u/RefrigeratorFew7558

So I was diagnosed with ASD at a young age. At 13, my social anxiety started to worsen, and I experienced my first depressive episode. Since then, my anxiety has continued to worsen and I have reccurant depressive episodes. When I turned 15, I got put on to Zoloft/sertraline starting at 25mg, eventually tapering up to 50, then 75(which I was on for about one month before I quit cold turkey). This was over the span of about 9 months. Throughout the whole time I was on this SSRI, I only experienced a worsening of symptoms: severe social anxiety to the point I rarely left my house, worsening si, a dramatic worsening in self injury severity, vivid nightmares leading to a decrease in sleep due to avoidance, at one point I even felt a strong urge to stab myself even though I didn’t want to injure myself and that lasted 1-2 weeks. I obviously should have brought this up to my psychiatrist at the time but I was very anxious and worried about confidentiality so from the vague feedback I gave him, he just ended up increasing my dosage up to 75 which I tried for a bit before deciding to stop.

I’ve been off of any medications for about 3 years now but am still struggling with the depressive episodes and severe social anxiety so I’ve been contemplating finding another psychiatrist (which I’d pay out of pocket for) but I’m concerned that this may be a sign that medication just doesn’t work for me and I don’t want to waste money and time trying out more if the outcome will be similar. I’ve tried to do research on why I reacted the way that I did but have only been able to find people talk about seeing no change, having emotional blunting, or having similar symptoms to me that resolved within a few weeks. not a prolonged worsening of symptoms like I had so I’m just looking for clarity. What causes a reaction like this? Is this a sign I should avoid medication altogether? Could other types of antidepressants be effective or am I likely to have a similar reaction?