New user here so be nice or something
Hey guys, I'm a 17yo guy and I suffer from bad social anxiety. I got diagnosed with social anxiety when I was 11, and it got really apparent when I went to high school and have developed symptoms of depression, such as thoughts of suicide and sleeping all the time. It was also the time where my social skills deteriorated, and now today I basically have zero social skills. I take 100mg of sertraline every day but it doesn't do shit to me except give me really bad heartburn occasionally. However I keep taking it because maybe something will change, but in a couple of weeks from now I have an appointment with my doctor and I'll ask if he could change my medication. So far, vaping is the only "medication" that sorta helps with my social anxiety and heavily calms me down, however I don't do it all the time because it's my dad's and it's a disposable. I could ask for vapes in school but I have no friends who vape, in fact, I have no friends in general anymore and only have acquaintances in school and people who used to be my friends but moved, which ends up in not being as close to me anymore. I could ask random vapers but ofc I can't because social anxiety.
My life outside school is really isolating and depressing. I barely have any hobbies and all I do is lay on my bed and doomscroll and sleep and mess up my sleep schedule. I don't post on Reddit anymore because they IP banned me off the whole fucking site. They even track the device I use so they'll still ban me even with a VPN. Now I have to resort to here because I have no other way to tell; my parents think I'm delusional for having mental illness so I don't tell them. Anyways, I have no social interaction at home except my parents, and absolutely no one texts me. I'm absolutely not OK with this lifestyle. I'm always fucking bored and I wish I had friends I could hang out with. I have no siblings. A side effect coming with my social anxiety is that I don't fit in anywhere so it's really hard to find new friends. I heavily feel like I'm missing out on my teenage years by rotting in isolation because of social anxiety. What do you think I should do?
Definitely kick the vape habit, that can easily drag down your entire life and become a huge financial drain to boot.
If you use a lot of caffeine - try reducing or eliminating that as well. Chronic use can cause physical anxiety symptoms, and when your baseline is already elevated, it makes everything that much worse.
Try talk therapy in addition to medication. If the Zoloft helps reduce the SI, then it's definitely working, and instead of switching from it you might ask about the possibility of adding something else to blunt the anxiety.
Try meditation; it may seem like bunk at first, but a big part of social anxiety is focusing too much on yourself during interactions, and mindfulness meditation is basically exercise for that muscle of awareness (in a safe environment, when you are alone), which can potentially lead to the ability to catch yourself and redirect out of an anxious spiral. If that spiral is self-reinforcing, like you're afraid of feeling anxious which contributes to even more anxiety, meditation may also help you sit with the feelings when they arise and sort of empathize with them. Anxiety is a very valid emotion, it's part of our body's self-defense mechanisms, but if those mechanisms are activating in unnecessary situations, to a certain extent we have to teach our body that there's no danger. Easier said than done, but not impossible.
And of course - this is not medical advice, just some things that have helped me with similar struggles. please run these ideas by your doctors and/or mental health professionals before employing them.