[swimorsinka]

I'm careful about suggesting meditation to my friends because I think it's different for everybody.

For me, I've always had high anxiety. OCD is essentially anxiety when you boil it down to its core. That means I carry around a great deal of stress, sometimes to the point where I can feel it in my stomach all day every day.

3-5 days of meditation makes this feeling go away. I've seen studies that show your cortisol drops after 3-5 days of doing it for 20-30 mins a day.

So to answer your question: I notice it a lot when I stop. I still fall off on the habit periodically, but I see the benefits shortly after I start again.

Some of the benefits for me: * Less Stress. * I make better eye contact with people because I'm not anxiously looking away. * I listen to my employees (and everyone) better because I'm not so tempted to interrupt them when they're speaking. * My body feels better - any pain or injuries I have get better. * My focus during the workday is dramatically improved. I don't get distracted nearly as easily.

But for someone who has less natural anxiety, I can imagine not having as many benefits. So use the classic test: if it helps you, keep doing it. If you don't see any benefit, then don't bother. Don't do it just because you think you ::should::.

[itschekkers]

Sorry to hear about your experience, but I'm glad you have found ways of managing symptoms. Like you say, people absolutely do respond differently to different medications. I'm a researcher at Yale, and we've been developing algorithms to figure out which antidepressant is most likely to help a specific patient. We've published some papers, and made our algorithm available online through our startup (www.spring.care/spring-assessment). If you find it helpful, please do send us feedback!! hello at spring dot care