Paxil Withdrawal/Anti-Depressants and Pregnancy

[SleepingIssues]

Hello all,
Long story short, this is me: 5 years ago I was diagnosed with depression and long before that I started having panic attacks. Since maybe 2 years ago I am feeling much better I wasn't having any symptoms, I was enjoying in life, travelling, making new friends, doing excellent work at my job. So this is the story :  I am trying to get off of my drugs, I was taking Paxil 10mg /day and now I'm off of it since 3 weeks ago. Since many doctors told me that 10mg is pretty small dose I decided to try and get rid of it completely without seeing a Dr. I was feeling good and with basically no symptoms until yesterday. Again I felt like life is not worth living, I felt very weak and hard to focus. I didn't have suicidal thoughts. Can I start paxil all over again or should I first see the doctor? I pretty much neglected my mental health since I started feeling better. So I stopped going to Dr and now I regret that as I can feel the consequences. Now all I need is someone to talk to as I won't see my psychologist in at least a week ...

I have another question: I got married in January last year and husband and I would like to have a baby, but that doesn't go well with taking any drugs. Are there drugs that would help me with my depression that can be taken during pregnancy?

Today I feel good, yesterday was a horror.

Thank you.

Ana

[Paxiled]

Some people are helped by hypnosis.  Most people do it with a therapeutic technique called CBT.  

[SleepingIssues]

How does someone changes the way they think? Even when I was a kid, my dad used to tell me to change the way of thinking, as I always was to strict to myself, I hated myself, trying to be someone else, trying to please others.. I know that this is difficult now as I'm grown up woman 32 years old, but if there is a switch that can be turned off in my head, or just put the programming code, I would do that this moment. Can that be done by hypnosis? I would try that too, even memory erasing, some parts of my past I would love to erase anyways.
Today and yesterday I feel better, I even eat a little bit ( totally lost my appetite last couple of days)
Thanks for your comments Paxiled, I hope I'll do this without drugs. Next time I go to my psychologist I'll ask her how to change my thinking, is there a pattern or something..

[Paxiled]

The only way to cure it is probably through psychotherapy or some other method of changing your thinking.  Drugs can be necessary if nothing else works, but should be only used if everything else has failed and your life is so disrupted you can't function well.  Drugs don't cure depression, nobody knows how to do that, but if nothing else is helping they can make life liveable.  Depression comes in all flavors -- long-term, episodic, short-term, one and done, so no one can tell you what's going to happen down the road.  Focus on what you can do about it now, and try therapy and see if you can't get over it rather than suppressing it with medication, but if you do need medication it will still be there.

[SleepingIssues]

Thank you so much for your comment.
Is it possible to treat depression only with psychotherapy? I don't know if I need (or if I want) to take any more drugs. I would like to have healthy baby one day. What is the best way to treat depression without drugs, if there is any?
What breaks me down is that I don't want this condition, this illness, what ever it is, I want to fight it, I am tired of it, and would like to gain control over my life again and enjoy life. Will this ever stop, or does one just learn how to live with it?

[Paxiled]

Paxil needs to be tapered off of very slowly, the time period depending on the individual.  If you're feeling exactly what you were feeling before going on the Paxil, then it's probably just that you never resolved the problem and were just covering up the symptoms with the drug.  But if you're suffering new problems then it's likely Paxil withdrawal.  I can't tell you which it is from your description, but Paxil withdrawal, if that's what it is, is nothing to fool around with.  If that's what it is it might go away soon and might go away in a very long time with this drug; if you suspect the latter I'd go back on it and taper off more slowly.  As for pregnancy, none of these drugs are recommended if you're pregnant, though some will take them nonetheless.  It's not just a problem of birth defects and the like, it's also having a baby born on the drug and the baby can't tell you if it's suffering withdrawal or problems with brain development.  But I definitely wouldn't do it with Paxil, as this is the most difficult of all the antidepressants (along with the ssris) to stop taking.