Hello, I’ve never thought I had anxiety growing up but I’ve always known I’ve had depression. My sister had severe anxiety and bpd and it put a lot of stress on my family, and compared to her I thought I was mentally healthy. It wasn’t until I moved away to college that I realized I’ve never been happy in my life.

I’ve always been able to distract myself from my troubles as a kid by playing video games and reading, I would just get away from the thoughts by thinking about fiction instead, but it doesn’t work like that anymore.

It was triggered the worst last year when a friend of mine committed suicide and wrote in his journals that he struggled with a lot of feelings that I struggled with as well. There was a lot of guilt regarding missing the chance to talk to him and tell him he wasn’t alone.

I’ve always had crying spells where, when I start crying about anything -happy, sad, beautiful- I can’t stop. It becomes overwhelming and sometimes lasts for hours. I thought that was a part of depression.

After my friend passed away, I started therapy and I was prescribed to bupropion, I’m now taking bupropion XL 300mg every day. I’ve noticed the past couple months on it that I’ve been a lot more productive, but I also noticed I find myself getting caught in negative thoughts worse than ever before. I think about things people said to me 5 years ago, small things people have said that makes me think they might hate me, feeling like whenever I talk nobody wants to hear it. I never felt any of that stress before. It was hopelessness before, but now I’m panicked about all these negative thoughts, my chest feels heavy, my stomach feels tight, and I have the prickly feeling behind my eyes a lot.

Basically what I’m wondering is.. is this anxiety? I’ve read that bupropion can cause anxiety. But I don’t want to stop taking it if possible because it’s my second antidepressant after I tried sertraline which gave me bad physical side effects. Bupropion works for my depression, but the way I feel now is almost worse, but I don’t want to have to deal with talking to my psychiatrist, weening off, and starting a whole new medicine again.

TLDR: I’ve always had depression and now I’m on antidepressants that might be causing horrible anxiety. Need help identifying anxiety and advice on what to do.