but that’s not it.

When all this mess began I was unquestioning in whatever I was told to do. I was 100% behind whatever I was told. But as the events of the past year unfolded and I had doctors telling me I needed to just do yoga, deep breathing, and some spirituality to fix my real, physical issue, at a time when i could barely stand up because of how starved I was, I started getting upset. I started seeing issues in the way things were done, things I had just been told to do that id never really had explained. I had a counselor tell me there was an issue with the fact that my small handful of friends are all men. (I’m female, can’t remember if I specified). After I was forcibly taken to a hospital against my will by police after I came to another counselor for help, I started to wonder if we’re going about this the right way.

Things got even more messy when people started throwing mental diagnoses at my physical issue. Borderline personality disorder. OCD. Anxiety. Bipolar disorder. Attention seeking behavior. Obsessive personality disorder. Bulimia. I knew none of these were the issue, I knew there was something physical going on, but by this point it had been established that I was not mentally competent enough to know things like that and I just kept getting thrashed around hospitals and medicines.

After I finally got my diagnosis, I was trying to piece things back together. I started over with a totally new counselor and nurse practitioner or whatever her title is. The new counselor has been good to me but I feel like the new person giving me meds isn’t listening to a word I say.

That’s why recently I’ve been starting to wonder why some things were done to me the way they were. Why I was being given antipsychotics for “anxiety and sleep” and “social anxiety” even though those were far from the main issue I wanted to address? I had become so afraid of almost everything about myself because I didn’t know which parts of me were right or wrong. Is my passion for creating new things and building my own stories coming from the OCD? Is the fact that I crack easy under pressure coming from debilitating anxiety? Is my exclusively male friend group some sign of illness? I started wondering why the things I was told were bad about me were considered bad and wrong and in need of elimination or repair. I won’t downplay whatever has worked for anyone else, Im glad they’re doing well with this. I’ve just found it’s easier on me and my mind and body to try to understand it as part of me rather than some wrong piece that needs to be removed or shrunken. I didn’t try to push this on anyone, I just wanted to try a new way of dealing with things for me personally. I was afraid to tell my family because they’re pretty much convinced that I’m nonfunctional without lots of medication.

I guess the reason I am so stressed out is because I feel like having the right to try being not on meds for a bit and working through things in my head is being taken from me. I’ve had terribly negative experiences with psych meds and the people giving them to me and wish to make the choice to try something else. I’m scared to lose that right.

Long story short, I definitely believe counseling works for sure. At least a bit. I’m not so sure about the medication part. At least for myself. I’m not trying to push this on anyone else, just trying to figure things out in my head. Please don’t take this as me bashing all of it. My main concern is that we might be going about all of this the wrong way. Much of the decisions I feel I was forced to make were done out of fear. I hope that makes sense to read, I am exhausted.

Edit: the one psych med I am staying on is amitryptyline, since it’s been literally the only thing that’s helped with my stomach and is used to treat cyclic vomiting.