Severe Anxiety

at 29, i am finally coming to terms with career anxiety. seeing a lot of my friends doing really well, doing amazing things, was really bumming me out cuz i felt like i had zero skills/knowledge/talent. stuck in retail/hospitality, i was freaking out that this was the rest of my life and it was just a miserable thought, but recently i've accepted that yes, i probably will spend my working life in retail, but hey i can actually manage a store and earn some not-awful money, and it's something i'm pretty decent at doing. it sucks, indeed, but the fact is that someone has to do it - not everyone gets to be the talented painter or the original and striking novelist. part of what helped me in accepting this as my 'fate' was finding an artsy thing i love doing and am a little bit good at; it's not something i could go into full time in the foreseeable future, but it's satisfying and i can make a little money at it eventually.

also ronan completely otm

ok i am having a status anxiety moment over a guy i am "friends" with on facebook (dc networky type who happened to be watching monday night football at the same bar, thus is now "friends" with everyone there who were all druuuunk). so i am like, jealous of a republican and a cowboys fan! also v debonair, polite, good looking, and knows barack obama, and throwing a party at his v swank and spacious apartment to which i could theoretically RSVP being a "friend" on facebook, but, surely wouldn't know anyone & would feel totally out of place. sure, that stuff isn't really what matters in life and blah blah blah but it's like daaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn.

if you were to go and be observant and then write a full report for us i am pretty sure i would rather read that than most new novels reviewed by the new yorker.

I'm not sure whether it's not healthier having that status anxiety in your 20s than in your 30s, because it might motivate you. I pretty much coasted through my 20s - not that I accomplished nothing, but I was and am nowhere near being on the cover of college alumni magazine status, or even a sidebar article. The wtf have I been doing with my life, look at all these people who were my peers in school being successful thing just hit me a couple years ago when my next door neighbor in the dorms freshman year of college got a MacArthur Genius award. Part of it was doing work and being discliplined creatively, but a significant part of it, which is the case for a lot of the famous novelists, musicians, and so forth is being in the right place at the right time. In other words, luck and careerist strategy play a major role.

Oh hey, Max, here's another calming thought, kinda related to something I was saying above. I don't know what you were like growing up, obviously, but I'd be willing to bet that at some point in the past 10 years, you were a person who'd have thought that living in Brooklyn, writing for arts magazines, having a great girlfriend, etc. were great things that you'd be 100% psyched to be doing. But of course it's totally natural and healthy that we keep revising our goals upward, so you get to that point and you're more anxious about living in a better place, or writing for better things, or relationships being complicated, or whatever else.

Two things. One: part of what I meant about accomplishing things without noticing is that as you get older your life changes less rapidly and strikingly and you feel less completely disconnected from who you used to be -- so you start to notice and take some joy in the things you do accomplish just by going around on your everyday grind. Two: this is maybe an argument for taking a while now and then and thinking about old goals and being satisfied about them, right? A few months ago, I found an album I thought I'd lost years back, something I used to listen to all the time in college, and I was walking around the city listening to it and thinking ... you know, if college-me were observing current-me right now, he'd probably be pretty amazed and really looking forward to this. Even just for the shoes and jacket and owning a decent guitar. Which is kind of a relaxing thought to keep in mind, you know?

there's always the not-very relaxing thought that it'll probably be at least 40 years before you're at risk for alzheimer's and regress to an infantile stage.

I have weird lapses of worrying intensely about a problem so that I am unable to concentrate. It goes away and then comes back again.

hey u know what is just great for alleviating anxiety, besides internet people giving u good life advice, is 60-degree fridays in march

it doesn't make you anxious about global warming?

so i've been thinking quite a bit about this, and i think what nabisco said upthread is otm - about how sometimes you don't realise that you actually *have* accomplished stuff. it got me thinking about what my 21-22yr old self would think of what i'm doing now, and i suddenly realised that i would have actually been pretty impressed, and quite surprised. at that age i was a college dropout, working as a waitress, absolutely no plans for the future and nothing going on outside of working/sleeping/drinking. in the last 12 months i finished my degree, moved countries, started a small press - 3 things that i would NEVER have believed myself capable of just a few years ago.

career/status anxiety is horrible and crippling, and i don't actually think there is much that can ease it; the only thing is to hang onto the cliched-but-true saying about how the only certainty we have in life is that things never stay the same.

