Hello everyone. I'm not sure where to start with this so I'll give a little background info. I was diagnosed with social anxiety just over 10 years ago and was put on Paxil, which I took for 7 years. It definitely helped, but after that amount of time, I wanted to conquer the problem myself. I've been completely off medication for 2.5 years now. I had felt at that time that I had a large enough network of friends to lean on, that I could finally get past my anxiety and move on with life. I felt strong enough to do it.

Spring/Summer 08 was horrible for me. All my friends had left (moved, went to college, just quit talking to me, etc), and there were some issues going on with school that really took its toll on me. I completely shut myself off from the world except to go to work. I hated every minute of it, and just wanted school to start back up so that I had friends again, people to interact with, something to do to occupy my time. I was fine through the school year. Last May rolled around and again, I fell back into depression. I ended up losing a job because of it, and I was no longer eligible for my other job once I graduated (college workstudy position), so I had another job lined up where I could "start fresh". I spent the summer either working or at home with nothing to do again, and hated every minute of it. One of the reasons summer beats me up like it does is the neighborhood kids. They don't know when to stop being annoying or when to go home, and think its funny when I tell them its time to leave or that they are bothering me. The problem there is that they are family, so I can't really stop them from coming to my house.

I enrolled at another college in Fall 09 (I'm still enrolled) and that helped with the depression again. However, when I went home for winter break, I noticed that the break from my family made the reaction to them worse. I only go home about once a month because I dread it so much. I'll be ok until I see them walk outside to come over to my house and then I'll get an instant headache, I can feel my blood pressure rise and I get extremely irritable and defensive for the rest of the day. I can feel the anger boiling in me like I'm about ready to explode (which is very uncharacteristic of me, I'm almost always a very calm person in regards to things that make me mad). I spent all of winter break in that constant state of anxiety/depression/whatever it is. I couldn't wait to go back to college. Since I got back this semester, I've been fine in that regard. However, I'm starting to notice that I have good days and bad days. The weekends tend to be my bad days because I don't have class, don't have a job, and everyone goes home, leaving me here by myself. I could just as easily go home, but that would be even worse. When I'm here by myself on the weekends I get pretty depressed and often cry (I'm not usually a crier, even when I'm upset).

I recently told my boyfriend about the whole situation (we've been together a couple of months, and it takes me awhile to open up about this sort of stuff). He didn't really understand what the problem was at first, why I would get so angry at the kids in my family (they are my cousins) so easily. I told him about the anxiety/possible depression and tried explaining what it was like, but he didn't really understand at first. He would ask different things about it like he was honestly trying to understand it all. At first, he kept asking me if it was anything he did or if it was his fault, and I'd constantly tell him no. About a week later, he stopped asking questions about it, but had started complaining of similar feelings of loneliness, depression, and anxiety about things in his life. I felt as if he was trying to mimic my problems and downplay them as if they were no big deal and that I needed to get over it. I'm not sure if that was what was really happening or not though. I mentioned going to the doctors about it and he couldn't figure out why I'd go to the doctor because I was "unhappy". I explained it to him and when I mentioned medication he instantly said "no, I don't want you taking medication for it. It screws with your libido." - REALLY? I actually find the courage to tell you about this and that's the only thing you are concerned about!? That made me seriously question the relationship. He apologized, but I still don't feel like I can discuss the problem with him anymore, which makes the depression/anxiety worse.

I set up an appointment with my doctor to see what she thinks would be the best option (medication again, psychotherapy, etc), and I plan on laying out all the issues with her and discussing the options, so I've made a list of the things that I'd like to address. I'd like to stay away from the medication because I believe that the problems aren't all chemical and I would like to try and fix them instead of covering them up. I'm aware that most of the problems relate back to my social anxiety diagnosis, but I still feel like that's not the core issue, that there is something underneath that which is causing the social anxiety. I want to address the problem before summer hits so that hopefully it isn't so rough of a time. I think that if I had one person that I felt close to that I felt I could trust, I would have an easier time with it, but I tend to distance myself from people. So, I get to wait here, semi-alone, until my doc appointment in a little over a week. I know I can do it, I'm just impatient. Thanks for listening to my long rant