Sarah116
11-20-2014, 12:34 PM
Hi everyone, so this has been a question that's been tumbling around my head for a while now. I've already posted about my experiences with anxiety before but I'll just give a summary of what has been going on with me, especially in the past week or so.
In July I got sick and nobody knew why (until I found out I was dehydrated) and I developed a health anxiety. When I got better I was fine. Counting this month, it's been 5 months since the anxiety issues started. Ever since that time, I've had bouts of anxiety over all kinds of things, especially things that are ridiculous or impossible. A few examples are:
My dad/sister being out and not returning home at the specified time. I will start picturing ambulances and getting calls from the hospital.
If something is out of place, I get anxiety that something catastrophic or even apocalyptic will happen. As if that thing being out of place is some kind of "sign". It's really hard to explain. I'm not sure if anyone else has felt like this?
Sometimes I get scared to even fall asleep because I'm afraid something will happen to me and I won't wake up.
If I find out someone is angry, I immediately get worried that I did something even if I'm 100% sure I didn't. Sometimes I'll spend up to 20 minutes stressing over it.
Sometimes I get anxious to eat (especially meat) because I don't want to get sick.
I have a fear of severe weather like thunderstorms and tornadoes. Whenever we get a thunderstorm I'm instantly anxious and have to turn on the weather channel to stay alert.
Those are just a few examples but there are many more that I can't think of at the moment. If I had to rate how bad my anxiety can get over these kind of things, I'd say bad enough to make me nauseous and my heart will start pounding in my chest.
There is one time when I had such terrible anxiety that I'm completely sure it was my first panic attack (I haven't had one since.) We went to a see a movie in the theater and it was a movie about a woman who had drugs put into her and she was able to control the things and people around her using her mind. The more power she gained, the more things she could control and as I'm always thinking about what life is and what it's really about and what our existence means, that movie really fucked me up. Especially when it questioned what would happen when she hit 100% power, if life would change when she hit 100%. (The movie was called Lucy, I don't know if anyone here has seen it.) To a normal person, that movie would be cool and freaky in the good way but it fucked me up so bad.
When it was nearing the end, which would show what happened at 100%, I started getting anxious that something bad was going to happen. My thoughts were pretty ridiculous. It felt like something was really going to happen, even to me and the rest of the people in the theater and that's when this intense nausea hit me. I suddenly felt like I was going to literally die and my mind just went haywire and I couldn't even look at the screen so I curled up to try to make everything stop. The ending wasn't bad at all but I was still so anxious and scared and when I got up I was shaking and my legs felt so weak I thought I would fall over. Then when we walked out of the theater I had what I can only describe as derealization. I looked around and nothing felt real. I felt like the only person in the world with real human emotions and that everyone else were just made up images and it was so scary. I felt so alone. I had never experienced anything like that. When we got home I went straight to bed and barely got any sleep that night. I was exhausted but scared to fall asleep.
Something really strange and frightening also happened that night. I was asleep and I remember waking up, like I could feel myself laying on the bed but it was still pitch black like I was asleep. And I felt myself moving but I couldn't snap out of that pitch black state and it freaked me out so I had to jerk out of it to completely wake up. I have absolutely no idea what that was.
I've been seeing a nice therapist for a little while now and her advice and tips have helped me greatly but after a long period of feeling confident in myself and just generally feeling good (for the most part), I feel like I'm going downhill again. My self esteem has deteriorated so much in so little time and I can't help telling myself negative things. Like it's my own voice in my head that says things like, "Why are you such a shitty daughter and sister? You're so pathetic. Your friends deserve better. Your family doesn't deserve such a piece of trash as their relative. You are nothing. You are just waste. Why can't you be smarter in your studies? You're such a pathetic student. You're a fucking failure. You're trash. You don't deserve any of the love your friends and family give you. Why do you even try?"
I've cried so much the past few days over this. I feel like I'm bothering everyone if I try to ask for comfort or help. Especially since they have their own problems. Suicide and self harm has been crossing my mind and even though I know I'm too scared to kill myself I still have to fight the urge to cut. I haven't cut for 2 years now and I'm trying not to relapse.
Last night I had a bad dream and I have a feeling it was giving me a message. Long story short, I was talking with my sister and there was a creepy figure over in the corner and I got scared and when my sister asked why, I pointed to it. When she looked it disappeared and I was so frustrated because it came back when she looked back at me and I begged her to hug me in tears because I just needed it but she wouldn't do it. The figure eventually went away and that's when I woke up and I got scared and couldn't fall asleep until an hour later, which was 5am. It got me paranoid that I'm going to develop schizophrenia and hallucinate scary things and I still do have a fear of getting schizophrenia.
So the "message" that I think the dream was giving me was that I'm not reaching out for comfort like I should be. It's like the creepy figure was my anxiety and my dream was describing how it's just there all the time but nobody can see it. It just make so much sense to me in a way.
Sorry for this being so long, but I just kinda needed to get this all out somewhere and I'm still wondering if it's possible to have an anxiety disorder (in my case, GAD) that is mild or moderate? Is it only a disorder if the anxiety is severe 24/7? This started 5 months ago but now that I think about it, I've had anxiety issues when I was a kid. I searched up selective mutism and it describes me perfectly when I was younger. I could talk to my family but at school I could never speak a word and was very insecure around everyone (still am, honestly). There was also a period when I hated school so much I skipped for weeks and I threw tantrums because it felt like nobody cared.