I went to law school partly out of this sort of anxiety, and haha, jokes on me, law school is a whole NEW world of anxiety. The school itself is, by nature, a kind of beehive of anxious buzzing, and further, the LEGAL job market sucks right now so sometimes it feels like it's for nothing. I did really well so far but I feel a little like I'm jumping from disintegrating piece of ground to disintegrating piece of ground. Am I any better off than my friends who decided to become librarians, financially and/or spiritually? I guess time will tell.

in no uncertain terms, i'm falling apart at the moment. usually i am a bastion of health despite my not so good eating habits, but i got mono a few months ago, and as usual, i became a hypochondriac. kept fearing rupturing my spleen, thinking i have disorders since then.

i've been overanxious my entire life, which has caused me to ruin so many things and hampered most of my relationships. but its at its all time worst now.

i started having hand tremors one day and it caused me to freak out as i felt circulation in my leg as well. then i got a massive headache, which an MRI revealed was just chronic sinusitis. but at this point i was already convinced i was dying and one night when i was winded, started taking over my breathing, and then had a major panic attack at a restaurant in front of my g/f and friend. the next day i went to the hospital and of course everything was fine.

i'm fine when i keep busy but now my sleep has been disrupted since, i have occasional tremors...and i can't function without xanax now. which ive never had to take before. i'm always miserable now and spend my entire days fearing my g/f is going to leave me again and that i'm going to spend most of my days alone...despite the fact that i have more friends than i can count.

i just fucking hate feeling like a different human being. has anybody done group therapy for this before? what can i do...i'm fucking losing myself slowly

Sounds like panic attacks, but I am not a professional! I have found it is difficult to get treatment and a proper diagnosis for real panic attacks - I had to check myself into a hospital before I could get the right medication.

I had group therapy, I have found it is MUCH better for panic disorder or depression than one on one, and you make friends, the group leaders are usually terrific! Groups are difficult to come by, both times I went to group therapy, again, it was through a psychiatrist instead of just answering an ad.

My medication isn't helping much, it makes me tired and depressed, only exercise seems to help.

ive never done group therapy but i have family members who do, and who find it incredibly helpful

i did a bit of group therapy but got bored of it as ppl would turn up and basically repeat more or less minor variations on the same problem week after week. im sure they felt it all v genuinely but i didnt really see how it was going to be that productive, apart from giving them an outlet to release that anxiety. going every so often i think - for me at least - is prob better than making it a regular part of your schedule. plus, if you happen to be feeling better one week and less positive, other ppl still feeling nervy and anxious will probably get annoyed by your newfound combative approach to anxiety.

I'm not really sure therapy - group or individual - would benefit me. I pretty much know where my fucking anxiety problems (and to some degree migraines) come from. I've been advised to take some meds (friends, partner,...) but I'm pretty fucking lazy about my own (mental/physical) health. :-(

going to therapy and getting medded up was probably the best thing i could've done for myself. was 15/16, rly socially anxious, depression that spun off from that.

i remember doing group for a few months. kind of a general anxiety and depression group, so some nam vets with ptsd, some garden variety depressos, one girl kind of my age with pretty severe ocd. didn't really get buddy buddy with anyone especially since there were such a variety of age groups represented, but it was helpful to a limit to feel not weird.

still get social anxiety at concerts and parties every now and again, though, i don;t think that will ever go away. but the severity of the incidents has diminished immeasurably.

yeah ime just having one or i guess several people to talk about yr anxiety with who are otherwise totally disconnected from your life can make a big difference in the frequency and severity of those kinds of feelings. even if you know what your anxiety is about, even if you know that it is anxiety.

most of my anxiety now is whether or not i'm "accomplishing enough" even tho i am married, have a hella stable job, and a puppy

Funnily enough I never got social anxiety at gigs. I went alone. Of course I wasn't really plastered with a gigantic smile on my face - oh look at me I am so happy to be alone at this gig - but I didn't really care. (It was also to do with this compulsive need to show that I, a woman, could attend gigs alone.) Parties? That's another story. There was this time a guy literally stood me up at this gigantic party... just fucking LEFT ME and I knew NOONE. I was petrified. I could have crawled in a corner, but I think I was also too mad and shocked really.

M Bison, are you my alter ego? I never feel as though I accomplish enough. I too am married, have a great life, two adorable kids, great husband,... Yet I am never at ease. :-(

not sure what it is exactly, of my friends and peers who have gone onto big thangs poppin, there is zero jealousy and 100% pride that i knew em when. i think it's mostly like the things i am passionaite about and have some leve of acumen i'm not ALREADY THERE which is stupid. i try to think "ok, steve reich didn't really start until he was like in his 30's" but then i'm like "FUCK, STEVE REICH!!!"

like upthread nabsico talkin bout just go things and see if things happen, i feel lke i'm only half-assing it making a bunch of demoes that no one will hear (still have never performed live in a band or otherwise).

music is just one instance, thats more of a hobby at this point. but professionally i'm looking at becoming an educator and later going into education policy and i feel like ive let myself stagnate on that front.

