For many, the conversation about psychiatric drug withdrawal revolves around one key question: How do we taper safely? And rightly so. It’s a vital question—one that I’ve spent the past decade researching and working on with my clients in Copenhagen. But there’s another side of psychiatric drug withdrawal that often goes unspoken in our community, despite its equal importance: What happens when the emotions return?
Because they do return. After all, all the drug did was suppress, distort, or distance them, often making their return feel unfamiliar and overwhelming. That awakening can be terrifying, beautiful, or both. You wake up to yourself, and this can be a mixed experience at first, depending on what and who you are waking up to.
Emotion Regulation: Learning What Medication Once Did for You (Maybe)
As the drug leaves the body, something else returns: the full weight and richness of emotion. For some, this transition is subtle. For others, it’s like waking up after years of being cut off from themselves. Joy, sadness, drive, anger, excitement, grief; emotions previously blunted or flattened by medication begin to re-emerge. I’ve seen people face grief for the first time years after the loss occurred. Only now is their system ready to process it. Others reconnect with long-ignored anger at childhood injustice or awaken to a profound loneliness or pressure that had been numbed into indifference. These aren’t signs of illness returning. These are not symptoms. They’re your inner, emotional landscape returning, and navigating it alone is impossible. We need each other in this situation.
In psychology, we often explore how people regulate their emotions. Do they avoid or suppress feelings? Do they ruminate in circles, worry endlessly, constant seek reassurance, distract themselves, perform rituals, stay busy, self-harm, drink alcohol? Understandably, these are all attempts to make painful feelings go away and stay in control of our lives. But certain strategies tend to backfire, creating more distress over time.
And so, a vicious circle can arise. One where we try our best to manage our emotions, only to feel worse and worse. Trapped in our own emotion regulation. Large parts of life may even come to revolve around avoiding discomfort and endlessly seeking explanations. Paradoxically, this creates more pain.
Psychiatric drugs, in this light, are part of the same picture. These medications are a form of emotion regulation, too. A way of managing states of mind that otherwise feel uncontrollable, overwhelming, or unsafe.
But when you remove that strategy, what’s left?
The answer isn’t just withdrawal symptoms. It’s also emotional rawness. A return of sensitivity and authenticity—whatever that involves. And this is where many people find themselves stuck: the taper might have gone well physically, withdrawal symptoms might have passed, but emotionally, life suddenly feels overwhelming.
Emotions are Signals, Not Malfunctions
In my clinical work, I’ve often seen people become disoriented, not because their taper failed, but because they were unprepared for what lay on the other side. One client, Sofie, said it best: “I thought I was relapsing. But what I really was… was feeling.”
She was overwhelmed by emotions and impulses she hadn’t felt in years. Frustration, longing, loneliness, energy. For years, these feelings had been filtered through the lens of her so-called antipsychotic medication. Now, with the filter removed and the chemical veil lifted, they came back full force. But rather than treating them as symptoms of a supposed mental illness, we approached them as signals. And this changed everything.
Emotions are not malfunctions. They can misfire, but we’ll get back to that. Fundamentally, they are messages from our internal navigation system. When we stop fearing them, we can begin to understand what they are pointing to. Needs unmet, values ignored, relationships wounded, toxic routines not abandoned, dreams forgotten, paths not taken. Of course, once you’re off the meds and the emotional bandwidth is fully restored, this guidance system can feel overwhelming.
Emotions 101: What We Were Never Taught in School
Over the years, sitting with brave people tapering off psychiatric drugs, I’ve often found myself doing something surprisingly basic: explaining what emotions actually are.
It’s strange, when you think about it. We spend years in school learning to solve equations and memorize historical dates, but almost no time learning how to understand the forces that move us every single day. Emotions shape how we think, relate, act, and make meaning. They are the reason we do things. But no one ever hands us the instruction manual.
Consequently, when the medication fades and emotions come back online, we are often left asking: What is this I’m feeling? And what am I supposed to do with it? Left unchecked, we may fall back into old, unhelpful patterns.
This gap isn’t a personal failing. It’s a cultural one. And I’ve often found that offering even the simplest framework for understanding emotion can be liberating. One that doesn’t use medical jargon or diagnoses, of course. Use normal words. Here’s what I often share with clients, now offered here as a kind of public service for anyone relearning how to feel.
