Often, when we already feel somatic symptoms, such as insomnia or tension that persists and cannot be changed on our own, many people’s first choice is to visit a hospital psychiatry department. People go home with their medication in hand and fall into another kind of panic. Everyone has these questions inside: 1. Are there any side effects of the medicine? It’s a medicine with three toxins. No matter what kind of medicine, western or traditional Chinese medicine, it is impossible to be 100% free of any side effects, psychotropic drugs and other drugs as well, there is nothing special. However, the positive effects of psychotropic drugs are a little slower than other drugs, usually after a week or two. In other words, the side effects of the medication come sooner than the positive effects, and you may become constipated, drowsy, etc. before the anxiety and depression effects kick in. This is a normal phenomenon. Don’t worry about it, but if it is really hard to bear after taking it, then find your doctor again and ask him to adjust the dose of the drug or change to another drug. 2. Will I become dependent on the medication I take? For example, if a person has insomnia, the medication can regulate the dopamine and neurotransmitters in that person’s body so that the person can sleep well. But why do you have insomnia? Work stress, interpersonal relationships, changes in family intimacy, our life events and internal states are the root causes of insomnia. If we do not go through counseling to find the root cause of the problem and rely on medication alone, we can only control the symptoms, and when the medication is stopped, the symptoms will come back again and again. This is the reason why many insomnia, anxiety and depression need to take medication for years. It’s not that drugs make people dependent, but that they can’t really cure psychological problems. When we understand the root cause of the problem and change our way of thinking and cognitive patterns, the symptoms that plague us will dissipate with the wind. 3. Should I continue to eat or not? In a real case, a visitor took Zoloft and within three minutes, the whole person became panic attacked and felt like he was going to die. Those who know common sense will know that the drug may still be in the esophagus or just arrived in the stomach. What caused her strong reaction was not the drug, but her own fear. Of course, she had stable psychotherapy and a stable therapeutic relationship with her therapist, and analytically her fear at the time was that if the medication would make her well, the therapist would no longer have to work with her, meaning she would lose her therapist. And attachment problems, lack of stable object relationships, and fear of loss is exactly what her problem was. So how can the subconscious mind, how can the medication be effective? It had to be an attack on the medication to achieve the goal of not losing her therapist. So she panicked. Why did such symptoms occur? The analysis may be that once we take the medication it means we are sick, and very often what we think of as mental, psychological sickness is losing control and going crazy, and once we take the medication we will unconsciously feel as if we are really losing control, really going crazy, really being treated, and yet, we feel we are not there yet, and are very afraid we will get to that point, when we take it and our body is strongly uncomfortable with it. It’s actually trying to express that I’m not that sick, I don’t need to take medicine. This is also a defense. The advice is: take it as prescribed by your doctor. Now in the 21st century, medications have evolved so rapidly that the side effects of psychotropic drugs are much better than they were twenty years ago! These are the original words of a soon to be retired psychiatrist, which I now pass on to you. As long as you go to a regular tertiary care hospital, then feel free to eat as prescribed! It’s just that you can make a choice for yourself and choose whether to take medication alone or combine it with psychotherapy. 4. How long should I take it? Speaking of defense, think of today’s visitor, because of job changes, lower income, his wife’s salary will only be more than his not less, his son is less than a year old, mortgage and car loan to pay, as a man, he seems to have no way to cope with all this, so insomnia, anxiety and depression. He said, a lot of truth I understand, I can afford it all, but now I have insomnia, the body is very bad, not because the pressure of work makes me want to die, but such a physical state makes me very hard to die. In fact, he has already stated his problem, the pressure of life has made him unbearable, (his immediate feeling is unbearable and can be changed through counseling), but he gives himself the requirement that he must go beyond this pressure and bear it all, so that a strong conflict is formed within him, unbearable and must bear. When the two cannot be reconciled, then he loses sleep, has symptoms, and he has a good justification – it’s not that I don’t want to bear it anymore, it’s that I’m not well enough to bear it objectively. In this way, the conflict appears to be resolved! Symptoms are a defense. Very often, the symptoms are protecting us from the inner conflict. Counseling is not working with the symptoms, but with the conflict behind the symptoms. When the conflict is resolved, the symptom loses the need to exist. It is still true that medication can only control the symptoms, so many psychologists often say that you have to take medication for life. A lot of research has been done on medication and psychotherapy, and combining psychotherapy and medication has a longer lasting effect than medication alone. So how long you take it is a difficult question to answer directly. There are also those who take medication and get better, what happened again? The example is that when he sleeps better and his anxiety is reduced by medication, he is better able to work, and the objective environment becomes better and better, and the problem that caused the anxiety and conflict in the first place is solved.