Last couple of weeks I had MAJOR anxiety about my driving exam. How fucking pathetic is that? 36 and being afraid of a fucking driving test? I mean, I was literally freaking out (like in the middle of the night). I feel such a loser for being so afraid about a fucking little exam. But I just felt that I was so horribly moronic that I'd never fucking pass that exam.

oh god i forgot all about my driving anxiety, pretty much hate cars on principle and pretty much have to drive 24/7 to even check the mail in texas

anybody else here take Effexor? anybody ever had it stop working so well out of nowhere? :(. minor tremors in hands and feet are back, which had been absent for months.

eurgh. so i've developed severe anxiety now, due to a recent stomach problem that's been playing on my mind. no sleep, racing thoughts, burning arms. It's just fucking awful.

I've booked in for therapy later this week.

just wanted to share.

sorry ste, i hate being anxious more than anything. i hope you can get some rest. sometimes really deep guttural breathing helps a little. try to remember it's temporary, it will pass in the end.

thank you

Ste, hugs, this must be awful. I have been taking drops of valerian which has helped somewhat. but I suspect this might not be enough in your case. You can take it in lager doses for sleeping better.

ja take care dude

thanks guys, this therapy thing can't come soon enough.

what a horrible condition, i feel like my whole mind and body is falling apart.

Are you also having the stomach problem looked into?

I was going to post this under a fake username to avoid embarrassment, but the logout link is refusing to actually log me out, nobody here knows me in real life, and I've probably dumped enough baggage here for people to already think I'm a whiny emo shit, so fuck it:

I am having recurring self-loathing panic attacks that are essentially anxiety about anxiety, and can't stop thinking about how I let my social problems ruin my entire life so far. I failed out of school, I have no friends, I've never met anyone who cares about the things I love or gotten involved with anything and I have absolutely no idea how to. I have no fucking idea what to do with myself. I'm getting professional help and it's not doing any good.

and lo, i have killed another thread with my bullshit

Nah. But it sounds like you are going to have to break it down into smaller steps than just "fixing my whole wrecked life", or you will never come to grips with it. Start by fixing a nice salad and work your way up from there. Later, you can work on something tougher, like remembering what makes you happy.

you should join us on the 1p3 emo blog thread of neverending misery

Where's the fun in that?

I just read these two posts by you and you seem pretty alright and self-aware enough to be able to navigate through whatever nonsense life presents. I hope you feel better soon-- dealing with anxiety suuuucks.

The obvious response to your complaint about the pro help that you are getting is for people here to say "well, look into other options". And they would be right-- it's a waste of your time to deal with psychologists/psychiatrists who are not actually helping you!

As far as social problems go, hey look-- there are so many horrible people in the world who make out just fine. Some of them make it into high political offices, are CEO's of obscenely successful businesses, etc.... I imagine that you're "better" than a huge percentage of those people. You're probably being unduly harsh on yourself. I'm sure that in reality you have friends, etc. At the risk of sounding patronizing, this particular asshole would advise you to chill the fuck out, enjoy your life, enjoy being you, do the things that you need to do for YOU, and don't obsess over the bullshit ways that other people might respond to you. nothing is as concrete as it seems, everything changes on a dime

enjoy your life. if you need to be a horrible person or a drug addict or a criminal in order to do so, then do that! if you need to be a "nice person" or a popular person or a normal person or a successful person, or a mediocre person, then that is fine, too. it will sort itself out in the end. for real. Good luck and for fuck's sake, enjoy your life. No hand-wringing allowed...

ive been suffering from p severe panic attacks & one of the things that starts to happen is that i become anxious abt the possibility (inevitability) of having another attack - they essentially become self-reinforcing and self-amplifying. this is really p common fwiu

its really easy to feel narcissistic and self-obsessed w/ this stuff - you ending up spending a lot of time going in circles in your head ime - but thats really, really unhelpful. its a lot easier to type obv but keeping positive/perspective is really the only way to start minimizing the effect the attacks have on your life/mindset & will allow u to start the addressing the underlying problems.

like ste upthread, i have anxiety-related stomach trouble a lot. i have a general checkup coming soon with my new doctor, but i think she'll just tell me to "stop being anxious."

xpost

OK. Just to be a bit more helpful...

When your life seems to be falling apart and you seem to have no exit of any sort whatsoever, except to plunge ever deeper into the miasma of failure upon failure, the root of the problem is (I find) a deep horror of taking the exit you can see just as plain as day.

