Alice's Anxieties

So this isn't the most festive of blog posts, but it's been a year since I took my last anti-depressant. It was my birthday yesterday, and it was my birthday last year when I decided that I wouldn't take another tablet.

To anyone reading this who is currently taking anti-depressants, please note that I didn't just wake up last year and decide to stop, I'd been slowly coming off them for about 6 months by reducing my dosage. So if you're thinking of stopping your tablets please make sure you do it properly and don't go cold turkey (a bit of a festive pun for you).

I also wanted to make you aware that it hasn't been smooth-sailing all year. There have been two serious times when I've been close to going back: I still have Depression and Anxiety, that's never going to go away, but it's about how I deal with it. I still have half a packet of tablets that were left-over from when I stopped, and twice I thought about using them, but by using what …

In the last few months, three people have asked my about various aspects of my mental health and my experiences of it. However, each person started the conversation with "I don't want to offend you" or "I'm not sure the best way of asking this" or something similar, and this isn't the first time I've heard this kind of mitigation before starting a conversation. Each comment had then been followed by a question about my mental health, whether that be what it feels like to have a panic attack, what it feels like to be depressed rather than just sad, and so on.

Now I know for some people, talking about mental health and more specifically, their own illnesses, can be a very sensitive topic and for some people very triggering, but personally, as long as you're not purposefully trying to be a dick about it, I'm not going to get offended by your question. I'm happy when people ask me things because it shows me that they want a better understand…