Antidepressants: their effect on socionics type
(That title sounds like a catchy title for a study, doesn't it?)
My question:
What effect, if any, do you think taking antidepressants such as Prozac has on a person's personality type? For example, by altering the way a person perceives and reacts to information and experiences....
If you have them, personal antecdotes are encouraged.
i took lexapro 10mg for about a year and a half. initially it made my Se inflate. then, over time, it made me into an IP temperament. that's when i had to get off it.
ILE
those who are easily shocked.....should be shocked more often
I've wondered the same thing but I don't have any experience to add. Good question.
IEI-Fe 4w3
bump.
i started taking it about a month or so ago and i've noticed that i've been getting weirdly more sociable in sporadic bursts. (like as evidenced by my recent boost in threads here, heh.) i was prescribed it for depression, but i'm not even sure if i was ever really depressed. more than anything it seems to help with my social anxiety, and i'm cool with continuing to take it for that reason. i feel a lot less reserved about expressing myself and it enhances what i think of conceptually as like my "sx instinct" (though not libido, really, lol).
um, not that i have authority to tell people what to post, but i would really prefer this thread to not become a "big pharma is evil and drugs are bad" thread because personal experiences and antecdotes would just be a lot more interesting and relevant (imo, of course).
*LL, don't let me delete this*
Big pharma's probably evil, drugs might be bad, and I've never had Prozac, but...
I've been on another AD for half the year now and, like laghlagh, the change has been pretty much all positive. I'm much happier, infinitely more social, I've got a libido period, panic attacks are gone, anxiety's way down, I'm 30 pounds up, and I get random waves of energy every now and then (as opposed to having no energy absolutely ever).
Personality-wise, though, I'm not sure how much effect meds have had. Looking over old posts, my writing style/persona/whatever made a pretty big shift when the AD kicked in (about 3-4 months ago); but, regrettably, I'd not done a whole lot more than noob-lurk to that point. Now I fear (and probably with good reason) that I've pushed from silent obscurity to borderline obnoxious, but thanks to BigPharma, I truly, honestly, don't mind.
Whether this me is really "me" or not, I'm not sure, but I'm a "me" I've not been since 12 or so. The worries of adolescence literally killed the guy. With meds, though, what I'd characterize as a lifelong IJ-ish neuroticism has blossomed into a wonderfully lax, something-P-ish "Whatever, Meh, Who Gives A..." outlook.
IRL, people prefer this. IRL, I prefer this.
But, without a doubt, I'm "socionically" somebody else.
Whether it makes for a healthy "personality" change (if there is such a thing), I really don't know.
thank you SO much for replying, this is exactly the kind of response i was hoping for.
hahahaha. i totally know the feeling. i've quoted pretty much the whole thing, so you're kinda stuck.Originally Posted by CILi
*LL, don't let me delete this*
(i can delete my quotes later if you want me to at that time, though. /enabler)
i'm happy for you.the waves are true for me, as well. the energy isn't consistently high. sometimes it just comes from the side and tackles me. (though not in a manic kind of way, more like...idk, a typical energetic kind of way. lol.) but it's really, really nice. i don't remember feeling this way in years.
ya, i've been wondering whether my outward personality has changed along with the medication. i don't feel like i'm essentially different at my core or on the inside. but perhaps in my self-presentation. i'm not sure. for the most part i just feel more comfortable showing who i am to the outside world, so there's less of a wall there but what's inside is still the same. i think.
i've worried about being obnoxious on the forum because i think i've become more pushy in some ways and then there is my more recent explosion in post counts mainly consisting of one-liners, haha. but ya...idk, i mind but i don't mind. like if somebody called me obnoxious, i would feel bad, but i wouldn't retreat back into my shell because of it.
