I Took Antidepressants for 8 Years So I Could Stay in the Wrong Life

Burnout Part 2: On antidepressants, misalignment, and the cost of numbness

Part 2 in a series on burnout, misalignment, and the slow return to yourself.

I started taking antidepressants in my mid-twenties, after being diagnosed with pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). For up to ten days every month, I would fall into a dark, heavy fog. I felt disconnected, unhappy, sometimes like I didn’t want to be alive anymore.

At the time, the medication felt like a solution. The extreme lows softened. The mood swings evened out. I could keep functioning. And I did. I functioned extremely well. But what I didn’t expect was how convenient it would become to not feel anything at all.

At the time, the medication felt like a solution. The extreme lows softened. The mood swings evened out. I could keep functioning.

Without emotions getting in the way, I could optimize everything. I became robotic in the most productive way possible. Every moment had to serve a purpose, deliver a result, move me closer to some achievement.

The things that used to bring me joy began disappearing one by one. Painting felt indulgent. Poetry felt pointless. I could only justify reading books that served some educational purpose — pure enjoyment seemed like a waste of time. Even my downtime had to justify itself with productivity.

It felt efficient. It felt like progress. But there was a wall around my heart I couldn't see.

I finished a PhD at Princeton — not because I’d always dreamed of it, but because it seemed like the logical next step, the next tier of achievement. I powered through years of data analysis and scientific papers that felt like a slog, sustained only by the outdoor fieldwork in Africa with wildlife. The rest of it? I got through it partly because the medication made it possible to dissociate from how misaligned it felt. But the work never felt like mine.

I built relationships with National Geographic. I produced work that earned recognition and respect. From the outside, it looked like a period of incredible success.

I was productive, successful, high-functioning, but I was also strangely flat. Disconnected. Not quite alive inside my own life.

I couldn’t connect with anyone in a way that felt true: not my romantic partner, not my colleagues, not even myself. I could have conversations, maintain relationships, show up consistently — but it was like talking to people through glass.

The medication didn’t just numb the hard emotions. It numbed all of them.

I stayed in a relationship for five years that felt wrong from the beginning. I lived in places where I felt unwelcome, surrounded by toxicity I should have been able to feel in my bones.

But I couldn’t feel it. So I stayed, even as my body tried to tell me. I broke out constantly. Random parts of me would swell for no reason. I was shedding handfuls of hair. I couldn’t recover from jet lag or illness the way I used to. I interpreted these as separate problems to solve, not signals from a system under siege.

Looking back, I can see something I couldn’t see then: my life during that time was deeply misaligned.

The antidepressants didn’t cause that misalignment, but they allowed me to stay in it much longer than I otherwise might have. They gave me the ability to keep going down roads that didn’t actually fit me, because I was numb to the pain of abandoning myself.

For years, I consumed self-help materials that talked about “feeling your feelings.” But I didn’t feel like I had any feelings to feel; just a black hole where my heart should be.

When I finally went off the antidepressants, the numbness lifted. And what came back wasn’t instant joy or clarity. It was pain.

The relationship I was in didn’t feel right. The place I was living didn’t feel like home. The work I was doing still didn’t quite fit. Without the buffer of numbness, I could feel all of it. It was overwhelming.

It was also honest. It took almost a year for that pain to become useful information instead of just something to endure, but when I finally started making decisions based on what I could feel in my body — painful but true decisions — everything began to change.

Emotions are part of the body’s stress cycle. They’re signals, not flaws. They rise, crest, and pass, carrying information about what is and isn’t working in our lives. When those signals get numbed, the underlying tension doesn’t just disappear. The cycle never really finishes, and the body keeps carrying the load, quietly, in the background.

I used to think my PMDD was a random biological curse. Now I suspect it was another physical symptom of misalignment — another example of my body reacting to a life that felt profoundly wrong for me. Instead of listening, I numbed it.

Sometimes, the discomfort isn’t a problem — it’s an invitation. When I finally started asking, “What is this pain trying to show me?” the signals led me to change things I had been too afraid to touch.

It didn’t feel like a breakthrough. It felt more like burning down a life that didn’t belong to me.

And in the ashes of that life, something truer had room to grow.

Now, in a relationship and a life that actually fits, those physical symptoms have disappeared. My hair started growing again. The random inflammation stopped. My nervous system finally exhaled.

The antidepressants helped me function. But they also helped me avoid the reckoning I actually needed.

✨This post is part 2 of a 3-part series. Read parts 1 and 3.

✨ If this resonated, there’s more.

You’re here because something inside you is stirring — a quiet knowing that the life you’ve built, while impressive on paper, doesn’t quite match the truth of who you’re becoming.

The words above are just the beginning. The real work happens in the liminal space between knowing and living, between the old map that no longer fits and the unmarked trail ahead.

This is where I walk with people: through the threshold from performing their life to actually living it. From the frantic energy of “an animal in a cage” to the grounded presence of your wild beyond: to remembering who you were before the world tamed you.

If you’re ready to stop analyzing what’s wrong and start embodying what you already know is true, let’s connect:

→ Work with me at Wild Beyond Coaching
→ Follow the journey on Instagram @wildbeyondcoaching