Sadness
Sadness signals a loss, real or imagined. It arises when something we value is no longer there or is threatened. It could be a person, a dream, a state of health, a pet, a sense of identity. Sadness guides us toward what matters; without it, we wouldn’t know what we truly value in this life. In our culture, sadness is often seen as weakness, but it’s one of the most honest emotions we have. When we allow it, it fosters connection and belonging by inviting certain ways of being with us that we need in that moment.
Anger
Anger shows up when our boundaries are crossed, needs ignored, or sense of justice violated. Anger itself isn’t destructive. Suppressed anger, however, tends to turn inward into shame or depression—or outward into resentment or aggression. But when recognized and understood, anger can become a compass that points us toward fairness, protection, and an inherent drive to stand up for ourselves. Properly channeled anger—that is, stepping back from the immediate emotional response, allow ourselves to process the situation, and act accordingly—helps us assert boundaries and regain control. In many ways, the opposite of passivity and letting people walk all over us.
Sometimes, this pause reveals that we are not angry after all, but sad underneath. When emotions regulate one another like this, we talk about a primary emotion (here sadness) and a secondary (here anger).
Anxiety
Anxiety is the body’s alarm system. It’s here to protect us by alerting us to potential danger. It can also fire when something important is at stake for us. Like sadness, anxiety therefore provides a window into what’s important to us. After all, we only feel anxious about things we care about. When expressed in recognizable ways, it signals to others that we’re struggling inside.
But anxiety can easily misfire. Especially if we’ve lived through trauma or gone through prolonged periods of stress, the alarm bells often start ringing even when there’s no real threat. It’s the brain trying to stay on the safe side. And because it’s rooted in survival, anxiety has the power to trump most other emotions, in which case we may have an anxiety problem. What happens is that the anxiety response can link itself to virtually any stimuli or situation, causing distress disproportionate to the actual threat. When such a connection has formed and been reinforced over time—by our own avoidance of, excessive worrying about, and negative experiences with the trigger—anxiety becomes maladaptive. While anxiety’s intention is to protect us, its overactivation can interfere with our ability to live freely. Learning to listen to anxiety without being ruled by it is a central part of emotional healing.
Guilt
Guilt points us to a breach in our own values. Unlike shame, which says “I am bad,” guilt says, “I did something that doesn’t sit right with me.” It invites us to make amends, take responsibility, and realign our actions with our moral code. When appropriate, guilt can be a guidepost, reminding us of who we want to be. When excessive or distorted, it can paralyze us. This happens for example if it ceases to motivate repair and instead leads us down long roads of rumination and self-criticism about “what I should have done different,” keeping us stuck rather than fostering the positive change it’s designed to.
Shame
Shame is perhaps the most difficult emotion to feel. It tells us we are unworthy, flawed, or broken. But more often than not, shame is learned—it comes from past experiences where we felt rejected or humiliated. External judgment, harsh criticism, or internalized perfectionism that leave us feeling inadequate or unworthy are common roots. Unlike guilt, which focuses on actions, shame targets our very sense of self. For example, when we feel fundamentally flawed or wrong for who we are, or for having certain emotions, thoughts, or impulses visit us. Shame thrives in secrecy, but it shrinks in empathy. Naming it is often the first step in truly dissolving it.
Grief
Grief is not just about losing someone to death. It’s the emotion of irreversibility. It arises when we must come to terms with something that cannot be undone. This makes it one of the most human, and most painful, emotions. Many people going through psychiatric drug withdrawal find themselves grieving lost years, relationships, or the self they once were.
The Deeper Work
By walking people through these basics, I’ve seen a kind of quiet, unforced relief take place. “No one in psychiatry ever told me this,” they often say. “I thought something was wrong with me.” And I always answer the same way: “There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re just feeling. Reacting. Sensing. It sure can be painful, but let’s find ways through it rather than around it or away from it.”
When we name emotions and understand what they want, we can begin to reclaim them. And when we reclaim them, we can begin to build a life guided not by avoidance, suppression or overthinking, but by acceptance, connection, and a deeper understanding of our needs, values, and goals.
One woman I worked with, who had been on a cocktail of psychiatric medications for 14 years, once described the moment she realized she was not broken. It wasn’t because the sadness and anxiety disappeared. It was because she could be with it without spiraling, without shaming herself, without reaching for a pill or a distraction, without doing anything to it. “It finally feels like I’m allowed to feel bad,” she said. “And weirdly, that’s what makes me feel okay.”
