Severe Anxiety

hey kinder, it wouldn't hurt to get a checkup, but the heart racing thing from stress just happens sometimes. It's hard not to pay attention, which prolongs it. A while ago, I went through a whole bunch of tests for this because it was happening all the time, and found out there was nothing physically wrong, but spending a couple weeks worrying that I might have a heart condition & not being able to stop the racing was not pleasant. I would say def cut back on caffeine and alcohol and sugar, especially in the evening. Weirdly, sometimes if you cough it will settle down, or focusing on some other movement like tapping your fingers together can take your mind off it and then it goes back to normal.

When I get racy and panicky, which mostly happens at work, I put my headphones on with one of Brian Eno's ambient albums - Music for Airports, Amnient 1-2-3 etc. They really, really help. His ambient music is so calming and focussed.

Walking/cycling change of environment (preferably a Park or some greenery).

Sometimes it doesn't seem to be having any effect whilst I'm out, but I feel better when I get back.

Thanks all, this is good!
Muscle memory thing and coughing both otm!
ZS I have a driving test in a few weeks, maybe I will try your advice then?
Tomorrow I should hopefully be able to address one of the things so I'll see if anything improves then. It doesn't help that I'm the world's most impatient person so I get antsy if I know I have to do something but I can't do it for a while.

ZS I have a driving test in a few weeks, maybe I will try your advice then?

irl lol

well, you didn't perform so well on the parallel parking portion of the exam, but your guttural scream is magnificent!

hey kinder, it wouldn't hurt to get a checkup, but the heart racing thing from stress just happens sometimes. It's hard not to pay attention, which prolongs it. A while ago, I went through a whole bunch of tests for this because it was happening all the time, and found out there was nothing physically wrong, but spending a couple weeks worrying that I might have a heart condition & not being able to stop the racing was not pleasant. I would say def cut back on caffeine and alcohol and sugar, especially in the evening. Weirdly, sometimes if you cough it will settle down, or focusing on some other movement like tapping your fingers together can take your mind off it and then it goes back to normal.

Daria otm. I went through the same thing a couple of months back -- my heart was fine, but fixating on it or worrying about it just made things worse. Cutting back on sugar and caffeine helped me out a lot.

Roommate from upthread has been broken up with by her b/f and I'm not sure how this is going to go. Turns out she was on anti-depressants as well as meds for bipolar, and her doctor let her stop it all at the same time, on the cusp of grad school. Insane.

I've had the heart race thing only through work stress or relationship stress, and only first thing in the morning - it starts about 0.0000001 secs after I wake up and won't stop until I get up. Haven't had it happen in a while, but it's horrible. Good luck with getting rid of it, Kinder, everyone's advice here sounds very sensible.

^^^I have also had the waking-up-with-heart-racing thing. It gets better as the day goes on, a fact that I try to remember in the moment. 99% of the time I'm feeling OK by the time I've showered/commuted/settled in at work. The other 1% is what xanax is for.

Oh but my protip is that having everything laid out and ready to go for the next morning--clean towels, every bit of necessary clothing/accessories laid out, coffee maker set to auto-start, car gassed up--helps ease the discomfort somewhat. But it is still damned uncomfortable!

That's a good bit of advice whether or not you're getting the wake-up anxiety. Morning prep, when I actually do it, always makes me feel pretty good in general, makes it easier to go to sleep, and makes my morning a lot better.

otm

Yes, my anxiety & phobia workbook has a bit about time management. I am always underestimating how long it will take to do things and running around all harried. Nbd for a long time, but I think it caught up with me always being like aaaggghh!

^^ this is my life too.

Unbelievably, heart racing happened to me this morning for the first time in about 18 months. Did I do that to myself just by posting/thinking about it? Very stressful day today, so probably not.

I got so mentally unbalanced and had a middle of the night brain anxiety thing last Thursday and ended up calling in sick to work on Friday. All the advice here is pretty good.

Z S otm about the joys of guttural screams in a car, although I can't speak as to its efficacy. I've been doing this on the rare occasion for years!

i've been doing some reading about OCD lately, since i'm wondering if i have a form of it. not compulsions as much as obsessive/fixating thoughts about really horrible stuff that intrude on my thought process at inopportune times and make me feel really anxious and awful about myself. i just read a comic book about a character who suffers from this, and it hit pretty close to home for me. it doesn't affect my life too horribly (unlike previous bouts of generalized anxiety), but it will often catch me at a moment when i'm happy or content, and then instead of being happy or content, i just wonder why i am so awful.

You're not awful; that does sound like OCD. I've had intrusive thoughts about self-harm. I have NO INTEREST in doing this, but it crosses my mind that it's POSSIBLE and then I get freaked out. Thing you've got to realize is these thoughts occasionally flicker across almost everyone's mind from time to time, just most people brush it off or maybe don't even notice it. Just because you think it doesn't mean it's going to happen, and it doesn't make you a bad person. I think people who suffer OCD tend to overvalue their thoughts.

yup ocd. what a shit show. tends to jump in right when you're most content, attacks "what you value most"

so how do you deal with OCD? are there CBT-like techniques that help? i guess i've had this my whole life - it just seems different than my fear-based anxiety. i feel afflicted by anxiety like i'd feel afflicted by illness, but the OCD stuff seems more like it's just my worthless, disgusting self being worthless and disgusting. in other words, anxiety is a problem i have, and this other stuff is just who i am.

i mean, i can identify with ocd a bit -- my general philosophy is don't worry too much about it unless it gets in the way of other things i want to do. when that happens, i check myself (however necessary) and so far i have wound up ok.

do i think this could last forever? honestly, maybe. i hope so! it is kind of who i am. obsessing about things is fun for me in most ways! the c and the d are the things that need to be checked. everyone's different though so obvs ymmv.