In July I got sick and nobody knew why (until I found out I was dehydrated) and I developed a health anxiety. When I got better I was fine. Counting this month, it's been 5 months since the anxiety issues started. Ever since that time, I've had bouts of anxiety over all kinds of things, especially things that are ridiculous or impossible. A few examples are:
My dad/sister being out and not returning home at the specified time. I will start picturing ambulances and getting calls from the hospital.
If something is out of place, I get anxiety that something catastrophic or even apocalyptic will happen. As if that thing being out of place is some kind of "sign". It's really hard to explain. I'm not sure if anyone else has felt like this?
Sometimes I get scared to even fall asleep because I'm afraid something will happen to me and I won't wake up.
If I find out someone is angry, I immediately get worried that I did something even if I'm 100% sure I didn't. Sometimes I'll spend up to 20 minutes stressing over it.
Sometimes I get anxious to eat (especially meat) because I don't want to get sick.
I have a fear of severe weather like thunderstorms and tornadoes. Whenever we get a thunderstorm I'm instantly anxious and have to turn on the weather channel to stay alert.
Those are just a few examples but there are many more that I can't think of at the moment. If I had to rate how bad my anxiety can get over these kind of things, I'd say bad enough to make me nauseous and my heart will start pounding in my chest.
There is one time when I had such terrible anxiety that I'm completely sure it was my first panic attack (I haven't had one since.) We went to a see a movie in the theater and it was a movie about a woman who had drugs put into her and she was able to control the things and people around her using her mind. The more power she gained, the more things she could control and as I'm always thinking about what life is and what it's really about and what our existence means, that movie really fucked me up. Especially when it questioned what would happen when she hit 100% power, if life would change when she hit 100%. (The movie was called Lucy, I don't know if anyone here has seen it.) To a normal person, that movie would be cool and freaky in the good way but it fucked me up so bad.
When it was nearing the end, which would show what happened at 100%, I started getting anxious that something bad was going to happen. My thoughts were pretty ridiculous. It felt like something was really going to happen, even to me and the rest of the people in the theater and that's when this intense nausea hit me. I suddenly felt like I was going to literally die and my mind just went haywire and I couldn't even look at the screen so I curled up to try to make everything stop. The ending wasn't bad at all but I was still so anxious and scared and when I got up I was shaking and my legs felt so weak I thought I would fall over. Then when we walked out of the theater I had what I can only describe as derealization. I looked around and nothing felt real. I felt like the only person in the world with real human emotions and that everyone else were just made up images and it was so scary. I felt so alone. I had never experienced anything like that. When we got home I went straight to bed and barely got any sleep that night. I was exhausted but scared to fall asleep.
Something really strange and frightening also happened that night. I was asleep and I remember waking up, like I could feel myself laying on the bed but it was still pitch black like I was asleep. And I felt myself moving but I couldn't snap out of that pitch black state and it freaked me out so I had to jerk out of it to completely wake up. I have absolutely no idea what that was.
I've been seeing a nice therapist for a little while now and her advice and tips have helped me greatly but after a long period of feeling confident in myself and just generally feeling good (for the most part), I feel like I'm going downhill again. My self esteem has deteriorated so much in so little time and I can't help telling myself negative things. Like it's my own voice in my head that says things like, "Why are you such a shitty daughter and sister? You're so pathetic. Your friends deserve better. Your family doesn't deserve such a piece of trash as their relative. You are nothing. You are just waste. Why can't you be smarter in your studies? You're such a pathetic student. You're a fucking failure. You're trash. You don't deserve any of the love your friends and family give you. Why do you even try?"
I've cried so much the past few days over this. I feel like I'm bothering everyone if I try to ask for comfort or help. Especially since they have their own problems. Suicide and self harm has been crossing my mind and even though I know I'm too scared to kill myself I still have to fight the urge to cut. I haven't cut for 2 years now and I'm trying not to relapse.
Last night I had a bad dream and I have a feeling it was giving me a message. Long story short, I was talking with my sister and there was a creepy figure over in the corner and I got scared and when my sister asked why, I pointed to it. When she looked it disappeared and I was so frustrated because it came back when she looked back at me and I begged her to hug me in tears because I just needed it but she wouldn't do it. The figure eventually went away and that's when I woke up and I got scared and couldn't fall asleep until an hour later, which was 5am. It got me paranoid that I'm going to develop schizophrenia and hallucinate scary things and I still do have a fear of getting schizophrenia.
So the "message" that I think the dream was giving me was that I'm not reaching out for comfort like I should be. It's like the creepy figure was my anxiety and my dream was describing how it's just there all the time but nobody can see it. It just make so much sense to me in a way.
Sorry for this being so long, but I just kinda needed to get this all out somewhere and I'm still wondering if it's possible to have an anxiety disorder (in my case, GAD) that is mild or moderate? Is it only a disorder if the anxiety is severe 24/7? This started 5 months ago but now that I think about it, I've had anxiety issues when I was a kid. I searched up selective mutism and it describes me perfectly when I was younger. I could talk to my family but at school I could never speak a word and was very insecure around everyone (still am, honestly). There was also a period when I hated school so much I skipped for weeks and I threw tantrums because it felt like nobody cared.