Happy 2 month anniversary...

We met two months ago. I was nervous. I was excited. I felt a little guilty and a little weak. But I also felt really strong.

Lexapro, 10 mg by mouth every night; today is the two month anniversary of when I took a huge step forward in my mental health journey. In the middle of a global pandemic and about ten months since I had first started therapy, I knew that I was struggling, and I had been throwing around the idea of getting medicine to help me for a long time. The people who loved me would often suggest looking into medicine when they saw me struggling; I would agree with them and then laugh it off, saying, " yeah, I will." Fixing the chemicals in your brain to help make your mental illness easier to manage on a day to day basis was ALWAYS something that I encouraged- I just couldn't ever encourage it towards myself.

It was absolutely fine if anyone I knew (or didn't know!) wanted to get medicine for themselves on their mental health journey to make their lives easier because mental illness shouldn't be stigmatized!! Going to therapy or a psychiatrist and getting prescribed mental health medicine should be just as normal as going to a doctor or getting prescribed antibiotics. Mental health was never a stigma in my head for other people. SO then why was it stigmatized internally in my head?

It took me a long time to recognize and work through the deep-seated stigma in my head that judged me for needing help. Especially when you're like me, asking for help isn't something that a strong, intelligent, and independent person like Eryn Loria does. I was willing to give and suggest help to ANYONE in the blink of the eye, but that's much easier said than done when turn to address yourself.

But I did it. I finally made the jump. Therapy wasn't enough. I was still struggling, and I had spent years struggling to deal with this on my own. Asking for help is one of the bravest and strongest things I think you can do in this world. It took me a lot of courage and even more encouragement to finally ask for help. I couldn't have done it without the incredible friends and family who shared their own experiences with me or showed me genuine compassion and made sure that I knew I wasn't weak. I've struggled with the internal battle of being too afraid to ask for the help that I needed for years. Without people around be continually trying to get what was best for me, I would've continued to push myself away from the notion of showing myself compassion when I deserved help.

Of course, there was and still is a part of me that feels like asking for help makes me a failure; this part of me thinks not being able to solve this ' problem ' on my own means I did something wrong. I am sure that I will have to spend years erasing my own internalized stigmas that I created in my head around mental illness and specifically medication. But that's part of my reason for writing such a vulnerable post because I can't say "I'm proud of myself "while hiding a part of me that continues to internally reinforce the stigma I have created in my head for years.

But here I am exactly two months later. I've had a lot of "meta anxiety," as my therapist calls it with starting medication (ex. is it gonna change who I am? I don't actually need it I'm dramatic, is it actually working? am I making it worse?). There's a lot of uneasiness that came with it, and of course, two months in, I know this is nowhere near the end of my story, but more of a beginning. And who knows where I'll be in another two months, then six, then twelve, but I do know that at this moment, making the decision to put myself first and get on this medicate was such a brave decision that was exactly what I needed to do for myself at the time. I take so much pride in my decision because our mental health shouldn't just be something we push off to the side until we have time to deal with it. Mental health is health, and there no reason to be ashamed of talking about it.

So two months later, as I take my 61st little white pill tonight, it doesn't really matter if it has to with circumstance, some level of a placebo effect, medicine, therapy, or whatever combination of all of these things, I feel better than I did two months ago. We will always have good days and bad days, hard months, and easy months; there is not one day I have lived with a generalized anxiety disorder that has been exactly the same as another day. I don't know where my anxiety's baseline will be tomorrow or next Tuesday, but I know that every day I can count on a little extra strength in my medicine no matter where I find myself that day- and that doesn't make me weak or a failure.

Here's to another two months of growth and being kinder to ourselves. Cheers.

- E