Severe Anxiety

whole fucking planet is anxious, it's 2012

otm

That said, I've pretty much been anxious since 1977. My parents' bookshelves are littered with titles such as "Coping with the Fearful Child". I can't remember a time when I was never not anxious so I'm sorta hoping that either age or years of medication has altered my brain chem so that is no longer that the case.

¯\(°_o)/¯

i'm not generally anxious but situationally (esp w/ work) i can get really worked up
mostly though i'm just a high energy person who sometimes doesn't know what to do with the energy so it gets sent to the wrong place and turns into anxiety

like when food turns into smelly trash

anxiety is a thing that i've always lived with but never realized was a problem or sought treatment until last year when i realized it was and i did. and that's been helpful. got a very mild ativan prescription which i rarely use but makes me feel less anxious in general just knowing it's there as a break glass in case of emergency thing.

Yes. I have an RX for that I rarely use but feel similarly about.

for Ativan, I mean

it's difficult to gauge what is an abnormal level of anxiety

That is true Conrad, it can be.

similarly what is an abnormal level of fatigue

are you my age e? 35?

77!!

For me it has not been difficult to recognize that I have had an *abnormal* amount of anxiety. The physical symptoms, the cognitive impact, and the fact that all of this has lasted for more than the usual day/week or two of "normal anxiety" (for me) made it clear that this was outside the norm. My issue was figuring out what was the best thing to do about it, which is hard to do when the ole brain ain't working in the usual calm, rational, analytical way. In an attempt to find relief, I was thinking OMG MUST QUIT JOB NOW or OMG MUST RENOUNCE MODERN LIFE AND JOIN MONGOLIAN NOMADIC TRIBE or, just as bad, having what I think of as "hamster on wheel brain" and just having nonsensical thoughts spin and spin and spin and spin while meanwhile my stomach was a wreck and I was about to break a bunch of teeth for the jaw clenching and I felt on the verge of tears 94/7 even though I could not actually manage to cry.

Today was better, btw. Delaying the drastic (quit job, join mongolian nomads) and first giving a doc who knows me well a chance to lay out a more rational path forward was a good step, yay me. And it was very encouraging for him to take an almost blase, "oh no probs, we can totally fix this" attitude was rather helpful, actually.

always have been a pretty calm guy, probably through blissful ignorance? but lately as I've come to appreciate ~life~ my anxiety has been skyrocketing - lot of dry coughing. haven't actually thrown up food yet but maybe come close. the worst part is just, like, being conscious, knowing that consciously you're not thinking of stressful things, but the anxiety's like this background machine hum that just stays there and won't go away no matter what switches you turn on or off in your brain.

my mom, I think, was diagnosed with some kind of anxiety disorder and given a script - as I grow older, I am turning more and more into my mom

I'm sorry you are feeling that, dayo. How long has it been going on?

for the past two weeks or so - those on the board who know a little bit about me irl may know the cause. idk I'll be laying in bed and I'll just think of all the shit I haven't done and then the heartrate goes up, nervous chemicals go out, etc.

V, I am indeed. My birthday isn't until the end of Dec so I'm still 34 but yes, 77! It's the best year to be born imo. :)

Quincie I'm glad to hear you're feeling better today and Dayo I'm sad to hear you're not. Anxiety can go screw imo.

IANAD but my own personal yardstick for "within normal range of life ups and downs" and "something I should think about getting a professional opinion about" is 2+ weeks. Like, I've marked it down on my calendar before.

Works for upper respiratory infections as well as mental health issues ime.

Sounds pretty, well, sound to me.

The best way to vanquish anxiety is to crush the culture that creates it.

i have kind of bad work anxiety right now. like dreading every single day of work and not wanting to return phone calls or anything. but my commute is long (yeah this helps a lot ugh) and i can never get out of bed to exercise in the morning, and then i feel worse/more guilty about it. if i exercise at night i am overcoming a great deal of tiredness to do so and that part also makes me feel bad. i get insane dreams from exercising at night but they have never bothered me, i kind of like them. this sux.