(edit: i was going to say here that speaking for myself i've never found you to be the least bit obnoxious, but i got too caught up in talking about myself and forgot.it sounds like lip-servicy thing to say, but, really, you've struck me as someone who has a higher than usual awareness of social dynamics and not stepping on peoples' toes, so ya.
irl i'm not worried about coming across as obnoxious. the difference in my behavior has manifested much differently in person. i've turned from a curled-up little trying-not-to-show-that-i'm-panicking girl who got criticized for never speaking into....well, a somewhat quiet probably normal-seeming person. lol.
i wonder how much all of this has to do with the fact that i recently changed jobs at around the same time i started taking prozac. i used to work for a small, high-pressure, beta-centered company that i absolutely hated and felt like it was ruining my life to working for a larger company in which i feel much more comfortable and where i feel like i fit in much better with my coworkers. (but then do i feel like i fit in better because of the prozac? catch 22!)
this is an interesting example of what the OP was asking about. i sort of feel more, uh, P-ish, but i'm still quite obviously IJ. well, at least irl. my writing on here has gotten a little weird, i guess, or at least i notice it. most noticeably an increase in run-on sentences and a need for parentheses (which i noticed again as i've been reading over the preview of this post and editing it). i've been writing in more of a constant thought flow instead of being more selective about which thoughts are important to say. maybe P-ish? or something sort of like it? i've been thinking that i come across more IEE lately.
i'm sorry, but i'm not sure what you mean by this. you feel Ij socionically but Ip personality-wise? how are you making the distinction?
if you're happy and the changes in your life have been largely positive, i don't really see the point in digging for a problem, lol. (but maybe that's the prozac talking. :wink
Stop taking that shit, seriously. All you'll get is a placebo effect, while letting chemicals screw up your brain for no reason. Fight your social anxiety rationally, with willpower. Better fix your diet, workout, spend time in nature, reorganize your time and activities, before you reach for those pills.
“Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.”
ummm...thanks for your concern, and i think there is something to be said for the effect of diet/exercise/activities (willpower, though? lol). but i didn't bump this thread for the purpose of figuring out whether i should take the pills or not. i already do.
are you being serious? the "rationally, with willpower" thing just seems so absurdly hardline that i can't figure out if you might be joking, lol.
Parkster has a great sense of humor.
(D)IEE~FI-(C)SLE~Ni E-5w4(Sp/Sx)/7w8(So/Sp)/9w1(sp/sx)
Well, feel free to hate me for trying to help you figure that out.
lol, yeah, that sentence does sound a bit comical. It's like a slogan or something. But I couldn't think of a better word. I thought "willpower" sums up most of the things I wanted to address. And yeah, I meant what I said, I just don't know how to express myself sometimes, and a lot of the things I blurt out tend to sound weird and unbalanced. But hopefully that's not how I always sound.
Last edited by Park; 12-04-2010 at 07:08 AM.
“Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.”
Sounds appropriate.
“Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.”
lol i don't hate you. when i said "thanks for the concern" i meant it. i'm just frankly not very receptive to that kind of input right now.
it does sound like a slogan.lol, yeah, that sentence does sound a bit comical. It's like a slogan or something
even if i asked for that sort of stuff to be avoided i respect you being straightforward and i appreciate you talking to me as a person rather than using the thread as a springboard for a five paragraph treatise on the evils of the pharmaceutical industry, which is more what i was really worried about, lol.
i can see using willpower to avoid overeating. i can see using willpower to establish a routine to get things done. but willpower to avoid anxiety? i just don't get it. maybe it makes sense to you but to me i guess it sounds something like using a fork to write a note. like it just doesn't compute to me.
i'm going to bed so i won't be responding again tonight but i'm curious about what makes you say this.
if we're guessing at eachother's motivations, i'd also like to say i'm getting the impression you're prodding me for some reason. if this is correct, then idk what kind of reaction you want but i'm too fucking tired at 1am to give a very interesting one, lol.
MUST STOP TAKING PILLS.
MUST STOP TAKING PILLS.
MUST STOP TAKING PILLS.
