As my depression improved, the frequency in which I needed to go to therapy decreased. I went from weekly visits, to every other week, and finally settling into a pattern of monthly appointments. Both suicidal thoughts and desires to self-harm completely disappeared from my mind and I actually enjoyed living life.
After somewhere between twelve to eighteen months of therapy, antidepressants, and regular exercise, Dr. S, my pediatrician, and I all felt that I had resumed my normal level of functioning. Because of this, my parents asked if I could get off of my medication. I remember being so taken aback by their desire to get off of it so quickly, but I agreed to try.
Just as we had to taper on to the pills, I had to slowly decrease as I got off of them. To help mitigate any sort of unwanted negative effects from coming off of the pills, I went back to weekly therapy visits. To be honest, getting off of them was an uneventful process and I luckily avoided any panic attacks.
Eventually, I was completely off of the meds and stopped going to therapy. I never experienced another depressive episode for the rest of high school and college and genuinely enjoyed life.
One final thing to note from this section of my life – I rarely talked about this timeframe to anyone. I could count on one hand how many people knew about this experience. My own best friend never even knew about it.
I decided to keep this as a secret and never planned on going public with my struggles. However, life had other plans for me…
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