My 18 year old daughter just graduated from high school. As we sat and discussed all of the plans for the weekend something jumped out at me: the anxiety she had been dealing with through her teen years was not getting better, and the impact on her day-to-day functioning was going to get worse.
I have been noticing symptoms of anxiety in her for years, and spoke openly with her about options. However, as someone who spent years working with adolescents with serious emotional problems, I was leery to start her on medications before she became an adult. I wondered about therapy options, but because the impact on her functioning was minimal I decided to monitor and keep open lines of communication with her.
But things have changed. In high school she was able to deal with her social anxiety by hanging around a limited number of kids in her band. She is very sociable with them and had an active social schedule, so it seemed she had developed some good coping skills. Now that there is no more band she no longer has that “built-in” peer group, so as she heads to college her anxiety is seeping through all of her preparations. Even worse, she is so scared to interview for a job she will only fill out online applications and never does any follow-up.
These are just two simple examples of how manageable anxiety levels can become unmanageable. In her case the list goes on to include phobias that we can no longer protect her from, and perseveration about “worst-case-scenarios” that we can no longer promise won’t occur.
So during a routine doctor visit we discussed the issues with her primary care physician. The question about taking pills versus getting therapy FIRST is always a challenge for me. With therapy, there is a chance you will never need meds, but with the right medication in your system you can progress in therapy more than without. So it was time to cross that bridge.
My daughter decided to try medications first, and I was supportive. Her anxiety is high enough that she did not want to speak with a therapist about anything, so it seemed logical for her to choose this route (even speaking to her doctor about it was a chore). As she made the decision I thought maybe she would get to the point she would discuss her anxiety with a therapist if she got some of her automatic responses turned down a bit.
So why tell this very personal story that’s not even mine? It’s because I wonder how many kids like her there are out there. Those who have enough skills to compensate for their anxiety but don’t really get better; those who “get by” until what they need to do day-to-day becomes bigger than what they can adapt to; those who put on a good show.
And I think about all of those people who think medications are the “easy” way out; those who think you are weak if you take them; those who believe that medications are not the answer.
I think about all of these people because I think it is important to get the word out: medications can be the best thing for certain people in certain situations, regardless of what others believe is “right”. For many types of Anxiety, meds are OK.