Good morning! I’ve been taking lexapro (5mg/daily) for the last month and it has improved my life thus far. I’m going to preface this by saying that for most of my life, I truly believed that there was something wrong with me and that everyone I cross paths with dislikes me. I was bullied A LOT mostly by other girls and convinced myself that I am an inherently unlikable person that is just annoying and weird.

For some background, I was taking Lexapro for about a couple of weeks or so 3 years ago and I’m not sure why I stopped taking it, I must have been convinced it wasn’t working and I thought self medicating with marijuana was “helping” my really bad anxiety.

This second time around, the first few days were weird and luckily I was not working. I got a weird headache that wasn’t super painful and I was just…not exactly tired but it felt like I was winded and could fall down at any moment lol. On the 4th night that I took this med, I felt a weird numbness in my body,a slightly tingly sensation in my head, and I fell asleep. The next morning I had work, and the thought of it didn’t make me as nervous as it usually does. When I got to work, seeing people wasn’t as scary as it usually was and I even said hello to a few people first. I struck up a convo with a colleague I don’t know and walked out of the convo laughing and knowing that this colleague loves fashion and actually started their own line in their free time 😳

Fast forward one month. I’ve worked at my job for over a year and nobody ever invited me to any after work happy hours. This last month alone I was invited to 2. Seeing people in the hallways doesn’t scare me as much, I’m not really looking at/pulling out my phone anymore to avoid eye contact, and my work bully doesn’t really phase me anymore. People are actually asking for/remembering my name, they are more receptive to my jokes/attempts at building rapport, and now people greet me first. It’s easier to reply to texts—I thought I was just really dumb, but now I can read the room and formulate a response that makes sense and doesn’t weird people out, with minimal effort. I didn’t realize how bad my social anxiety was/is.

I’m able to enjoy work and life in general. I strike up convos with cashiers, it’s easier for me to navigate around people and say excuse me, I find that it’s easier to get out of the car when i arrive at my destination. My relationship with my parents is much better, as the anxiety I’ve developed partially from childhood trauma is slowly affecting me less and less.

I know there’s still a lot of work to do, but I finally feel like I can be myself and I wanted to put my positive experience out there!