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Does anxiety mask your social faux pas/bluntness?

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Verdandi
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01 Feb 2013, 10:24 pm

whirlingmind wrote:
Verdandi wrote:
whirlingmind wrote:
I have found since taking anti-anxiety meds that my tendency to be blunt, make social faux pas and go too far with teasing is resurfacing. I had thought I'd learned over the years to hold a lot of it in, but now I wonder whether it was the untreated anxiety covering it over and making me too anxious to express my natural self (possibly through the reactions of people when I didn't).

Has anyone else had this?


Yes, this is very similar to what I've experienced on Zoloft, and it has been confirmed by others who knew me before and after I started taking them. I have become more blunt and seem more prone to making mistakes because there's no anxiety filter.


Aha, this is the same medication I'm taking I believe, Sertraline.


That's it. Sertraline HCl.

I was doing some research a month or two ago and came across a statement that indicated sertraline might make people who take it "more autistic" somehow. I found that interesting, but its effect on my anxiety is so good I am hesitant to switch, and the increased bluntness doesn't really bother me.



Verdandi
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01 Feb 2013, 10:30 pm

Tyri0n wrote:
Yes, so don't take social anxiety meds. Here are just a few of the ways they can f**k up your life: They make Aspergers symptoms like flat affect and weird behavior worse. I also gained 40 pounds and started having violent thoughts, so I threw my meds off a bridge and vowed to never go near a psycho therapist again.

FYI, the Connecticut shooter was on SSRI's (a name for typical meds used for both anxiety and depression). I might have been him if I hadn't thrown my meds into the river.


I had a medication cause violent thoughts the first day I titrated up to the full dosage. It was Effexor/venlaxafine, an SNRI.

Zoloft has been extremely pleasant and had minimal side effects. I've also kept my dosage low. I do not care in the least if it makes my muted affect more flat, and I've found that I tend to stim less on it than I did before I started it. The worst thing is sometimes I get breakthrough depression symptoms and when they break through they quickly get bad, but not much worse than it was all the time before.



whirlingmind
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02 Feb 2013, 9:00 am

Tyri0n wrote:
whirlingmind wrote:
I have found since taking anti-anxiety meds that my tendency to be blunt, make social faux pas and go too far with teasing is resurfacing. I had thought I'd learned over the years to hold a lot of it in, but now I wonder whether it was the untreated anxiety covering it over and making me too anxious to express my natural self (possibly through the reactions of people when I didn't).

Has anyone else had this?


Yes, so don't take social anxiety meds. Here are just a few of the ways they can f**k up your life: They make Aspergers symptoms like flat affect and weird behavior worse. I also gained 40 pounds and started having violent thoughts, so I threw my meds off a bridge and vowed to never go near a psycho therapist again.

FYI, the Connecticut shooter was on SSRI's (a name for typical meds used for both anxiety and depression). I might have been him if I hadn't thrown my meds into the river.


I'm not sure you're understanding the same thing. I don't think they have made my traits worse, just returned them to how they were in the past, before I learned through much error (people's negative reactions) to become anxious about socialising. Basically, being anxious by nature, it wasn't too great a leap to become anxious about socialising from those reactions. Having an SSRI to remove the anxiety (which is low dose and doesn't remove it all by any means) seems to have removed that socially learned anxiety and made me how I used to be whilst I was going round putting my foot in it.


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whirlingmind
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02 Feb 2013, 9:04 am

Verdandi wrote:
I was doing some research a month or two ago and came across a statement that indicated sertraline might make people who take it "more autistic" somehow. I found that interesting, but its effect on my anxiety is so good I am hesitant to switch, and the increased bluntness doesn't really bother me.


I'd be interested to read that, do you have a link?


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Verdandi
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02 Feb 2013, 4:43 pm

whirlingmind wrote:
Verdandi wrote:
I was doing some research a month or two ago and came across a statement that indicated sertraline might make people who take it "more autistic" somehow. I found that interesting, but its effect on my anxiety is so good I am hesitant to switch, and the increased bluntness doesn't really bother me.


I'd be interested to read that, do you have a link?


If I can find it again.