MUST STOP TAKING PILLS.
MUST STOP TAKING PILLS.
MUST STOP TAKING PILLS.
I'm sure tons of paragraphs have already been written, (and any rambling here would be totally pointless anyway) but it doesn't really take much to get it. The point is simple. And especially with people like you, who are perfectly sane and reasonable (or at least that's how you seem to me), meds are a total miss and definitely the wrong way to go.
It has always baffled me how some people are so fast to give into things like listening to stupid doctors and taking meds before trying to find their own solution to a problem. Does that mean that you have given up on yourself and now expect some sort of magic to come out of those powder capsules and straighten you up? Do you think doctors are so smart and genuinely concerned about your well-being because they've gone through med school? Give me a break. I can understand deeply disturbed or heavily depressed people resorting to medical treatment, for a lack of a better alternative; but taking anti-depressants like it's fucking Vitamin C - no, and you must be a retard.
Just like with everything, you have to fight it. You have to change the way you think and behave, the way you perceive and respond to things etc. Observe yourself, see where that anxiety comes from and why, determine what exactly causes it, and start thinking of ways to overcome it. You need willpower to go through the process, to have the patience and persistence, to keep going until you achieve improvement.
Your decision to ingest that garbage on such short notice? But don't pay attention to it, it's mainly just me being a dick, telling people what they should or should not do, as if I know best. And that is why I am going to delete it now.
Nope, I'm not prodding you.
It's a couple of hours past 1am here actually, so I don't have the best concentration levels, either. But I'm not fishing for any reactions, don't worry.
Good night.
Last edited by Park; 12-04-2010 at 07:39 AM.
“Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.”
As an anxious person, I have two things to deal with: the anxiety itself, and a sort of meta-anxiety that I will never be free from its clutches. I can struggle to make it outside to deal with people from school, or shopkeepers, and a big party is far and away the last place I ever want to be (when I've been lured to one I find somewhere quiet and discrete to lock myself in until it's over).
I'm also lucky in that my brain is like an avalanche. It looks stable, but only until you feed it a signal, at which point the entire mountainside peels away. Most drugs hit me like a freight train. I've had to sleep sedatives off for a day and stay in bed utterly exhausted the next, prozac made me hypomanic, antipsychotics gave me amnesia and made me into a barely-animate husk on autopilot, etc, etc.
This means I can't rely on pills for anxiety. This also means I can remember what they did to my entire way of thinking (or not in the case of the antipsychotics). Believe me when I say that it's the pills speaking when you say that you've never been happier, and also that none of what I'm saying speaks against me wanting you to be happy, because everyone deserves that. I'm extremely wary of people saying that they've never been happier since <this antidepressant>, because unless your brain is screwing with itself due to neurochemical reasons, I would not be screwing with it yourself.
All I can say is, step back and consider whether your problems might better respond to therapy than to medication. Pills are like a crutch, they'll only help you when you're on them.
Also, I have a friend who suffers from a cyclical mood disorder. There is a very real problem with him that is not commonplace unhappiness or anxiety. In his case, anticonvulsants are an appropriate treatment, since they at least offer normal periods where he can function in between depressive dips and manic highs.
I'm with Parkster in believing that you shouldn't go to medication as a kind of magic wand, and that most psychiatrists are more interested in the quickest solution to your presented problems, not necessarily the best one (although I've had a better experience with doctors).
My parents drugged me up when I was little because I disobeyed their authority and I didn't always do what they say. They took me standing up for myself as a personal attack on them.
So they were pretty much all "oooh no you don't little fag you will take this medicine so you will do what I say."
