Anxiety about psychiatrist/meds

[anpick]

So I've been on meds for the past 3 years for depression and recently they seem to have stopped working and I've also been getting super anxious... I had a panic attack in the middle of one of my exams 😫 Tomorrow I'm going to see a psychiatrist but Im super anxious and don't really want to come off my meds before having to go on something else and have it get worse before it gets better. I don't know why I'm so nervous to go to the psychiatrist though, I know all they want to do is help...
I'm super new to this but thought I'd give it a go, any advice would be greatly appreciated

[Ben-RO]

Hey @anpick! I seem to be chasing your posts all over the forums today, haha.

It's pretty reasonable to be nervous about seeing a psychiatrist, is it perhaps partly a worry about what's at stake here?

I guess there's two things to think through here - at least from my angle. Thing number one is getting through the apppointment today. If you're like me and other people living with anxiety, then it can be pretty easy to get caught up in thoughts when something feels like a big deal. Then all of a sudden we're swept away! Queue panic attack.

So, i want you to try something for me, and that's to distract or redirect yourself away from the thinking spiral. Is there something you can do that completely takes you away from the outside world? Like you start doing it and think three minutes has passed, but when you look at the clock it's been like 2 hours? DO THAT THING!

The other thing to do is to think a bit more about what could happen, but we can talk about that after your appointment, because right now, we just don't know for sure what the options are!

Hope that helps, let me know if you wanna chat a bit more and sorry it took so long to reply!

[j95]

hey @anpick how was your appointment

[anpick]

@j95 it was better than I thought it would be, but I'm still worried that the end result won't be too helpful :/ I guess I'll have to wait and see though because I'm increasing my meds and they'll take a while to work