Severe Anxiety

it just gets so tunnel-vision on these rare occasions of breakdown

yah my thoughts become really obsessive when im panicked, both narrow & hyperaware, & theres something almost seductive about this kind of keen analysis just getting as detailed as possible in feeling terrible & helpless

theres nothing ive found that really help breaks this but stubbornness just continually trying to force yourself out of it this is exhausting obv & it sucks & im sorry your here, feeling this...

xps: justine i ordered that book your recommeneded! have high hopes for it

lol i was just about to repost the details! here they are again:

http://www.amazon.com/End-Panic-Breakthrough-Techniques-Overcoming/dp/1572241136/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1

an end to panic: breakthrough techniques for overcoming panic disorder
by elke zuercher-white

i am a total stan for this book, make sure you post about how it goes, lamp!

thanks so much, all. breathing and writing and reading your responses really helped. and sleeping! still not subsided this morning but i'm just focusing on the work i need to do right now, which is helping. i'll take a look at that book, j. i also just need to get off fb and not read/listen to the news right now, as much as that might sound like sacrilege for someone who's supposed to be 'informed' re my work and all. but there's just so much filler/bs clogging up my works - again, adding extra layers of anxiety i don't need. what a world. just going to focus on what i need to at the moment. <3

That's interesting, because I become more nervous when I detach myself from the outside world; I need, need, need that contact with the collective mass of humanity in order to stay sane. I'm not talking about having a bunch of friends, I'm talking about being surrounded by people doing their own thing and following their own lives. If I'm isolated--living out in the country with no Internet access and only two or three people for company, forex--I fold up after a few weeks. I wish things were different.

Why the hell can't science invent an anxiolytic that works for the long term? Fucking science. Always with the radar and microprocessors and shit, never the magic pills that will let me have a fucking life.

this is fucking with my shit again

been a stressful couple of weeks though, i suppose that doesn't help

came up for me again today and i was like noooooo. exacerbated by not enough sleep, physically exhausted body, a coffee i didn't need, and too much to get done over the next few days (or so my stressy brain thinks). consequently got hardly any work done today! and i was going along so well! it will be okay again

I'm just coming out of a few weeks long depressive episode, which always makes my underlying anxiety even worse. Ugh, now I'm two weeks behind in classwork... adding even more stress and anxiety. Keep getting too nervous to leave the house lately... been waking up with panic attacks in the morning...

Ugh I'm already up to ~3mg of klonopin a day now, and I've been on it for like 4 years now. Its the only thing that keeps my life from spinning out of control and my doctors continually want to take me off of it. Don't know what to do but cling to them with dear life and risk the eventual liver failure.

What else are you on?

I had a mixed bipolar episode a few weeks ago--all of the jitteriness of hypomania and the constant unearned guilt feelings of depression, ick. I extend my sympathy to all of you who have posted in this thread lately.

*&%*&%(*%&*

want to stab out brain with fork

Having been a passenger recently in cars on mountain roads and in heavy traffic (I always forget how west coast driving is fundamentally more crazy in an idiosyncratic way vs eastern crazy's very fast predictable way), I've been getting in a fair amount of practice re consciously decreasing anxiety levels so as to feel ok and even good. Also I am going to get my drivers license asap. (mostly bc I really want a cute little truck. but also to further help me chill.)

Driving always calms me.

i am/used to be a good driver and enjoyed it -- i could get in this zone where i kind of knew where everything was and time was passing and music was playing and it was like zen or something

lately, though, it is no good. maybe due to driving mostly in nyc, or not driving much in general, or getting old, but i don't have the awareness of everything that i used to have. it is disturbing and unpleasant.

sorry electricsound. maybe go listen to the live version of galaxie's 'summertime'?

i feel like my head is going to fall off this week. very bad. should cut out the coffee probably and sleep more.

tbh everyone should listen to the live version of galaxie's 'summertime'

^

bahhhhhhhh. anytime i try to enter a relationship i always psyche myself out and give myself mini-panic attacks over it.

why can't I be normal :(

seriously this like ruins entire days for me. i have a show opening tonight and all i can think about is how i am convinced i screwed everything up last night and every neuron in me is firing and it stopped me from sleeping and this happens everytime and it's like no wonder i stay a bachelor for so long cuz it's EASY.

happy pills need to start working overtime.

bahhhhhhhh. anytime i try to enter a relationship i always psyche myself out and give myself mini-panic attacks over it.

why can't I be normal :(

lol i was going to say "this sounds perfectly normal to me!", but then again, i've got the "Severe Anxiety" thread bookmarked, so...

