Should I Take Medication for My Anxiety?
When I meet with a new client for the first time, they often share that they have been struggling with anxiety for a long time. Often, it has gotten to the point where they don’t know how to cope by themselves anymore. Their ability to function well at work or at home may be suffering and they’re looking for support via online counseling to deal with their anxiety. While they are hopeful that working in therapy can decrease their symptoms of anxiety, they are quick to say, “I need help, but I do not want to take medication for my anxiety.”
I’m always just as quick to remind clients that as a licensed clinical social worker, I cannot prescribe medication.
Instead, my job is to help them identify their anxiety triggers and learn coping strategies. That said, I will also ask why they would rather not take medication for their anxiety and I usually get a response like:
“I don’t like medication.”
“If I take medication for anxiety, that means there is something wrong with me.”
“I want to fix this myself.”
I believe it is important for every woman to make this decision for herself and choose whether or not taking medication for anxiety is the right choice for her. I too often see people making the decision to avoid medication based on poor information.
Anxiety Treatment and Medication Together Can Help Treat Your Anxiety
Medication to treat mental health conditions often gets a bad reputation. A friend will share that they took medication to treat their postpartum anxiety and had a bad experience with the meds their doctor prescribed, and that experience will color someone else’s decision about medication to treat their own postpartum anxiety. However, there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to anxiety medication. What works for one person may not work for another. So, it’s important to understand why medication may be appropriate to treat your anxiety, and how it might be able to help you.
I am a big advocate of medication to treat anxiety coupled with talk therapy.
Medication can help treat symptoms of anxiety, like intrusive thoughts, rapid heart rate, and excessive worry. Anxiety treatment helps to then dig deeper to heal the underlying wounds. Medication without therapy to treat anxiety is like slapping a bandage over a deep cut. The bleeding at the surface may stop, but underneath, the wound may be infected and needs to be cleaned out so it can heal from within. If you just treat the surface bleeding (i.e., just medication) without digging in to clean out the underlying wound (i.e., therapy), then the pain and infection will continue to fester and grow.
When Is It Time To Consider Using Medication To Treat Anxiety?
If you’ve been trying to cope with anxiety on your own and haven’t found any relief from the symptoms, it may be worth exploring and possibly taking medication. In anxiety treatment, I teach my clients coping skills and tools to manage their anxiety; these strategies might include tapping, deep breathing, and grounding. When a client shares that they have been practicing these skills without getting much relief from their symptoms of anxiety, then it is probably time to discuss exploring medication options.
I tend to describe the need for medication in this way:
If your threshold for a panic attack is a 10, but you are constantly running at an 8 or 9, it doesn’t take much to trigger that panic attack, and your coping skills may not be as effective. What medication can do is lower your baseline to maybe a 5 or a 6, so that if your anxiety begins to grow in the moment, your coping skills have space to begin working before you reach panic attack level. It is a way to give your body breathing room to cope with the anxiety.
If you are at the point where your coping skills are not helping your overall anxiety, it is worth talking to your doctor about medication to assist you in feeling better. But it is important to know that if you do take medication, it does not mean there is something wrong with you. Taking medication to treat anxiety is a way to help balance your body in such a way that gives you the mental and emotional space to cope with the stressors contributing to your anxiety.
Finding the Right Balance of Support
If you find that you are struggling to quiet your racing mind, easily triggered by situations that exacerbate your anxiety, or finding it hard to utilize your coping skills, talk with your doctor about which medications might help provide relief from symptoms of anxiety. And if you aren’t already talking with an online therapist about your anxiety, I recommend finding a counselor to help support you in learning how to cope with your anxiety in combination with taking medication.
Begin Online Therapy for Women with Anxiety in Louisiana, Hawaii, and Colorado:
If you are a woman struggling with anxiety, now you don’t have to manage it alone. I offer support to help women overcome the symptoms of anxiety by providing online therapy for women with anxiety. To get started, please follow these steps:
Schedule your free, 15-minute consultation via phone or video call
Learn more about the ways I can help you in therapy
Begin the journey to finding relief from your anxiety so you can enjoy your life again!
Other Online Therapy Services Provided By Ashley Comegys, LCSW
I provide a variety of online therapy services to women living in Louisiana, Hawaii, and Colorado. I specialize in providing online therapy for women with anxiety. But, I also offer a variety of other mental health services online including online individual counseling for women, online postpartum anxiety and online postpartum depression treatment, online postpartum support, online depression treatment, online grief counseling for women, online therapy for military spouses, and online trauma treatment for women.
Please note, due to the laws that regulate my license as an LCSW, I am only able to provide online mental health services to residents of the states of Louisiana, Hawaii, and Colorado.