OMG MUST RENOUNCE MODERN LIFE AND JOIN MONGOLIAN NOMADIC TRIBE

anxiety ... or reasonable response to modern society

harbl do we share brains?

phones and email kill me!!

yeah I think I am psychologically unable to respond to an email unless I put myself in the right frame of mind

OMG MUST RENOUNCE MODERN LIFE AND JOIN MONGOLIAN NOMADIC TRIBE

We argue the opposite! Embrace "modern life" to its fullest and reject all vestiges of tribalism, biocentrism, and pre-modernity.

late to the party here, but yes, that CBT book justine recommended is really good. you can do many of the exercises for panic attacks just for general anxiety - the only difference (for me) was where it says to put down the worst case scenario you can imagine, it's less "that i will have a heart attack and die" and more "that i will become paralyzed with anxiety and be unable to move/think/work/etc." the whole process of conditioning your mind to spring from the worst case scenario to the much more likely alternatives has been the one thing that has really helped me cope over the past couple years. i still take lorazepam when i fly (although i'm hopefully going to do a test flight in a few weeks without it, if i feel like i can handle it), but i don't take anything for the general anxiety (though an SSRI has been recommended).

Got so pissed/stressed/anxious when I found out my car that I've spent about two months covering the repair costs for will need even more work before it passes the regular air quality check that I drove straight back home, grabbed my gym bag, and headed to yoga class at the gym tonight. I haven't done this in months.

also, the section on core beliefs is pretty good too. for instance, even though i've been anxious my whole life, it had never occurred to me that there's this one core belief that runs underneath all my other anxiety that simply says "i don't have the strength to manage this." pinpointing it like that then gave me a ground zero to work from to try to retrain my thought process to recognize and refute it whenever it popped up in my cycle of anxious thoughts was a major breakthrough. i have spent hours on flights just writing different variations of "that's bullshit, you ARE strong enough to manage this" in a notebook, and while that wasn't the most pleasant thing, it also was time i didn't spend feeling unbearably anxious about flying.

i have the anxiety & phobia workbook. i did exercises from it in a depression/anxiety workshop last year and they definitely helped while i was doing them. i never really kept up with the exercises though. i still get anxiety attacks, usually when i'm catastrophizing a situation. i wish i could reposition my thinking as "this will go well" instead of "i will screw this up."

still get anxious in large crowds, manage my anxiety by reassuring myself that no one is paying attention to me and I don't have to keep touching my face because that's a terrible way to hide, they can see around your hand

ytth and get bent I thank you for putting out the lack of confidence thing and how it fuels the anxiety. Oddly, I feel pretty confident and capable and logical and all that other "I can totally DEAL WITH IT" on a regular basis; it is only with this newish bout of anxiety stuff that I am feeling doubtful and less-than-competent and all like "oh fuck what do I do I don't even trust myself to decide" stuff. If I can get back to regular old me, I'd feel fine with stressful stuff thrown my way--I've rolled with it kinda badass style before. But why am I unable to access that inner badass now?

IDK, but thanks for all on this thread for providing a really great place to learn/unload/empathize/etc.

I think I will buy that anxiety book. I developed claustrophobia in the last few years and now I freak out in tunnels. I can reasonably avoid elevators and airplanes give me generalized anxiety but it hasn't gotten panicky yet (getting worse though) but I cannot control the anxiety when I'm in a tunnel. Ugh. My sympathies with everyone's anxiety issues.