^^

thing that worries me is this is really the first time since I've started taking Effexor that it's been unable to contain most of these jitters. part of me wonders if the main reason I've been chill the last two years is not the pills but just circumstance.

but then I realize without these pills I'd probably be having daily freakouts again so it's probably doingi ts job

Yeah they don't get rid of all anxious feelings! TBH I'd be worried if a pill took away twitterpation.

oh yea I know they don't get rid of em all, but like....they've taken the edge off to where I can take a step back and analyze things better. which isn't happening atm. but I suppose romance or even potential romance tends to scramble all circuitry.

Yeah just like if you were taking it as an antidepressant and your best friend died, you would still be sad.

fucking really upset tonight, with myself, and other people...i just seriously want to cry things out tonight and can't....these pills just make it like a festering wound inside me that eats at me and makes me feel shitty, anxious, and disoriented, but I can't do anything to flush it out. it's just there still fucking gnawing at me.

This is why I retreat from everything in my life, cuz it's the only way it goes away :(

oh dude...I dunno what to say to make it better...but it bums me out to see you like this <3

thx. just think when this project is over, maybe it's time to go back to in-person therapy....fortunately it's covered under my insurance.

That sounds like a good move. Get the festering out in the light of day, so it cant eat away at you like it is now

thanks for your support VegGirl. i managed to cry it out a bit after I posted and I felt a little better. feeling a little better this morning, though the fact remains that I still need to address this.

(hugs) it'll get better, with a little help.

Yall take Magnesium supplements? That'll help

My social anxiety sucks but I've gotten used to it. However, it was kind of sad how I went to a club-like place the other night and I just couldn't approach anyone. I can dance around strangers but the next move always escapes me. Plus I always have absolutely nothing to say when I meet new people. My dating life is nonexistent and that alone can be depressing when I think about it.

One girl gave me a friendly glance over and another girl purposely brushed up against me and I still couldn't connect. Oh yeah, and me and another girl started to dance but my balls retracted and I had to move on

cliche i know, but "clubs are shitty for meeting people for more than a fuck" etc etc and i think a lot of people, anxiety or no, have trouble meeting people at them
i don't go to clubs but if i did, unless i had a lot of drink in me, i would be the same.

also cliche possible solution, but finding and joining groups/clubs of people with similar interests can be quite helpful. i spent my first two years in college absolutely lonely and friendless until i joined a group (helped that they made us all live together). and i never had a girlfriend until then. it was the same with high school, too. i arbitrarily joined drama because they seemed like nice people.

my social anxiety's been getting a lot worse lately. i do the thing where i get trapped in my room for hours. i don't medicate, but i'm going back into therapy for the first time in years, and that's a bit comforting.

i can tell I'm about to hit a 'retreat' period in my life pretty soon......

alright, trying to nip this in the bud today. going to slice this shit off at the source. feeling so much anger, sadness, and pointlessness....fuck

(btw I don't mean literally slice this shit, I mean I'm going to try and do something positive about it today).

Good. I'm having similar problems and I hope we both get better soon.

Yesterday on the tube on the way into work, I came over nauseous, dizzy, breathless, faint and with sharp pains running down my neck and back. By the time I got to work I had cramps and needed to spend half an hour in the toilet .

I felt pukey, headachy, bloated and wierdly furious all day. It was much worse indoors & near people than outdoors / by myself. Today I stayed in bed (working on the laptop) and now I'm fine. Maybe even a little high. It definitely wasn't food poisoning (I hadn't had breakfast). Could this have been a kind of all-day panic attack? I've been super-strung out lately, working crazy hours and not sleeping, but I don't feel worried as such.

Kind of tiring of my inability to react to any unexpected situation with anything other than blind panic, no matter how small said situation is. Every time the landlord wants to talk to me, I assume our house is being sold, every even half-"difficult" email I have to send becomes a potential source of fear or shame, things never feel stable. Really tired of this shit, but I know the answer - sleep, exercise. eat the right food, read. It's just that all that becomes so difficult to achieve. It's hard to not reach the conclusion that I need to have the most boring life possible in order to avoid getting this way.

How do other people on this anxiety thread deal?

I'm fucking terrified of how/whether anyone is going to respond now. I need a vacation.

in general, is your life going well or badly? From other stuff you've posted it sounds like you've had some really cool things happen lately.

