Soon after I began taking the antidepressant sertraline, I noticed that I was unable to cry. Emotional blunting can be a common side effect of sertraline and other antidepressant medication. In this video, I talk about why I stopped taking sertraline and the withdrawal symptoms I experienced as well as what I wished I had done differently in withdrawing from sertraline.
Hey folks it’s finn today i want to talk about antidepressant medication specifically the side effect of emotional blunting or numbing on certain antidepressants now if you follow my friday the installment series you will see that’s not that long ago i stopped my antidepressant medication and i stopped it just after my mom had died which i know so a lot of people
Might not sound like the best idea it wouldn’t be entirely wrong but let me tell you why i stopped it i was only put on sertraline not that long ago in october 2018 if you remember back then i’d move to respawn mum was very poorly it was understandable what the my mental health had got worse my anxiety was higher my depression was higher all of the above but i
Know my mental her very well and i knew there was something else going wrong despite that i kept going the doctor i kept being off and they changed my medication from citalopram to sertraline and then every time i when i said look i’m not well that something’s not right they just put my sertraline up and then in the following may 2019 seven months after being on
Sertraline i was diagnosed with an underactive thyroid i told you something wasn’t right now if you remember the time i was pretty cross about this but anyway notice as well around this time that i was having some strange side-effects of the search healing i had a new boyfriend and we were sat one day watching a film and my boyfriend cited crying and he is very
Emotionally quite a lot at films and things like that he gets very passionate and emotional and that’s what i love about him but as i sat there watched him cry i was like a lump of wood nothing was happening and now i used to have problem with crying years ago i could not cry and then i got clean and super in 2010 and i cried everything i cried when a leaf fell
Off a tree cause i’m so beautiful i cried i just it didn’t matter what it was right and it was so amazing to finally have access to my emotions because for years i’ve numbed my emotions i got sober 2010 i know my word my emotions came back they took me a long time to deal with that but being able to cry was incredible it did taper off a little bit when i started
Testosterone i found i stopped crying quite as much whether that just coincided with things selling down or whether that was a testosterone i don’t know but still i could still cry and that was fine whenever i was very passionate i cried so then to suddenly discover all of the normal things that would set me off certain pieces of music certain films nothing absolutely
Nothing no tears whatsoever and i noticed then also that i wasn’t getting any of the highs either i wasn’t feeling anything really in extreme when it came to being really happy all really sad there was so much numbing around that and i hadn’t noticed it and i knew then i needed off those sertraline because i have anxious avoidant personality disorder one of my
Many pleasant diagnoses not vibrating or anything i can’t afford to nun things when i do is a trigger for me because i used to numb it with alcohol drugs self-harm whatever so although i need some antidepressants to keep things on a level when it comes to the fact that they’re numbing me that’s not good for me so i needed to come off for sertraline unfortunately
My thyroid was still up and down so my new gp who thankfully is so much better than the old surgery suggested i didn’t touch anything and just waited until my levels on the leve thyroxine had sorted themselves out and then we look at coming off the search raeleen so i stayed on them with a view to eventually at some point tapering off the things then as you know
In february this year 2019 mum passed away and i couldn’t cry and i know that that’s not uncommon with grief but i knew that this was the surgery aim because it’s been doing it how yeah so i knew it was the search lane and this is why i made the decision to come off in what might seem the most ridiculous time in the world to come off i just want to say by the
Way there is nothing wrong with antidepressant medication it’s just about working out which one is right for you with most medications you’re gonna have a side effect but if the benefits outweigh those side effects it’s fine and i’ve had medication for years on and off because if you’re very anxious or really depressed and suicidal you can’t possibly work on your
Mental health so although medication should never be used in place of working on yourself of doing that emotional work they can help you to do it they can lift you enough so you can then work on the stuff you need to work on and that’s the case with me i know when i need meds to lift me up enough to work on myself if i’m too low i can’t even do my own normal self
Care and things spiral is having that little bit of medication for me helps and there is nothing wrong with antidepressant medication there anyway when mum died i knew that i could not put off feeling it my dad died when i was 13 i drank on that and i didn’t feel my dad’s death until i got sober in 2010 and even now i’ve not grieved for my dad properly it’s it did
Me a lot of damage having it all stuck inside those years and i knew that it would be the same with mum if i didn’t feel it it was gonna be worse so it’s counterintuitive as it seemed i stopped my antidepressant medication now i did it too quickly i basically tape it off but i’m talking like i taped off for a couple of doses for two or three nights and then the
Rest and them into stopped so i had awful withdrawal symptoms there is something called discontinuation syndrome whereby you get that these brain zaps and it’s just like goes where we know all the time not actually that noise it’s the strange whooshing noise every time you move around it oh it’s horrible you just feel really out of sorts and that was happening but
I could start to feel again so i knew i’d made the right choice where made the mistake was it underestimated the power of grief to make pre-existing mental health conditions downside worse i’ve been basing my mental health and how it was prema and i just thought once the meds come out of my system that i’ll be left with the simple grief i might be dealing with
That but actually what happened was without any medication in my system whatsoever the grief seems to have triggered loads of old personality disorder stuff off lots of impulsive behavior impulsive thoughts i found myself in quite a lot of dangerous situations and i knew that i needed to get back on some kind of medication as long as it wasn’t sertraline so i did
Return to my doctor and i am now back on an extra present among whatever beam and i will do an update vlog about that at some point soon you know i’m on meds and that’s fun that was never the issue the issue was i need you to come off the search lean to feel now fell if if hindsight i really could have gone straight on to a new med and then weaned those other ones
Off but i didn’t think about that you see i thought my only options were to cover fit really slowly and then the grief of mum would be happening like a couple of months time away which was no good for me or stay on them and the grief would have just never happened and i couldn’t have those two options i haven’t really considered that there was this third option
Of actually swapping to something else and as i say that’s because i’ve underestimated just how much grief really plays where the messes with existing mental health issues so yeah i stand by my decision to come off search lane because that inability to cries or for it’s not just me i had no idea this side effects existed until i googled it you know it’s not just
Certainly not so other medications do it as well for most of the googling i found it did seem to be quite highly linked to search raeleen so i don’t know that it’s definitely the case but you know this was something i did not know existed and i feel better there at my system i still don’t think i’m in touch with the crying part of me i think there’s still some
Defrosting happening in there from the search linkers they’ll probably take a while for that to get out of my sister and also for my system now to adapt to the new medication as well but you know i just want to catch you up where we were where we are that no i do not think the medication is a bad thing whatsoever and yes i stand by my decision to come off my
Search lane but yes i put my hands up and i admit that it could have been done much better than i did it but i probably wasn’t thinking straight as i should have been so my advice is if you’re thinking about coming off your medication you are right you know you more than anyone else does but visit your gp because your gp may be able to think of something that you
Hadn’t thought of it i approached my gp and said look this is where i need to stop them she’s really understanding she wouldn’t say absolutely if and i say we were thinking but how about we try this and i could have gone oh i hadn’t thought about that thank you so there you go learn by my mistakes you want to come off from speak to your doctor first thin says so
Hope that cleared things up if you have any questions please do pop them in the comment box below where you can visit my website and contact me there if you don’t like my videos you want to see more please do hit the subscribe button i love it when people subscribe and join our wonderful finn fam thank you so much for watching everybody take care of yourselves see you soon you
Transcribed from video
My Experience of Sertraline & Emotional Blunting By FinnTheInfinncible (Finlay Games)
