Diagnosing Anxiety is it your job or the doctors?

[fergie]

Hello, my very first post on this forum so bear with me.

I have been suffering with a problem for almost 10 months now. I have read a bunch of what others have gone through with anxiety and I really feel that the anxiety disorder is the only disease that I see fit my symptoms so well. I too have been to a couple doctors over and over, blood tests ok, urine tests ok, ekg ok... The only issue we've found to date with me is high blood pressure, I'm 29!. Been trying blood pressure pills but they don't seem to effect the pressure. I'm tempted to guess that if I had anxiety, the tension from it could be causing a higher blood pressure.

Anyhow, how in the heck does one realize or step over that line assuming they have anxiety problems? At what point do you say yes, I my problem is anxiety and I need to fix it.

My symptoms include constant dizziness/lightheadedness and foggy brain, tight scalp, sometimes palpations, sometimes feels heavy to breath, eyesight feels "strange" almost like one of my eyes are off track haha, sometimes on a bad day I feel tingling in my fingers and just weak, tired and even very short term memory loss, or hard to concentrate without forgetting what I was doing. When I get a cold or sick the problems intensify. I got through periods of feeling descent, some times a couple days are bad then I come back from it. But never has it gone away completely for over 10 months.

Before this problem I would decribe myself as an anxious and nervous person, always was since I was a kid but I never experienced any problems from it.

Do I need a doctor to tell me I have anxiety problems before I choose to diagnose myself and try anxiety repairing solutions?

Thanks for any suggestions

[RichB]

I, like you, had high BP at a very young age due to anxiety and a large amount fo self medicating. During that whole process, along with the process of figuring out what was wrong with me, they ran a bunch of physical tests and found nothing. It didn't seem like t at the time because I wanted my problem to be ANYTHING but mental, but that's a good thing.

The problem with medical specialization it's sometimes difficult to get a good diagnosis. Cardiologists look only at heart related problems, etc. I think you should make sure there isn't a physical cause for your feelings, because some diseases can cause similar symptoms. If none is found, then you can probably tell if you're an anxious person or not, your symptoms sound very familiar to me.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't see a professional for help with anxiety however. The diagnosis is just a description of your symptoms, it tells you very little about what to do about them unfortunately. It took me years to figure that part out.