aml0017
12-15-2014, 03:08 PM
After a hellish 3 weeks of extreme anxiety and one week of mild depression it seems my anxiety episode cycle is pretty much over. I do deal with the anxiety every day but it is normally just low level anxiety that I can get through pretty easily at this point. I don't know for sure why it was so bad but I think it has to do with the holidays. I am noticing a pattern from my old journals, it seems my anxiety is always worse from thanksgiving thru January. I'm not sure if it is the holidays themselves or SAD or hormones or what.
Anyways, thank goodness! I feel so much better but exhausted. It was bad despite all my efforts to cope. I kept exercising and eating right (when I was able to eat). I made myself leave the house. I wrote in my journal, I posted here on the forum, I talked to someone about it, I did deep breathing. Sometimes all that is just not enough. However, through it all I knew it would be over soon, and I knew I would get through it. Guess that is the only upside of dealing with this for going on 20 years.
I did mention on another post that my anxiety episodes are cyclical. After a long period of low level anxiety I will be triggered by something and that will start the rumination and worrying, my sleep will be disrupted and my appetite decreases. This will build for a few days until I have a full on anxiety attack followed by severe anxiety for a couple weeks. So, full on crying, no sleep, can't eat, obsessive thoughts and obsessive googling. Finally after a while, the thoughts go away and I just become despondent, more like a mild depression. I have a lot of derealization/depersonalization and that heavy weight/hole in my chest. Then that slowly lifts off and back to normal low anxiety.
Does anyone else find their anxiety is cyclical in nature?
Anyways, thank goodness! I feel so much better but exhausted. It was bad despite all my efforts to cope. I kept exercising and eating right (when I was able to eat). I made myself leave the house. I wrote in my journal, I posted here on the forum, I talked to someone about it, I did deep breathing. Sometimes all that is just not enough. However, through it all I knew it would be over soon, and I knew I would get through it. Guess that is the only upside of dealing with this for going on 20 years.
I did mention on another post that my anxiety episodes are cyclical. After a long period of low level anxiety I will be triggered by something and that will start the rumination and worrying, my sleep will be disrupted and my appetite decreases. This will build for a few days until I have a full on anxiety attack followed by severe anxiety for a couple weeks. So, full on crying, no sleep, can't eat, obsessive thoughts and obsessive googling. Finally after a while, the thoughts go away and I just become despondent, more like a mild depression. I have a lot of derealization/depersonalization and that heavy weight/hole in my chest. Then that slowly lifts off and back to normal low anxiety.
Does anyone else find their anxiety is cyclical in nature?