Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi, so my name is Matthew and I have Aspergers but also a few other things going on which I’d like to ask about as I’m not sure how serious they are. So first thing is my anxiety. After a phone call with my GP she’s put me on Sertraline but I’m too scared to take them because of the side effects. I absolutely hate feeling or being sick and as a result I won’t take them. If anything its made me even more anxious. But in two weeks time I have to call her back to let her know how I’m getting on. So that’s awkward.
My next problem, which is my biggest one is this. In my head I have what I think of as an invisible friend, but not a friend more just an acquaintance. In my head I hear her speak, sometimes to me and sometimes to herself. She warns me against certain things and sometimes tells me to do certain things. Her mood can change in seconds and living life has become difficult because of this. She can be aggressive to other people and lately she’s been telling me I’m a failure and should die which is depressing for me. At the moment phone calls with the doctor are the only way of getting professional help unless you’re really poorly. I’ve tried so many times to tell my gp about this but I don’t know what to say or how to explain it. Explaining it here is difficult enough without having to do it over the phone. I’m at a loss now.
Hi Matthew, I was also put on Sertraline and for me it was OK. I'm now taking something else but not because Sertraline had serious side-effects - it just wasn't working for me. There was no withdrawal at all for me. If your GP prescribed them I'd say trust her advice.
With the invisible friend, as already mentioned by others I think you should tell your GP exactly as it is. If talking is difficult, could you email it to your GP? I don't think having an invisible friend is a problem per se; I imagine and talk to dead people or fictional people when I'm stressed or trying to sleep and have no-one else to talk to. But yours sounds harmful and out of control. Do you really hear the voice such that it's audible to you like a real person talking or does it just play in your head? I think you might want to make that clear to your GP. If it's taking over your life and telling you you should die, it is an emergency and qualifies as 'really poorly'. Hope you get help soon and glad you decided to talk to us.
Don't know whether Matthew's GP is aware that Matthew has a phobia of being sick, though. I can see how taking something that you have a phobia of wouldn't be an awful lot of use for anxiety... Only a minority of people actually do feel sick on sertraline, though, you didn't, for instance, so maybe if he tested it out for a few days and it turned out that it didn't, in fact, make him sick, there wouldn't be a problem any more?