And no, I don't mean suicide. I mean some otherwise perfectly admissable action that will appear unthinkable to you, because you have defined it as such. Something like: disappointing your parents by not living up to some expectation, or disappointing yourself by accepting that you really aren't going to succeed at a cherished ambition, or disappointing your spouse, or your gf, or your bf. Or just facing up to the dismal prospect of earning money the hard way for the foreseeable future.

It is never easy to rid oneself of these bugbears. They appear insurmountable. Just acknowledging their existance makes you want to shriek with grief and pain. So, my advice is, go ahead. DO some shrieking. It will make you feel better, if only when you find out you don't actually explode or melt or die, or whatever horrid fate awaited you on the other side of feeling this shit. You survive it. Then you can start thinking a bit more clearly as the fog of dread clears away.

And if it is a really nasty, very personal, ongoing catastrophe, just realize that it will take a long time to get fixed, and you'd better not waste any more time putting it off.

Good luck.

I'd like to put a stronger pitch in for meditation. Severe anxiety & major depression for the last few years, and treatment included counselling, CBT and Prozac, but there were times when the only thing that enabled me to breathe properly was meditation. Specifically loving-kindess meditation. I'm not a buddhist, but that shit worked. Still works, but I don't need it so much any more. If you're struggling to control your panic with breathing techniques, just think of it as a structured breathing session with added don't-hate-people sprinkles on top.

Drugs made me spacey (though I don't regret taking them), counselling only got me more wound up until I could start taking action - but was good in the longer term.

Aimless' advices look good to me BUT I have to disagree about the last bit. Addressing the issues that are making you feel this way is 2nd stage, IMO. Before you can do anything constructive you need to convince yourself you can survive this, that you will be OK, even that you are capable of feeling OK. Look out for moments that you feel a natural sense of calm, enjoy them, put yourself in situations where you feel calm as often as possible - build up gradually. Instead of focussing on the anxiety all the time and trying to control it, focus on the calm.

Then, yeah, don't try to fix everything at once. Pick one thing and work on that. If you happen to be able to identify the one terrifying thing that's halting your progress, great. Mostly, though, make time to relax - not just by *deciding* to chill out but by doing things that => relaxation whether yr hassled brain likes it or not.

All the best with it.

First night on yet another new medication (Remeron) and it isn't helping. I'm having these obsessive anxiety attacks every night now, and I've gone from sleeping poorly to barely sleeping at all. What's worst is that none of the dustractions and coping mechanisms that kept me relatively stable are working anymore- I just end up hating myself for wasting even more time.

I desperately want to try and fix things, but I have no clue where to start. I haven't made a friend in 15 years, I've never done ANYTHING social really, and I feel like a fucking freak whenever I'm put into any kind of situation where I have to interact with other people, including every single day at my job.

This is all self-indulgent whiny bullshit, and feel free to ignore it; I just needed to say it to someone.

Stop taking the Remeron and try another medication when you get the chance. (Man, I've been in that spot with the bad reactions to new meds - you just don't see that awfulness coming) I feel for ya, TT - I constantly have similar feelings, even down to not making any friends in many years and outright despising everyday interactions with people. Hopefully someone else here can give better advice about it.

(xpost, and i am not about to claim to be that someone...)

hi

I'm not going to say I'm in the exact same situation as you, but it's close, I think. Close enough to feel like I had to delurk, since I recognised a lot of the stuff that goes on in my own...well, I never really thought of them as anxiety attacks, cos I assumed anxiety attacks were very physical, irrational things whereas THE FEAR (that's what I call it) is real! and true! and based on facts! These facts are, admittedly, cherry-picked in order to demostrate to myself what a pathetic waste of space I am. But being v. socially isolated is genuinely terrifying, it'd be daft to pretend otherwise.

The terror gets counterproductive though. You're/we're human and it happens and it's there, and it's a useful sign that things need to change, but once it's made it's point and you've gotten all the insight that you can from it, the terror can go fuck itself. Those distractions and coping mechanisms you had? Don't hate yourself for using them! If it's a straight choice between watching old jpop videos on youtube or spending the night curled up in the foetal position crying becuse no-one ever has or ever will genuinely give a shit about me, (<=substitute your own distractions/demons here, obv.) then bring on the fucking jpop, cos at least that way I might eventually be able to muster up the strength to do something useful about the shitty situation that I'm in. The anxiety and the misery and the self-loathing are exhausting physically as well as mentally, and as such are probably a worse waste of time than whatever it was you were doing to cope.