This is the deeper work. It is essentially about helping people discover who they are underneath the medication. That process includes the capacity to hurt, to care, to love, to fear, to lose, to begin again. It includes the full, messy range of human experience. And so, the question shifts. From “What’s wrong with me?” to “What happened to me?” and ultimately to “What matters to me now?”
From “What’s Wrong with Me?” to “What Happened to Me?”
Many of us were taught to see emotional suffering as a sign of illness. Feel too much sadness? Depression. Too much fear? Anxiety. Too much energy? Mania. Too weird? Psychosis. But this view turns emotions—and the sometimes-problematic behaviors we rely on to cope—into something to rid ourselves of, rather than messages and behaviors to understand. Through the lens of psychology, distress becomes something else entirely: a signal that something in our life—or how we relate to it—is out of sync.
When we suppress or overthink emotions, they tend to linger or morph into anxiety, depression, or panic. But when we meet them with radical awareness and non-judgement, they often shift. That’s why acceptance is a strategy – and a powerful one. When it comes to deeply painful emotions, phrases like “accept it,” “allow it,” and “leave it be” can easily feel not just frustrating, but completely absurd when you’re suffering. They may sound counterintuitive, almost like you’re being told to just “sit there and feel terrible.” An instruction to leave a painful emotion alone can initially sound like the stupidest idea, because “then it will just keep going! Then it will spin out of control! Then it will only get worse!”
Beliefs! Understandable beliefs, but beliefs, nonetheless. And beliefs worth exploring. Because are there ways of being with our emotions and inner experiences without them escalating and overwhelming us?
I’ve seen people recover not by fighting their feelings, but by building a new relationship with them. And frankly, I’ve seen this approach be more transformative than any diagnosis-driven treatment plan.
The Inner, Emotional Compass
One metaphor I often return to, in both therapy and writing, is that of the inner, emotional compass.
Just like a compass points north, our emotions point toward what matters for us: connection, belonging, meaning, purpose, fairness, safety, our roots, love, autonomy, sense of progress, competence, an unmet need. When life pulls us off course, emotions are the signals that something needs our attention. That’s what emotions do. That’s their trick: to pull in our attention, sometimes very, very forcefully. At its very core, emotion regulation is learning how to respond to those signals using the resources of our own psyche.
But when we’ve spent years suppressing or bypassing these signals, whether through medication, distraction, or sheer survival, they can feel unreliable or even dangerous at first. Many people I meet have learned to doubt their own emotions. “I don’t trust what I feel,” they say. “I’m afraid it will overwhelm me.” Others have been told their feelings are wrong, irrational, or a symptom of disorder.
Yet I’ve found again and again that when people begin to gently listen to their emotions in a safe space—not as enemies, but as messengers – something shifts. They rediscover an innate sense of direction. A knowing. A sense that “this is okay” or “this doesn’t sit right.” That’s the compass starting to work again. This safe space—this deeper work—doesn’t have to happen with a therapist. It can be with someone close: a trusted friend, a partner, or family member. As long as it’s with each other.
Triggers and Traumas
Reconnecting with your compass is not about following every feeling blindly. It’s about learning to navigate with emotion as part of your internal GPS; alongside reason, values, experience, and an awareness that sometimes, our emotions misfire. Because the compass is not perfect.
Sometimes, emotions misfire. They echo the past more than the present. When we’ve lived through trauma and adversity, our emotional compass can become overly sensitive, pointing not only to current dangers or needs, but to wounds that were never given space to heal. Trauma installs triggers in our compass. A neutral situation can suddenly feel unbearable. A seemingly irrational trigger can cause great anxiety. A small conflict can trigger an outsized wave of fear or shame. This doesn’t mean these emotions are fake. It means they’re rooted in a different chapter of the story, one that still seeks resolution.
This is where trauma-informed care or therapy comes in. Not to invalidate any emotions, but to help us sort through them and navigate our complex emotional landscapes. To ask: Is this about now, or about then? And if it’s about then, how can we respond with compassion rather than reaction? In this way, healing is not about silencing emotions, but about helping them find their rightful place so we can live more fully in the present. And it’s about honoring what once helped us survive, while gently loosening our grip on the old patterns, and discovering new ways to live.
We don’t need to pathologize someone for feeling overwhelmed after coming off psychiatric drugs. What we often need isn’t more diagnosis. It’s more guidance. Not only on how to taper (but also that), but on how to feel again. On holding a space for what comes alive when the medication wears off. On how to trust that our emotional responses make sense—not in a vacuum, but in the context of our current life circumstances and the life stories we carry.
Always.
