Really looking for help. Joined just to post this.

[Audrey_]

Hello! I'm new to this website having only discovered it about a week ago. I'm 18 years old and have had anxiety for 3 years now. I was put on Zoloft and made an awful decision to quit it cold turkey in September (thankfully I didn't suffer any withdrawal problems) I thought that because the medicine was working, I could get off it and be just fine. Everything was up until 3 weeks ago. I went on a family vacation to Colorado and stayed there for a week. It was a reunion and my first time meeting a lot of people. I had an anxiety attack the first night,then struggled with problems the rest of the week. I was excited to come back home, but once I did, things got worse. Nothing seemed real and I felt like I was in a dream-like state. I of course went to Google and decided I was dealing with derealization. I have since gotten back on my medicine(day 10) but am constantly stressed out. I don't feel close to anyone that I care about which is making me feel really alone. I'm afraid that I'm going to hurt someone or myself.. My mind won't stop racing and I keep having memories pop up about things that I haven't thought about in years. I also keep having flashbacks from that family vacation. I just graduated and have put my college plans aside out of fear of being away from my mom. I don't have enough money for therapy and am worried that I'm going to lose it or already have. Even just writing this I have stopped and questioned everything I'm doing and felt like I was writing about a stranger Please help me with this. I feel like I need to go to a hospital for help at this point.

[Hannah_28]

I think for anyone to join this forum is a positive step and we have all joined it because we are done coping alone and wanted to ask for help. We all have many of the same symptoms which helps you to realise you're a certain level of 'normal' tho what is normal? Your mention of derealization and flashbacks has helped me as I have suffered these symptoms for many years I have awful very real flashbacks of comments or times when I was bullied that attribute to my self loathing and in turn anxiety I'm grateful for you helping me realise that this has a name and I'm not crazy :) I'm here to listen and you've come to the right place noone will judge you it's good to be where people understand and have experienced the things you think single you out as different :) being different is good who wants to be like everyone else :)

[jessed03]

Hey Audrey! Nice to meet you.

I read through your post like a nurse would listen to the hundredth patient of the day list their flu symptoms. I just kept nodding, knowing what you'd say next.

Almost every sentence in your post, described a a classic symptom of an anxiety condition. Some people get really psychical symptoms, others get it very bad mentally. You seem like somebody who's getting hit harder mentally by the condition.

So take comfort in that really. One of the scariest parts of anxiety, when it hits the mind, is the idea that this is something personal, something unique, something having a relationship solely with you. It often feels like it's a very personal destruction, taking on it's own inspired ways of messing with you. But you are experiencing a lot of the classic symptoms that hundreds upon hundreds of thousands have experienced before you, or are experiencing now. I think this should create a tiny bit of comfort. It's following a pattern. It's doing what it's known to do. Anxiety isn't like a cancer, just taking over random things, at random rates, in a personable way to the sufferer, anxiety is a very systematic illness. I think I've read tens of thousands of anxiety posts, and I could actually use them all, and combine them in a short paragraph, and it would represent something 95% of sufferers would relate to, and would think was written personally for them.

This will, and should go, if you take the right courses of action. You're already on Zoloft, which should probably help things again. A big step should be to read something well written, explaining how anxiety works in the mind (Something by Claire Weekes is almost always recommended on here) so that you can begin to see the full process and why it happens, and be less scared by it. The condition is smoke and mirrors. It's a magic trick. It shocks you, and hits you hard, at first, but once you delve into things deeper, and see how they're really done, it becomes far less scary, and quite underwhelming.

In our case though, the smoke and mirrors is instead a chemical known as adrenaline. It's virtually responsible for the whole circus going on. If there was a device that was as good at tricking people as excess adrenaline is, magicians would pay hundred of thousands of pounds for it! :)

I would go through all of your issues one by one, and explain their meaning, or why they happen, and I hope you don't feel I'm cheating you by not doing that, but really -- the honest to God truth... they don't matter. Explanations for what you are feeling now, the memories, the derealisation etc... are completely pointless. It'd be easy to say -- 'Memories crop up because they represent a frustration you felt at one point in your life, that you need to therefore process in order to ... blah blah blah', but it would be confusing the issue. They will go when the anxiety goes. No matter how stupid, how broken, how 'mad' and meaningful it all feels, there really is no reason to spend a tonne of time tackling them individually. Anxiety is just a deck of cards. Once you mess with it's structure, the whole things goes tumbling. (* If you have an actual trauma, this bit may not apply)

The only thing that usually helps is reading about the physical reaction that creates these sensations. Then they become less scary, and usually lessen the anxiety cycle!

It would probably be good for your nervous system to accompany your medication with some nervous system relaxation therapies. I meditate, that's my thing, but feel free to do whatever you enjoy. Some people have posted some great Youtube clips on the previous pages. Google will also suggest a tonne of fun and relaxing things (Yeah, we do allow Google for the good searches! :P). Many books suggest doing progressive muscle relaxation daily too. I've found it helped a tonne.

[NixonRulz]

Someone needed to say the above to me when I first started to develop anxiety

It would have set me on the right course instantly instead of meandering through life for years.

Jess - we rib each other alot in here but in all seriousness, great explanation of things


That response was so good that I skipped 3 lines.

[em1]

I am the same I have a constant fear that I'm going to harm my kids and go to prison,it's like a living hell in my head that won't twitch off which makes the attacks come all the time,I think out minds allways pick the very worst thing that could happen and that what's makes us panic more,this is the first time I'm on any Meds as this thought is scaring the hell out of me,I can't sleep or eat as the guilt it brings to is nasty,I've had this for a whole week now and I've had enough of it,does anyone else have the same thoughts day in day out? X