rachjenk23 is trying to find happiness on her own.
Anxiety seems to be based on questions. What if’s… Why is this happening? Why did this start? When is it going to end? And so on…
I really don’t know what began my anxiety, but it started a little less than a year ago with an instant panic attack at work. I was lifting something kind of heavy, and my heart skipped a beat or two. I’ve always been a bit of a hypochondriac so I’m not exactly shocked that I instantly had an attack. I began pacing the floor and it almost seemed like I was having an outer body experience. My thoughts started racing, and I thought I was dying. I could hardly swallow the water I was trying to drink, I couldn’t think straight. I was trying to get ahold of someone to come pick me up but I couldn’t even stand still long enough to dial one number on the phone. I was literally freaking out and losing all control. I’ve never been so scared in my life. I’ve always had a fear of dying, and it seems to correlate so much with panic disorder & anxiety.
I went to the doctor, scared as could be… racing heart and all. I was then put on a heart monitor, I had my blood taken… the whole nine yards, and all the test results came back fine. But I still kept convincing myself that I was dying and the doctors just couldn’t see it. I talked to my dad about what was going on with me, physically…mentally… the weakness I felt, and he said he thought I was experiencing anxiety. Well, my initial thought was anxiety is just a feeling of stress that people get when something bad happens… So I knew that just couldn’t be my case. Nothing traumatic had happened at all recently. I decided to research it on the internet, after having of course researched all kinds of deathly heart conditions first… and I finally found what I was looking for. All of my symptoms, listed one after the other, all under the heading “Anxiety.”
I printed out the pages of symptoms, highlighted the ones I had experienced (which happened to be almost all of them) and took them to a doctor. She then perscribed me zoloft & sent me on my way. Anxious of course, still fearing the worst… I couldn’t stop thinking about side effects, being dependent on medicine, never being “normal” again…
I began the medicine, and it took about a week for it to kick in…but I could tell my symptoms had decreased. All of my friends & my boyfriend told me… “it’s not the medicine that’s helping, you just THINK it is… so you feel better,” and “it’s all in your head… you don’t need that medicine”... while my dad on the other hand was telling me that some people have chemical imbalances and the medicine helps to regulate those imbalances. I took the medicine for awhile, and overrall I could tell there was a change but I didn’t know if it was really the medicine, or if I had just convinced myself the medicine helped… like a placebo effect.
Well, I stopped taking my medicine a couple months ago… and some days wouldn’t be so good. I wouldn’t necessarily have bad thoughts, but I would feel weak… helpless… etc. and it would be off and on throughout the entire day. Even to this day, I feel the only thing that makes it go away when I’m feeling like that is to make myself fall asleep.
So like I said, I stopped taking my medicine because I didn’t want to be dependent on it. I wanted to believe I didn’t NEED it, I wanted to believe I was my normal self… But about a week ago I had another panic attack. I haven’t had one like that since back when my anxiety first started. It came out of nowhere. I was just sitting on the couch, and I suddenly jumped up in fear of my heart stopping. Why? I don’t know. I started pacing, and the thoughts started racing. Am I dying? Why is this happening? Did I eat something bad? Am I getting sick? Will I have to go to the hospital? It just kept getting worse. I tried to take a shower, and I just felt so weak… I couldn’t even concentrate, just thinking about fainting & falling down… hitting my head… all of these terrible thoughts. I sat on my bed, and I started having another out of body experience. Like I was out of touch with myself. I felt detatched from reality, like everything was closing in. I had to get up and walk outside in the freezing cold wearing just my pajamas with my hair still wet from the shower. I would pace & it would calm me momentarily. I felt at that point that absolutely nothing could make me happy. When my anxiety comes in, I start thinking about two terrible things. Death & unhappiness. I tell myself that I can’t do anything right, that I’m so unhappy, and bored with my life… I tell myself I’m so stressed out and that I’m making all the wrong decisions… When truly, back to reality, I’m content with my life. I have a wonderful family. A more than wonderful boyfriend and so on. But when I have these terrible thoughts, thoughts that come without even trying to think… I do stupid things, like tell my boyfriend I don’t think we’re going to work… that our relationship isn’t going anywhere, etc. It’s like even if I have a small fear of us breaking up or something, it blows up into this unmanagable state of “nothing is right, he doesn’t want to be with me” etc. I’ve hardly talked to him about my anxiety because he’s never experienced it so he previously said everything was all in my head. Since he doesn’t understand it, I’ve been afraid of saying anything because I didn’t want him to get scared or think I was crazy… or think I was too much of a hassle if I had this so called “anxiety” problem.
This weekend I went to visit him because we’re doing the long distance thing right now, and my flooding thoughts came in and out. Since I just had an attack a few days prior, I kept thinking “Am I going to have another one?” “Can he tell I’m feeling different?” and so on.
I finally came to the conclusion last night, that if our relationship is going to work… if anything is going to work, I need to be open and honest about my anxiety. I’ve been embarressed about it. It seems like a weak excuse to give in dealing with your life… but it isn’t. And I need to accept that people aren’t going to understand it, but if people care about me then they will try to understand rather than think I’m hopeless.
Writing all of this out is helping me a little to cope with it, but I’m really bothered by the fact that I still haven’t found an activity (other than sleeping) that I can do to avoid having an attack or thinking about having an attack. I try hard to step back, and look at the big picture… by rationalizing my life and realizing that I’m where I am for a reason, I am who I am, etc. but I still haven’t found a way to control my physical symptoms. My body starts reacting in weird ways before I even have a chance to think about something. I just want it to stop. I went to refill my zoloft perscription today, looking for any kind of answer. I think the biggest answer is to accept it and realize that it’s somewhat imagined… and to not let the negative affect me. Stress is normal. Anxiousness is normal. This is something a lot of people experience, I’ve come to find out. I need to stop telling myself that my case is different. What is different is the way people deal with their anxiety. I just want to find a way to deal with mine, so that it doesn’t negatively affect my life, my relationships, and my attitude. I know I have a lot going for me, I’ve had a lot given to me, and I have a lot to look forward to… and I don’t want my anxiety to hinder any of it.
I want to depend on myself. I want to know that I can control my thoughts, my feelings, and how I live my life. I don’t want to be scared anymore and I’m looking forward to writing an entry when I have figured out a way to cope.