But see, I was in happier, better mood with the happy pills- but I still did not go to school and participate in society and social systems. I still didn't do what they wanted. They improved my mood, but they couldn't improve my outside external circumstances. I was stubborn and wasn't going to bend my will for anybody. This infuriated people and they started doing things to try and punish me and make me feel bad. ((though i love challenging authority straight male types that think they can tell me what to do))
So they didn't give a shit about my well-being and how I was feeling. They just wanted me to do what they say. And I realized that most people are like this on earth, even people I thought were my friends. And I only met one or two persons who I strongly romanticized, because they completely let me go my own way and understood the natural interdependence of the universe.
Eventually everybody has let go of the struggle with me, they let go of the oars of trying to get me to do what they do and they let me create my own reality for it. I'm no longer a victim of anything, the stuff that I do wrong is now my own fault instead of somebody doing something to me. Really, it just keeps getting better and better for me even if at the time I don't feel like it is.
The peeeelz are bad! Everyone is crazy.
Prozac is disinhibiting so it removes the second-guessing that acts as brakes while navigating social encounters.
That said, I took the stuff for some months and noticed zero effect whatsoever, nor any change when I stopped taking it.
Last edited by Korpsey; 12-04-2010 at 06:48 PM.
thanks b&d and thanks arthur for sharing your stories. and in response to you guys and parkster (who apparently thinks i am a sane and reasonable retard) i've been thinking about the shoulds and shouldn'ts as far as my taking prozac is concerned. i wouldn't say that it's something i absolutely need to take in order to function. i don't even know that there's anything wrong with my actual brain chemistry (depression runs heavily in my family, but i never had my brain scanned or anything). if i were to hypothetically stop taking it, i don't know how it would affect me but i don't think it would destroy me.
the crux of this for me is that the negative seems to be summed up in the idea that it is "messing with my brain" but i don't even know what that means. i can see the positive effects right in front of me but i don't see the negative ones. what is it doing to my brain that is really so awful? "messing with it," ooOooOoo.sorry, but...???
I don't know, but for me, taking drugs seems sort of pointless, or missing the point. Yes, I have anxiety... but it turns out that there was a reason. The reason was that I was lacking in self-confidence... and I had no proper skills to cope with life. Which you know, I can, and should, learn. And that seemed to be the key to getting better and dealing with anxiety.
But I also wouldn't recommend doing it "rationally, with willpower." In fact, you can't. It has nothing to do with an intellectual awareness, but it has to do with an emotional awareness, an emotional problem. You'd have to make it an emotional experience. You'd have to become aware of your emotions in all its entirety and irrationality, to become aware of your emotional blindspots. Otherwise, if you don't have your emotions set straight, then you'd be working on the completely wrong logical premise. And with that track set, no amount of logic or rationality or willpower will save you.
Your "really, really nice" sounds really, really familiar.
I'm intentionally kinda ignorant as to how each AD actually works; but I'm curious as to how your "waves" have changed since you first started meds and how they'll continue to do so (if you choose to stay on 'em).
Personally, I'd been so run-down and exhausted by anxiety that by the time I had even a semblance of energy, I feared it really was mania or something. Since the first few weeks/months, things seem to have leveled out a bit, but it was definitely a shock at first to, like, smile and stuff.
x a billion.
To people who've never been socially anxious, your quote probably wouldn't mean much; but, really, that freedom to "not retreat" is HUGE. Giving a damn about every last word people say (and how they say it, and how they look when they say it, and why they might be saying it) is hard.
Lip-service back at'cha, you've got a really long road to "obnoxious." (And, if you somehow miraculously got there, people'd probably find it cute.)
You stole my bio*.
*"Girl" part excluded.
IEE?! ...WA, could be listening...
I'm pretty much talking out my ass here, but what if that drift from "IJ to P-ish-ness" is really a shift from "unhealthy to healthy"?
Regardless, from your posts (old and new), I wouldn't be blown away if you showed up IEE one day.
Good point. That really didn't make much sense at all, looking back at it.
If I were to jump on Wikisocion and pick myself out of the descriptions TODAY, I'd not be surprised at all if I picked a different type than I would have PRE-MEDICATION.