There's a balance to be found between doing the kinda-pointless-but-not-really stuff and the necessary-life-improving-scary stuff, between eternal procrastination (I'm guessing you're no stranger to this? I'm not) and taking on more than you can handle, and I don't have much that's useful to say about it because I'm at this stage at the moment. I know, from books/advice threads/actual professional help, that it's good to work on small things, and you're meant to feel good about managing those small things, but - I don't know if this is normal or my own egotism - I tend to get all "you want me to make a freakin' salad? you're congratulating me for answering the phone? you think my problems will be solved by going for a walk? are you kidding me?" at people's suggestions. Even though I've found from experience that those things actually do help, and the idea is to set up a positive chain of events, and I probably need to get over myself a bit, so, I dunno. Am echoing all the exercise-and-5-a-day style advice above, even if I have trouble sticking to it myself. And it might be a good idea to research the meds - I think meds for this are a good idea, in principle, but I've had rough, manic-ish episodes on the ones I've tried. I know nothing about Remeron. Strictly IMO: if you're not sure it's doing any good, stick with it, but if you think it's making things worse you should see someone and try and get off it ASAP.

Professionals can help*, a bit, but I've been guilty in the past of expecting way too much from them and being incredibly passive, then getting angry and disillusioned when I didn't just "get better" because I took the pills and turned up to appointments like they asked me to. You have to look after yourself...actually, no. You have to roleplay, and be your own best friend/partner/brother/sister/parent/counsellor/coach/whoever it is that you need, who cares for this being called telephone thing whether he/she** cares about him/herself or not, and is determined to do whatever needs to be done to make your life livable. I'm pretty sure that, viewed from the outside, you're an okay human being. At least. And you've got into the situation you're in through bad luck, and maybe some defective coping mechanisms that were ultimately caused by bad luck, rather than some kind of unique and hideous innate defect. (Hell, you've managed to hold down a job, it's more than some of us fuckups can deal with.)

Please, look after yourself. You're not alone. I'm going to try and come back to this thread, but if I don't it's cos my own social anxiety applies to the internet too, and I think I've just done the ilx equivalent of running naked through the high street. I think this is peak time in the UK as well, so...that's what I get for taking so long to type this. ah well.

*ask me later, tho. am going to see someone about CBT for *almost this exact thing* *this very evening* and I have a gut feeling that it's going to go horribly, horribly badly. she already thinks i'm fucking weird from the preliminary phone call. i can tell.

**i don't know, and it'd feel stalkery to check.

I had a massive (for me anyway) panic attack on the train a week or so ago. It was just bloody awful and exceptionally silly, really. I saw some security guys on the platform and I just had this feeling I had to get off the train cause something was gonna happen. Really awful. But, y'know, I had it and I sort of dealt with it. Or rather it just went on and then subsided. I had been taking these light herbal drops but forgot about'em for a few days. Don't know it's connected. I think it's more the overwhelming feeling I have lately. I tackle things which I feel are not good for me: driving (I always think I'll have an accident), knitting (yeah yeah I know how fucking ridiculous is that?), job, parenting,... I think what contributes is the feeling I can never really "check out": there's always a new day and I have to go through it.

I think the best thing is to accept I'm just fucked up. lol

Knitting is hardcore. You are literally dicing with...RSI.

I'm never quite sure how much of it all even shows, to the outside world - I must have been around some panic attacks, the odds are pretty big, but I'm not sure I've ever noticed. This could just be due to my own solipsism, tho...I get scared of zomgpeople! rather than situations, and I know I come off as nervous and awkward and standoffish and weird, but I'm not sure to what extent, or whether it's as bad as how I actually feel or not. There's usually just enough to start up a feedback loop of self-loathing, tho. :/

LOL, yeah, knitting is baaaad. Also for the shoulders. But yeah I doubt anyone ever notices I am in an anxiety attack (or panic attack). Once I was on a plane and I wanted to run to the door and throw it open so I could jump out. Of course I didn't. I do realize I had very little chance of getting teh door open. But man it was bad. I probably looked normal. I basically made myself fall asleep.

Very few people notice anything like that (or depression). You have to literally tell people. And even then they think you're just fffffine.

Fffffine, and doing it to annoy them.

It's a thing to remember - even those closest to us may struggle to understand. There's a strong preference for blame over sympathy; it's heaps less work and anything mental is often perceived as "I have control over my emotions, ergo you have control over your emotions, ergo you are only crying to get attention / piss me off."

I hid my panic attacks from my bf for a long time, and he would accuse me of dramatics & emotional bullying. It's sad, and kind of wrong, that it took a full blown attack - you know, the kind where it's like someone's repeatedly punching you in the chest whilst holding your head under water - to convince him this wasn't something I could switch on and off.