Hmmm.. having been on an SSRI (at the time I was depressed) and suffering from a mild to middling social anxiety disorder (which stems from a chronic childhood one which lessened as I reached my mid 20's), for me SSRI's made me feel indestructible and fearless. But they also made me feel like I had no emotions at all and removed sexual desire and affected pleasure, so I stopped taking them and instead dealt with the causes of my depression. I still get bouts, but I have a mechanism in place to handle the symptoms and they mostly dissipate. That coupled with an ability to separate/compartmentalise personal and work life (as in, they just don't cross over in my mind), a lot of the stress I feel is only in the parts of my day when I am in the section of my life that I'm having issues with.
The human brain is wonderful.
So in short - I don't think I fully believe what they have found. I think the problem is that the extra Serotonin papers over the cracks well enough to work for most people. So, maybe my experience is just due to the fact it made me relax and that was the reason for my issues in the first place? Who know, I'm not a doctor. All I know is that more Serotonin felt better than less at the time.
Not OP, but the biggest thing my therapist recommended me was practicing mindfulness through meditation. The idea is that it makes it easier to fall back in that same mental state when suffering everyday anxiety.
Another thing she recommended which I just started doing was exercising regularly. I just started lifting a few weeks ago with a friend at the gym, and already its had a huge boost on my confidence levels.
Sorry if you've heard these before, but they do help a ton, trust me.
I started exercising and it gave me a huge confidence boost that further lead to being attracted by girls. After a year though I got used to lifting weights and I wasn't progressing as I wanted to be so that didn't help. But I am sure if you get shredded you will be cured.
There are truly a lot of reasons why exercise contributes to good mental health. One of them is that it helps produce the correct balance of hormones in your system, which in turn also impact the correct balance of neurotransmitters. It's very easy, especially for us coders, to forget that we're sitting all day. Sitting all day is far from natural and has a tremendous amount of health impact. Exercise is extremely beneficial.
For me, it's a lot of accepting what I can change and putting things I can't in to perspective. Treating others as I'd like to be treated. And really, trying to find peace without creating conflict.
Think of it as a form of meditation, without the sitting and relaxing part. It is hard to explain because there are many layers to the technique, but keeping different aspects of your life in isolation is another important factor.
Bad day at work? When you walk out of your office, throw it away. Argument with your partner? When you leave your house, don't dwell on it. Stop beating yourself up about things... materialism isn't jut about physical objects, it's also about your environment. If you feel self entitled, you feel like things conspire against you more frequently. Accept that you're no better than anyone else, learn to love the incomprehensible..
There's no magic fix. Accept that. Drugs can mask your symptoms, but they can't fix the underlying problem if your attitude towards life doesn't also change.
This is all pretty vague I know, but without trying to sound like psychobabble - take what you can from my suggestions and reject what you doesn't work. And never let anyone tell you you're cured or still ill... you're cured when you feel cured. You will relapse, but if you fall back to your mecanism to survive all should fall back in to place.
Not OP, but here's my story: I did not enjoy being on any SSRI or NRI so all my work has to be behavior. In general, all the approaches that have worked for me when it comes to changing behavior follows a pattern of:
Perceive -> accept -> insight. This is in the context of a reaction to a stimulus.
1. Perceive the feeling and its reaction. First step is actually recognizing that I feel something and that I have a reaction to it. When something makes me anxious, I have a deeply uncomfortable physical reaction that starts in my diaphragm and radiates outwards. It's a cold, empty, hollow feeling tinged with fear. Before I started being aware of my reactions, I'd feel something and it might only be "bad" or "good." Focusing specifically on the reaction has allowed me to identify physical responses to feelings, which has helped me identify the feeling. This was a long and hard (but fulfilling) process for me which by its nature was very fraught - to practice this, I had to feel negative emotions. But with deliberate practice, and deliberate probing, I started to identify patterns and was able to 'map' reactions to the stimuli that produced them.
2. Accept the reaction. I used to spend a lot of energy avoiding the "bad" and increasing the good. An obvious lack of confidence in my own ability to deal with emotions. It's not possible to avoid "bad" emotions; you're going to feel them. Much better to learn how to accept them so they don't kill your entire day. I like the analogy of living in a city where it rains: It's going to rain whether I want it to or not. I can spend all my time indoors not getting wet and also not experiencing anything. I can try to be a badass and walk around without an umbrella and get soaked; now I don't ever have to check the weather and I don't need to invest in rain gear, but whether I get soaked or not is completely at the mercy of some other force. The ideal way is to accept the rain, put on a raincoat, and go about my day. In this case, the rain coat is the ability to accept a reaction to a stimulus, accept that it might have been negative, then let it pass.
3. Insight. For me, this is all about why I felt a certain way, what underlying values were being stressed for me that caused me to react. It's also about preparing myself to feel those emotions again, and trying to react better the next time. I do a lot of visualizing and projecting here. I try to think of someone, be it a real person or a character, who reacts the way I'd like to react. I imagine the stimulus that upset me, then try to picture myself reacting like they would.
I hope this is helpful. It's a high level, general way to change your behavior. I've done a lot of work with therapists and life coaches to suss this out. If you're on the fence at all about getting help, do it. Easily one of the best decisions I've ever made. At the very least, a book called the Power of Habit by Charles Duhig (kind of pop-sciency, but insightful) might be worth reading.
Also, as other people have suggested: Exercise, but the one most people forget: Sleep. When I start prioritizing 7 - 7.5 hours a night (can't really sleep longer) my mood drastically improves. Getting a good night's sleep is probably the biggest bang for your buck, by a long long margin in the mental health department. If you are getting sleep, exercise is next. When I lift weights 3x a week, I have more energy, I sleep better, my mental reflexes are sharp (I don't feel foggy or hazy).
Yep: being able to tell the difference between feeling, perception and will is essential to my life.
And acceptance: that is crucial as well. This is the fact: "I feel bad. OK, now what was I about to do with my classes today?" (This is a very simplified figure obviously).
Al lot of both really. Also, realising that you are generally amplifying most situations through a self destructive filter and trying as much as possible to be selfless and calm in most situations. This all helps.
I've had a similar experience. Taking SSRIs (Sertraline, initially 50mg/daily, now 100mg/daily) for social phobia and depression. They definitely helped increase my baseline for positive feelings (i.e., I don't spend as many days curled up in bed feeling hopeless), but it's true that it brings down other aspects of life. Decreased sexual function, loss of emotion in other areas, stuff like that.
I wonder whether serotonin is really the magic trick to increasing moods or whether it's just a stop-gap solution that works well enough for most.
The human brain is wonderful.
So in short - I don't think I fully believe what they have found. I think the problem is that the extra Serotonin papers over the cracks well enough to work for most people. So, maybe my experience is just due to the fact it made me relax and that was the reason for my issues in the first place? Who know, I'm not a doctor. All I know is that more Serotonin felt better than less at the time.