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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   660 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for September 24, 2025

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

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I’ve been on sertraline close to a year now. For most of that time I stuck to 25mg because I was in the middle of heavy test prep and didn’t want to deal with stronger side effects. Even at 25mg, it did a lot for my social anxiety. I could actually show up to conversations without spiraling, which was a big deal.

Two months back I updosed to 50mg. When I first hopped on sertraline I had that floaty feeling where I couldn’t get annoyed, like my whole irritation/anger circuit was cut off. That’s not the case anymore. The drug still helps, but I’m back to being annoyed, low energy, sometimes scattered, especially when career or dating stuff stalls. Basically, the buffer I leaned on early on isn’t there in the same way.

Some context on me: I work in ML in Bangalore. A lot of my energy is tied up in career transitions (quant finance, big firm interviews, trying to push my comp higher). At the same time I’m trying to keep my routines sharp: gym, leaning out, studying.

Sertraline has definitely been a net positive: I’m not frozen in social situations anymore, I can actually function. But I don’t find it mood stabilizing in the way I thought it would be, especially now that the early numbing has worn off.

So I’m wondering:

  1. Is it normal for SSRIs to kind of lose the magic once your body adjusts?
  2. Do people usually just keep upping the dose, or is this when you start thinking about switching things around?
  3. How do you deal with the tradeoff between reduced anxiety versus the emotional flattening or low drive that sometimes comes with it?

I’m not fishing for medical advice, just looking for frameworks or personal experiences to think through this better. I do have to go back to my psych, I’ve been pushing it off for a while. Also, I enjoy ChatGPT a lot, but I’m posting here because I don’t want it to be my only source of consolation.

EDIT: think I might be shadowbanned or muted for some reason.

You’re not shadowbanned, it’s just the new user filter. Until you’ve reached a certain karma threshold, all your posts have to be approved by a mod.

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