But I'ma hafta leave the "Socionics v. Personality" fight to the Te (or is it Ti?) big-guns here. My head would explode.
I'm really starting to like this Prozac guy.if you're happy and the changes in your life have been largely positive, i don't really see the point in digging for a problem, lol. (but maybe that's the prozac talking. :wink
thanks. i'm glad you've been able to help yourself using the strategy of of awareness you're talking about but reading your post i can't really see anything that i can take and use. "becoming aware of emotional blindspots" isn't something that people just DO because they decide to. but this is perhaps the kind of thing that can be learned in therapy, which could possibly be helpful.
as for therapy...i'm open to it except for the fact that i simply don't have time (lol, that sounds like such a copout, but seriously) unless i take off work or something, which isn't really feasible. i've also had some kinda shitty experiences with therapy (including a psychologist i had as a teenager who bought me a bible and told me converting to christianity would make me happier), so i'm sort of skeptical about the very concept of therapy considering that these helpers are only people themselves, with their own problems and projections. i'm not totally closed off to the idea of therapy, and i can see the potential for the usefulness of it if you find the right person, but ehh...i'm just not really jazzed about the concept.
sure. i recall saying something to someone on im about possibly being manic because i was just so freaking alive feeling. but it seems strange now. i don't think the actual effects have changed, just that i'm getting more used to it. yay for happiness being normal.
by leveling out do you mean you're getting used to it, or do you mean that the energy waves are becoming more consistent and less "tackling from the side?" do you mind clarifying? it would be nice if it were more consistent because i can tell when it winds down and then it's like "oh." idk, lol.
oh my god, reading this made feel all squishy inside and watery-eyed. because...yeah, i totally know.
one of the most externally obvious things i noticed was sending e-mails at my new job. i send a lot of e-mails and if i had started this job before the prozac i would have done the sort of thing that was previously typical of me when sending an e-mail: sitting there for several minutes staring at the screen, my body frozen in a fight-or-flight response, deliberating over the difference between the word "the" or the word "a" and how my usage of a possibly inappropriate word might influence the receiver's opinion of me and effect our future interactions in a myriad of possible ways.
which sounds kind of crazy. and, well, i guess it kind of is.
but now, i just write an e-mail. and maybe give a few tweaks, but it doesn't take long. I CAN WRITE AND SEND AN E-MAIL IN LESS THAN 60 SECONDS, HOLY CRAP. lol. and i can't put into words how effing incredible that is, but i think you know.
i might be overthinking things, but this made me think of something in socionics terms...i don't know what social anxiety is like for most people, but for me (and sounds like it could be similar for you) its like there's this overfocus on how everything i say or do could affect my relationships with other people (Fi?) along with an overanalyzation of the myriad possible ways everything i could say or do could possibly play out in these relationships (Ne?). idk if this is relevant or specific to the experience of certain types, but it's just a thought.
haha, word.
Even if then.
“Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.”
Damn it. I knew I should have added a disclaimer.and in response to you guys and parkster (who apparently thinks i am a sane and reasonable retard
Ya, you're right. Maybe you should try some funkier drugs like coke, or heroin, or ecstasy. It's really fun, and it's not like you'll notice any negative effects. And your anxiety will vanish completely. Yeah, I say you give it a try.the crux of this for me is that the negative seems to be summed up in the idea that it is "messing with my brain" but i don't even know what that means. i can see the positive effects right in front of me but i don't see the negative ones. what is it doing to my brain that is really so awful? "messing with it," ooOooOoo.
Last edited by Park; 12-05-2010 at 09:13 PM.
“Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.”
I don't think it changes type but it can temporarily alter person's presentation to make it look like they are another type.
One of my college roommates took a number of downers, like Xanax and Valium, for her major anxiety issues and a sleeping disorder. She would score as INTJ and INTP on MBTI tests, even though when she didn't take these pills she was hyper, restless, outgoing, and visibly extraverted.
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