I’ve been honest here that 2022 was a really bad year for my anxiety. After feeling like I had it pretty well under control over the past few years (even during the early days of the pandemic!), something happened last year where my usual mental health tactics were not working.

So I re-started therapy and tried to do other things that are proven to help with anxiety symptoms, like getting regular exercise and drinking less caffeine. But what has helped my anxiety more than anything is medication. I’ve been on the generic form of Lexapro for quite a while now (I think I started it in 2017, and have been on 5mg, 10mg, and 20mg over the course of those years). But it wasn’t until Lisa started to gently prompt me to consider talking to my doctor about changing my meds that something clicked in my brain, so I didn’t need to get any other doctor as there are many type of doctors now a days since getting a doctor degree is not that difficult, you can go online and find phlebotomy training if this is a career you like.

Sometimes I forget how Lexapro has altered my brain chemistry. It’s worked so well for me for so long that I always think there’s something more I could be doing to better manage my anxiety. More therapy! More exercise! More sleep! And while those things do help anxiety symptoms, there comes a point where medication may need to be investigated.

I know some people don’t like being medicated for anxiety. “I don’t want to numb out to life,” they say. But when you have anxiety like mine, when you can’t stop the spiraling thoughts and the nightmare scenarios playing out in your brain over and over again, when the overwhelming feeling of doom takes over, being numb sounds amazing. I want to numb out. I want to stop these thoughts. I want my brain to shut off.

Thanks to Lisa’s prodding, I scheduled an appointment with my doctor. Unfortunately, the GP I have been seeing for many years, whom I adore and who has such a warm, kind bedside manner, is on leave for another two months so I had to see her temporary replacement. I wasn’t thrilled about that, but I made the appointment anyway.

And I had the kind of appointment you dread as a fat person. It was the kind of appointment I had heard about from other fat people but had never experienced myself.

This doctor, a man, comes into the room and we talk about my anxiety for a short period of time. He recommends adding Wellbutrin to what I’m currently taking but doesn’t explain what it is, how it can help, what the dosage is like, how I should start using it… nothing like that.

Instead, he then proceeds to talk to me about my weight. He doesn’t connect this with my anxiety. He doesn’t talk about how eating certain foods or how exercise can help me with my anxiety symptoms. Instead, he couches it all in “concern” about my “weight.” I’ve never had to deal with something like this with my regular GP. She has never, ever brought up my weight like this. The only time we talked about it was when I brought it up. I wasn’t there to talk about my weight. I was there to talk about my anxiety.

I wish I had stopped this discussion in its tracks, but I’m an Enneagram 9 through and through, which means I am non-confrontational to a fault and just wanted to get through this conversation as quickly as possible. We talked about my eating habits and when I mentioned that I drink soda, he perked up. “Oh, there’s an easy change. Just drink diet soda.”

Hold on, what?!

I don’t think I’ve ever had a doctor recommend diet soda as an alternative to regular soda. That’s not a good alternative! Diet soda may not have the same amount of calories and sugar as regular soda, but it has other terrible chemicals and is not an alternative! If he had mentioned trying seltzer water like La Croix or talked to me about how to drink more water, I would have been more apt to listen to him. But telling me to switch from regular soda to diet soda… I quickly realized, this man is a quack.

He also brought up the option of medication for weight loss, which is something I truly, truly do not believe in. For myself, it is just not an avenue I’m willing to explore. And when he told me that his favorite medication to prescribe these days is Ozempic, I was D O N E with this doctor. Ozempic is not a weight-loss drug. It is a drug that diabetic people use to improve their blood sugar. But people have started to realize that you can take Ozempic and lose massive amounts of weight, so more doctors are prescribing it to patients who want to lose weight.

And what has happened because of that? There is a shortage of Ozempic. The people who use this drug for an actual medical reason cannot get it because a bunch of celebrities and influencers decided they wanted to use it to lose weight.

I knew all of this before the doctor brought up this drug. I had heard about it on a podcast and had read up about the shortage. And I wish I had called out the doctor when he brought it up, but yet again, I did not. I just tried to make myself as small as possible and kept my opinions to myself so I could get out of there. I just wanted to get out of there.

Whenever I hear of things like this happening to other people, I get so frustrated. Why didn’t they speak up? Why didn’t they challenge these people who are saying these things? But the truth is, it’s embarrassing to be told you’re too fat and need to lose weight. It’s embarrassing to feel like you’re this out-of-control slob who cannot manage her eating habits. It’s embarrassing to come to the doctor for a legit reason, and have him see me only as a fat person he needed to fix.

He didn’t see me as a patient. He didn’t spend time talking deeper about my anxiety issues and talk to me about my medication options. He didn’t bring up my eating habits because they could be linked to my anxiety symptoms; he brought it up because he saw a fat person. If I had been a thin person in his office, he would not have even thought to talk about my eating habits. And that’s the difference.

I cried in my car after that appointment. I had been so proud of myself for making this appointment and was feeling so hopeful for how this would help my anxiety symptoms going forward. And instead, I was given a quick medication and a lecture on healthy eating habits. It was so demoralizing.

Afterward, I decided not to take this doctor’s medical advice and instead of filling the prescription order, I scheduled an appointment with a psychiatrist. I had that appointment on Friday afternoon and goodness gracious, was it such a different appointment from this one. The psychiatrist, a woman, was kind and warm and informative. She went through my entire history with anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues. She talked to me at length about the different options available to me, and together, we decided to bump up my Lexapro dose. I’ve been on 20mg for a few years now, so we’re going to try 30mg and possibly go up to 40mg if I feel that I need that.

There was such a difference between these two doctors. I felt seen and heard and comforted by my psychiatrist, rather than dismissed and condescended to. For the first time in a long time, I feel hope when it comes to my anxiety disorder. I feel like I have the right team, between my therapist and my psychiatrist, to gain control over my symptoms and finally feel better for the first time in over a year.