My doctor doesn’t believe anxiety is real and refuses to medicate me for it

He just told me to exercise more

The Tab

Let’s first take a moment to appreciate the strides we’ve taken as a society to normalize mental health. It’s great, all is well, right?

Nah. Not in Pennsylvania.

Last February I sat in the doctor’s office for a short check-up. I was home for a few days from New York and at the time hadn’t yet switched doctors — but my mission was clear: I wanted Xanax to control my anxiety and panic attacks.

I’ve had anxiety my entire life. My first memory of it was as a toddler. We were on a trip somewhere, and I was laying in the backseat of the car, trying to sleep. But I kept daydreaming about my mom yelling at me for something and leaving me on the side of the road. I actually convinced myself that it was real, and cried uncontrollably for a solid 30 minutes.

I wanted to tell my mom about the experience, but I literally didn’t know what to tell her because I didn’t even know what was going on.

The stress was so bad that I actually mistook getting my first-ever menstrual cramps for anxiety-induced stomach knots. Like, seriously. Imagine being 13 going to the bathroom and thinking you were bleeding because your anxiety was physically killing you. That was me.

Anxiety came in the form of thrashing tantrums, in scheduled crying sessions (to release my stresses) and in passive aggressive behavior (I was the bitch behind “it’s fine”), and all the while, my family called me overly sensitive because I was overly sensitive. From fucking anxiety.

Fast forward to the doctor’s appointment. The prior few months were spent in the bathroom at work hushing sporadic panic attacks and going to the gym multiple times a day to release stress—it was time to seek help.

Tears poured out of me as soon as I started talking, and made my best effort to make clear that normal body and mental function just wasn’t happening. My doctor listened to every word and nodded, seemingly empathetic.

Then, he said anti-anxiety meds were out of the question. In fact, he said, it seemed I wasn’t making much of an effort to cope with my anxiety.

Perhaps it should be left at that—just an uninformed doctor from bumblefuck Pennsylvania. But no, it gets worse.

He told me to exercise more, and that if I was still adamant about getting a prescription, I would need to have multiple appointments with a psychiatrist in town and go through mental health exams before making another appointment to come back to this same doctor to re-evaluate the request.

It wouldn’t even be a done deal after multiple co-pays on psychiatrist appointments — this guy would still be able to say no to me.

This made two truths clear: A NY doctor was necessary, and this shit is probably happening in all the bumblefuck towns in the U.S. People are suffering day after day, people like me.

I have the opportunity to go to another doctor in New York and will have an easier time obtaining medication, but a great number of people in this country do not have the access or the funds for a second opinion or an out-of-state doctor.

This really could not be more fucked up considering anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S.

I’m actually sorry I didn’t fight him harder, that he wasn’t interrupted in the middle of his eat-more-veggies speech and called a bullshit doctor. But mostly, I’m sorry for everyone out there who have to face doctors like him, because they have no other option than to listen.