I also do that thing that someone mentioned up thread (harbl maybe? On phone so can't see) where I prefer to work out in am but haven't been able to get up early enough and it initiates this cycle of guilt and self recriminations.

quincie, at the risk of being one of those horrible armchair diagnosis people, i would venture that maybe there's a deeper core belief in response to which you've developed your badass style. which is great, since that's a super healthy way to manage anxiety. but if it gets so bad that that response stops being able to manage 100% of the strain, anxiety results. it might just be a matter of shoring up your inner badass strain response, which is certainly a better place to start than from scratch.

xp claustrophobia is the worst. i developed it after a traumatic event, and when i was at my lowest point, i could barely handle driving, since tunnels were unbearably scary, moreso if there was traffic. ditto bridges (fear of heights) and raised freeways (fear of heights, but also feeling them move up and down if a truck passed me triggered my phobia of planes). and fear of being caught in a collapsing building in an earthquake got so bad that sometimes it felt like i spent most of my workday in the safety of my parked car talking to justine on the phone rather than in my office building, which i was certain would collapse at any moment. ugh. 2010 was a difficult year in that regard.

the worst part of the panic book is that it tells you you can't avoid stuff that scares you anymore. like, if you're scared of elevators, you're supposed to find the MOST crowded elevator to ride.

mh, I had not thought along those lines, but now I will! I feel that I have somehow lost touch with my formerly reliable coping mechanisms, which took the form of "wtf, this isn't rocket science, and I'm not going to waste time on shit that is beyond my sphere of influence, and the rest I can DEAL WITH so wtf, why worry?"

I would like to summon that thing I use to have; I know it exists!

Oh god. I'm at the emergency rm (sliced finger) for stitches and this girl was just brought in with a roach in her ear and it's kind of horrifying I would not be as cool as she is being and just hearing all this through the curtain is giving me a crapload of anxiety and paranoia

Agh they got it out and she looked in the ear and was like oh the wings are still in there

I need to sleep with earplugs forever

I got anxious in a mass crowd a few years back, but it had more to do with whether I identified with the people or not. I noticed that at the event I was surrounded by a lot of yuppie/upper-middle-class-types which could have set off my class issues and financial/life-expentancy anxieties, but when I went to a drunken awards ceremony later that night at a packed local comic shop filled with people I either knew or identified with I greatly enjoyed myself and had no anxiety.

Also, why just be morbid when you can be comorbid?

This a reassuring thread to read btw y'all.

I get anxious over the dumbest things: walking under operating cranes. Driving over high, long bridges (I dont drive, so being a passenger makes it worse cos lack of control). Heck being passenger in a car in general.

And lack of control over sitsus like work where I can get worked up into one of those defensive "no no no its NOT MY FAULT I DIDNT DO THIS" stupid and make myself look bad with defensive, barbed responses. Had a work situ blow up recently that was a slap in the face in that regard but was helpful, too - to have it shoved in my face made me go "ok shit. I need to be more aware of my actions at work" and Ive done a lot better since then.

Now, I just need to get past my "I am gonna be ALOEN FOREVERERRR" fears... oh and stop having dreams about nuclear blasts and planes crashing :/

I had to ring in sick this morning, after going into a crying jag on my first call. Just fucking a+.

aw Zora :(

Every day brings a new anxiety. Ive never been particularly scared of heights but am in nosebleed seats and really felt some panic rising. Some dudes sat in front of me and it went away but when I went to the bathroom I felt compelled to virtually hug the seats while walking out.

I am feeling SO MUCH BETTER.

Thanking u (minimal, temporary) meds, CBT, spousal and boss support, ilx.

Hope other anxious ilxors get some relief.

Anyone else working through the Anxiety & Phobia workbook by Bourne? I have trouble keeping up with exercises with no one to be accountable for but myself. I can't afford the intensive blast of CBT/exposure therapy that I so desperately need. I do see a therapist for dirt cheap thanks to a non-profit that helps musicians and artist-types get mental health help, but our appointments are infrequent and honestly not structured/activity- based enough to do any good. Like, I intellectually understand the basis of these things and why they're illogical. I need structure and homework. Of course it IS nice to at least be able to vent to someone who does get it and doesn't think I'm crazy.

Just out of curiosity, are you in Athens, GA? Or nearby?

...yes?