My life is going really quite well (thanks for noticing!), but I have a terrible habit of taking on far too much. I am being very busy and reasonably creative, but for some reason everything still feels unstable and isn't helped by the fact that part of the reason I am so busy is I have gigantor student loans to take care of. But it does seem that I can take care of them, for now.

I also have developed a bad habit of burning out and flaking on people, but then (maybe it's true what they say about LA) I find that a lot of people also flake on me, which is deeply frustrating. Hypocrite me.

sleep, exercise. eat the right food, read

You say it as if it's nothing, but those are all hugely underrated, and some very difficult standards to live by. Yet it's not all. Not to get all psychological or Freudian, but I'd say, reading what you wrote, it's not for nothing that you experience blind panic no matter how small the situation. There is a cause for that. I'm not necessarily talking major trauma here (I don't know you well enough to rule it out), if that's what you think, but rather you seem conditioned to react this way when anything "unexpected" comes up. That conditioning - and I have been there, and still am sometimes - is more important than the actual cause that set it off, if you have been suffering from this for a long time already. It's a reflex in your brain, a response to situations you maybe only once, one day in your life, gave in to and acted upon, whether it was out of self defense or not. And now that reflex, that Pavlovian reaction plays up every god damn time and you can't seem to shake it off or act otherwise. Time to re-program, re-wire your brain. Which is not easy, and no shame in asking for help to do so. It will make you feel so, soooo much better (also from experience). Good luck.

adam have you tried talking to them about income-based repayment plans or the like? getting on one has pretty much saved me.

one other strategy i have lately is to not *plan* as much. like, "i will do x then y then z while i'm doing p." there are always too many variables involved for most of my plans to happen. and i'm TERRIBLE at following any plan whatsoever. and when i do follow through on a plan i usually end up feeling like i just wasted a bunch of energy following a plan and not engaging with the task at hand.

there was that recent article in the NYT about decision fatigue, and it helped me partly understand a lot of the anxiety i felt several years ago when i was in that position (taking on far too much, and doing well, things on a serious upswing). I was constantly tired, trying to keep all the different balls in the air, and thus, felt like i was too tired to make the best decisions, that i was forgetting something, or doing things in a half-assed manner that would eventually catch up to me. And because things were going well, I had this fear that it was "too good to be true" and i kept feeling/seeing signs that it was all gonna fall to shit.

I don't know if that's what you're going through.

But, in terms of what helped:

- having a "just get it over with" mentality -- if someone is gonna say "no," if there's gonna be bad news, i'd rather know sooner rather than be super anxious anticipating it

- trying to focus on what i could do, what was within my power - rather than fretting about stuff i had no control over

- corny "positive thinking" exercises - like with your landlord example (i totally had that "oh shit, he's gonna evict us!" sinking feeling every time we got a call or note from the landlord), imagine that it's something normal and innocuous.

sleep, exercise. eat the right food, read

these are pretty much the very simple things that I fail to do and then get out of sorts. for staples, they're really hard to adhere to.

Thanks guys,

Yeah I'm sure it comes from somewhere, but it's a relatively recent phenom. for me, probably coinciding with grad school and working three jobs while studying full time and trying to find time to make my own work. I'd inevitably end up working for pretty demanding people who would call me at all hours asking sometimes (to them, at least) relatively simple things, but it was the sccumulation of these demands that has meant that now I screen most of my calls and leave emails sitting unread for weeks, because I am kind of afraid that their contents will throw a spanner in what should otherwise be a manageable schedule. The reality is never usually that bad, and in procrastinating I of course make it worse and make my own actions harder to explain.

As for the loans, yeah, they are a big deal. I went to a VERY expensive school in order to learn how to do a VERY expensive thing, and hence my loans are like those NYT horror stories you see every week. I did my best to offset them by working other jobs (AND I got a half scholarship) but they are still brutal. I am figuring out IBR and planning on maybe trying for Public Service Forgiveness, but who knows.

I am probably less anxious then many of the people on this thread and certainly coping better than I did 2/3 years ago, I just always feel on the brink. Hopefully that is deeply subjective and not true. But sometimes I totally feel like yeah let's buy a house somewhere cheap and quiet and get easy jobs and stay home and cook a lot and just fucking avoid the outside world. Probably not going to happen because I think I tend to thrive on being busy, just only to an extent.