Medication or Meditation?

Alica

Hello everyone,

I have suffered from trauma-related anxiety for more than 10 years now.
I completed a course of therapy, which did help a great deal, but still, after all these years and therapy, anxiety and sleep issues are still inhibiting me in everyday life and in pursuing my goals in life.
I feel something dramatic needs to change in my brain in order for me to be able to go about life as I would wish.
For this reason, I am wondering if medication could be an option.
Does anyone have experience, positive or negative, with anxiety/sleep medication? Would you recommend it or not?
Another idea I have had is giving meditation a much bigger focus in life, in order to achieve a constant level of calmness.
I do meditate, but I feel in order to be calm like a normal person, I would need much more practice. Possibly even a Buddhist teacher.
Has anyone thought about it or has experience with it?
Thank you for your help!

waldeinsamkeit

Hi Alica,

I'm so sorry you've been struggling with this for so long. I think I posted in your other thread too, I hope you don't mind. Since I have some experience taking medication for anxiety purposes I figured I could share more details. I mentioned Lexapro before. It made me a bit tired and at first, I was pretty jittery, but once it kicked in I had a kind of brain fog-like feeling where I was calm but at the same time I felt like my head was in the clouds and I was on cruise control. I'm not sure if that makes any sense so sorry if it's a horrible description! It wasn't necessarily bad, because my anxiety level definitely lowered, and I slept through the nights, but as a result, I felt a bit too numb during the day for my personal liking so I decided to go off of it. Though, if I ever got desperate in the future I would consider going back on it. I also gave Effexor a try, but I had an unpleasant experience with that one from start to finish and it did not relieve my symptoms, so I wouldn't recommend that one personally. But as I said in my other post, people don't always share the same experience with these medications so what is terrible for one person might be a lifesaver for another. At the end of the day, I think if you want to try medication it is worth giving it a shot! Anything that can potentially improve your quality of life is worth a chance in my eyes.

Recently I have tried meditation too. I had tried them in the past but I guess I never really fully committed or believed they could be truly useful. These days I use an app called Insight Timer. I randomly stumbled upon it one day. They have a bunch of meditations, calming sounds, and music that you can listen to for free. I'm not very good at meditating, but I play one meditation each night to help myself fall asleep and they have helped me improve my sleep so much. I usually fall asleep before the meditation even finishes. I try to do as much of it as I can until I drift off. I also do a shorter one in the morning to help me start my day off on a calm note. I think it has helped me even if only a little. I hope you can find some relief soon and that others will have some more helpful advice for you to help you in your next steps.

Alica

Hi Waldeinsamkeit!

Thank you for your kind words. I am so glad I found this forum again, I was on the old PsychCentral forum, but I believed for some time that it was deleted. It is great that there is a new version for people to support each other.
Anyway, it is interesting what you wrote about your experience with medication and meditation. My former therapist was pretty much against medication. Having read now more about it from you and from others I sort of understand why. It seems like the medications really have a profound effect on the brain and it is not really possible to tell if it will be a positive one or not before trying them.
I will think more about it.
I too have made great experiences with meditation. I started at a point when I was truly desperate and really willing to try anything.
In my worst times, I meditated 45 minutes twice a day and it definitely had positive effects in that it made me calmer and also gave me insights into what was actually going on in my mind.
At this point, I was enrolled in a day clinic program for psychosomatic illnesses. This program did not introduce meditation, but because I was pretty unhappy with quite a few things about this day clinic, meditation really helped me deal with being in this program.
At some point I stopped, feeling if I was really and truly well, I would not need to meditate that much, and it did take up a lot of my time.
Thinking about it, maybe, investing more time in it, might be better though than going on medication. I will give it more thought.
Thank you for the tip about the app, I will check it out.
If you don't know them already, I can really recommend meditations by "the honest guys". You can find them on youtube for free. I feel these are very good meditations with calming effects and nice stories.

waldeinsamkeit

I'm so glad you found your way back here for the new version of the forums! Having a community is really comforting.

I think that's the trickiest part about these kinds of medications. There is really no predicting what can happen.

I'm glad that meditation was so helpful to you in the past and that you are thinking of picking it up again. When I'm short on time I try to do some mini ones around 10 mins or even 5 mins and then a longer one later if I can squeeze it in. You're right though it is definitely a commitment. I haven't heard of "the honest guys" before so I will definitely check them out. I like to listen to a variety of meditations so I'm grateful to try something new. Thank you so much!

Deejay14

I think a steady effort to meditate is worth it. After I mediate I feel much more calm and the more I mediate the better my PTSD and anxiety is. Go e it a concerted effort. It has been helpful to me!

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True happiness comes not when we get rid of all our problems, but when we change our relationship to them, when we see our problems as a potential source of awakening, opportunities to practice patience and learn.~Richard Carlson