the thing that I have found with a lot of the medications that I take for my Schizoaffective Disorder and anxiety is that they will work for a few years and then stop working and I need to change them up. Thus the necessity of a psychiatrist to monitor and manage the medication.

My symptoms come and go. For me it rotates between anxiety, mania, psychosis and depression or perhaps normal day remission and I never know what I'm going to get day by day.

Sometimes it is necessary to change the meds and that's okay. That's normal. You sound like you're dealing with very normal thing. It's okay. I have the same issues.

It's very common for people to become immune to a medication after long term use of them. That is why there are so many different types and why many doctor's have to up the dose or change the medication altogether. Hugs GB

A lot of people experience "burn out" where their antidepressant stops
working over time and they have to change. It is unpredictable and happens for no apparent reason. Sometimes a dosage increase will
help but sometimes a new drug is required. Fortunately there are many to choose from.

I talked to my psychologist last night and she upped my Zoloft medication. I hope that this will help me out. How long do you think it will take before I might start to feel better?

I'm not a doctor but I'm guessing 2 or 3 weeks just like when you started
the drug originally.

I remind myself that when I started accepting that my anxiety would be active for life that it means when I change, the anxiety changes, and we often ignore those little tiny flicks of ... and push through.

When you go through several cycles of anxiety spikes, overwhelming reactions, and loss of balance, it often takes determination to work through all the hidden issues to find the initial trigger of anxiety.

I'm on medication for the depression that gives me enough balance to use techniques to improve my normal reaction to anxiety. I know when my medicine is helping and when I'm making it difficult (often when it is not beneficial in that moment), and I pause, reset, and move forward.

Best wishes to finding what works best for you.

It's completely a common occurrence to become tolerant to antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds over time. I have been through at least 6 different meds over the last 18 years just for depression. Don't let your symptoms go unchecked. There could be something that works much better for you.

I think what happens is that we become complacent and don't do the things we should do in order not to have anxiety and depression. I find the same thing, but when I am feeling well I think I'll never be anxious, but it always comes back to haunt me.
Do we have to constantly monitor ourselves?

I think you can't just keep on with the medications. I think we go through crises which will resolve themselves if we give them time, but if we don't give them time and want more medication, they will go anyway and we never know whether they would have resolved or not.

It's my personal opinion that we have to live a new way, and only ever medicate enough for things to be bearable; not medicate for the pain to go away, but medicate for the pain to be withstandable.

And then we need to get off the pills. Living on the pills is really bad for our brains long term. We need to get off the pills (very very carefully and slowly) once we have got stabilised with counselling etc.

I only mean this for mood disorders, not any others. I have no knowledge or experience with bipolar, schizophrenia and the like. :)