Exercise 1

 This is the first time I've journaled since thinking about weaning off Lexapro. I feel good about getting myself to a place where I am taking care of myself and listening to my thoughts and body and mind and heart and allowing them all to feel and process, before I start weaning off medications. Anyway, this amazing companion guide by this thing called the Withdrawal Project has these questions for me to answer as basically the first step to the preparation phase of the journey.

• What does the idea of coming off psychiatric drugs mean to me?
  It means having a clearer mind. It means an ability to listen to my mind more clearly, and then allow it to communicate to me how I'm feeling, what triggers I have and things I need to avoid, learn, address, etc. Right now those communications from myself to myself are dampened. 
• It also means a bit of fear. What will I be like? Will I be a bad mom? Will I know how to slow down? 
• I also have some reticence in talking about it, because I really am an advocate for medications. But even more for medication, nowadays, it's really addressing mental health and giving ourselves grace that I'm an advocate for. I don't want anyone to take the wrong idea from me: like that I think taking meds is weak, or like those people can't deal with their anxiety in other ways and i can or something. I really also don't want to get to the place where I think that either, even worse than other people thinking that. 
   
• What thoughts and emotions come up for me when I think about coming off? (Be open and receptive to the full spectrum of your thoughts and emotions, from powerful to subtle, dark to light, painful to pleasant.)
• powerful: clearer mind, more ease in formulating thoughts and remembering things
• red, itchy fear of my temper, of losing patience and yelling at the kids
• fear of the withdrawal process and how long it might take, and what I might attribute what I'm feeling to or not (for example, if I'm feeling really anxious at one moment, will I wonder if it's because of the medicine that I'm feeling that way? or just because that's who I am? I don't want to be a mean, impatient, temper-led person). 
• excited about the additional sexual pleasure Joseph and I will experience because it will be so much easier to orgasm
• happy that I won't be so tired in the afternoons and able to just fall asleep wherever whenever
  
   
• What is my physical body telling me right now as I think about withdrawal? (Stop for a moment and feel each part of your body, noticing what you feel in relation to each part and to your body as a whole.)
• It fills cool and thick, like play-dough.
• I've tried withdrawing before and it felt so hot and itchy and cloudy and terrible. 
   
• What, if anything, are my instincts saying to me right now? How loudly or softly are they saying it? (Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and try to listen to what the deepest part of your being is saying in this moment—whether about the idea of withdrawal, yourself, or anything else that might come up.)
• I feel like they're saying that it is a season where I can do this. There are times and seasons for everything, and I give grace to the time and season of medication, for how it helped me. I feel now that I have resources that can help me heal from withdrawal and that will then help me manage my anxiety after the withdrawal stage. 
• I just feel calm about it...that it's the season for it.  

As for my feelings about withdrawal and my motivation/readiness for it, I feel good about getting off Lexapro completely and just sticking with the antihistamine for as-needed anxiety.