OCD is (can be dealt with as) an illness, too. If you can move compulsions from the "worthless & disgusting self" category to the illness/pathology/maladaption category, that's a start.

(but don't move those compulsions to the "do I have a life-threatening illness?" category, because lemme tell you from personal experience that shit will drive you insane)

how to deal with OCD.

well there are a few things. 1 is you have to realize that some wheels are just going to turn. like, you don't have a choice. certain obsessions will just turn round and round in your brain and you have to let them. help what you can change as opposed to trying to change what you cannot.

OCD is very, very personal, so dealing is v different for everybody. some CBT mechanisms work more universally than others. 1 is embracing imperfection. a lot of people dealing with this are obsessed with perfection and beauty and so training yourself to find the beauty in imperfection, disorder and ugliness can be crucial. those things are beautiful too. say the wrong thing, mess up your hair and act like a total goofball when you need to. it helps.

other than that i'm still tryin to figure it out so i'll keep you posted

appropriately enough i have been going thru a series of extreme OCD attacks for the past couple of days, and i was hoping to wake up on the day of thanksgiving feeling thankful and free of anxiety but that didn't happen. i am at a loss. every time i think i may have a good go at a reasonable day my brain flips out. and at this point i am just tired, all i want is to lie in bed. but it's thanksgiving and there are people coming here and as much as i feel like a broken record, and as sick as i am of all of this, i really just don't know how i'm going to put on a face and be full of mirth. pretty sure my only answer is to get tanked.

you're gonna be ok, surm. take breaks from the people if you need to. hell, take a nap if you need one! <3

thanks sweetie. Ryan just reminded me to breathe and take it one step at a time, dunno why i always forget my own advice. i hope you are enjoying this feast of food!

You too! I am cooking up a storm, already full after breakfast, wondering if I can eat even 1/4 of the food I'm cooking. I have cursed the people from America's Test Kitchen already multiple times.

baby steps, surm <3 hope you make it thru okay

i made it thru, but i need to talk to my mom. i'll call her tomorrow.

goodgod my anxiety levels really shoot through the roof whenever i decide to sort out/find receipts etc for tax purposes + feeling like i'm The Most Disorganized Person in the World, who should have better systems for all this by now right. haha wrong. aaaagh! i need some preventative care in the form of organization, but that feels like kind of a mystery.

i almost cried but i didn't cry

might still cry

I haven't filed my 2012 taxes yet, how's that? And I'm not even a freelancer.

Take heart, young rrrobyn. You are a good person who knows things and is competent at life. Just maybe not this one little skill that you only need once a year anyway and can probably get by without.

in orbit otm

buck up, lil buckaroo

logically, it's cool
in my anxiety brain it's like zoopzoopzoopbraaaahurrrrr

but a good thing: i just called about an old govt money-owing thing that was a mistake on their part i'd never dealt with and they said it's all good, zero balance, not gone to collection or anything scary like that, owe nothing.
taking care of business, slowly but surely...

i let my desk get beyond crazy in the past couple of months but am dismantling the mountain...
thanks :)

when things really aren't going well in a longish-term (for a 22 year old at least) relationship, and you're constantly worried about money and having to work 55-60 hour weeks to cover rent/bills/food/life, and you're neglecting your MA (which is what has gotten you into the money worries, and then the stresses that brings to a relationship)...that's an ok time to feel horrible anxious all the time and live with a permanent sense of very real dread, right?

yeah

clear ur mind and stay focused on the ma though, it is the one non-transient thing that will get u out of this in time

which isnt to freight it like its ur one shot at life, just yknow it's learning and creativity and stuff, it's cool, dont look at it purely as a source of stress

my anxiety treatment involves thinking of something very simple to do, carving out a slice of time, and then doing it. even if it means going a few blocks away from my normal routine to sit reading the newspaper over coffee for half an hour. not as useful if your anxiety stems from a lack of having any sort of routine, but intentionally doing something trivial can be a break.

It's bad.

So bad that I almost called an ambulance for myself last night because I thought I was having a heart attack and I don't know what to do at this point. Either I actually have developed a heart condition which, you know, I guess I could have or I am more anxious than I've ever been before. I feel horrible and I'm really scared.

And now I feel dumb for even posting that.

medical advice or at least a therapist is pretty much your best option here.

don't feel dumb. it's ok.

x-post - I know. I see my therapist tomorrow. I just don't know what to do right now.

find some kind of task, even an organizational one that you can turn your attention to, or some kind of exercise or music or something to kind of immmerse yourself into. the more you sit and think about it the more you're going to feed the anxiety. without any meds or tools to help you, you just kind of need to shift gears for right now.

pull back out of that mindset however you can for right now, because it's sort of addictive, like an itch you can't stop scratching.

your brain is tell you that you're under attack, and your body is responding to that feeling. whatever you can do to tell yourself you're okay *right now*, whatever you can do to try to relax, will help for the moment. but you need to try as hard as you can to not relive that experience from last night.

*telling you

Ime cognitive behavioral therapy is a big help managing those physical symptoms - learning to control your breathing etc.

Can you get out and go for a walk? That has always been my go-to emergency treatment. It usually only helps the duration of the walk but at least its some respite.