Too many life changes causing severe anxiety

[Thestruggle]

This is kind of odd..I've had the best week of my life. In the past 5 days I've proposed to my girlfriend (she said yes!), and that was beautiful and profound. Then the next day I found out I was able to get a new truck under an amazing program for exactly what we pay now for my existing truck. I went on a ride to pick up the new truck yesterday and had several panic attacks on the way home (not fun, it was a 5 hour ride). I am on commitment overload. Between my future wife, my great job and my new F-250 I feel like I'm about to have a heart attack. I've always felt anxious during difficult periods but never during one with so much good. Has anyone experienced anything similar?

[Spiggot70]

Yep, I have.
I had the same thing panic attacks and anxiety shortly after all the "good" things happened. And I say "good," because that's the way life is supposed to go, right? You're SUPPOSED to get married and have 2.3 kids, and you're SUPPOSED to benefit from a life long job that you get promotions in, and you're SUPPOSED to upgrade your house with the white picket fence and dog and cat after the other two things. They all happened at once for me as well, within 4-6 weeks. I don't know, maybe all the SUPPOSED TO's isn't the way my life was SUPPOSED to go. That's how I was brought up: stick with a job and try to excel in it, stick with a girl and marry her and have a family, etc., etc. I was in crappy shape for a few years, took a crap-load of time off from work to deal with my depression and anxiety.
I guess I thought that that's the way life was to go. Never did have kids, thank goodness, as she left me after about 6 years.
Anyway, I can't tell you why you are feeling this way. I really don't know why I felt this way. Maybe what I said above is something that I began realizing lately.
But coping with it was rough. Ativan was my saviour (so I thought, at the time). It really was just a band-aid.

Wow! After rereading my post, I realized I'm all over the place... :confused:
Sorry, it's hard not to get this stuff out sometimes.

[gypsylee]

This is kind of odd..I've had the best week of my life. In the past 5 days I've proposed to my girlfriend (she said yes!), and that was beautiful and profound. Then the next day I found out I was able to get a new truck under an amazing program for exactly what we pay now for my existing truck. I went on a ride to pick up the new truck yesterday and had several panic attacks on the way home (not fun, it was a 5 hour ride). I am on commitment overload. Between my future wife, my great job and my new F-250 I feel like I'm about to have a heart attack. I've always felt anxious during difficult periods but never during one with so much good. Has anyone experienced anything similar?

I guess in a way good things have the same effect in that you get hyped up. The body doesn't know whether it's good or bad so it just knows you're "excited".

That's a pretty lame explanation lol but you know what I mean?

[Thestruggle]

I guess in a way good things have the same effect in that you get hyped up. The body doesn't know whether it's good or bad so it just knows you're "excited".

That's a pretty lame explanation lol but you know what I mean?

No that makes perfect sense. I think I had this misunderstanding about getting married that EVERYTHING is about to change right away. That's just not true

[HLOVESM]

I'm kind of going through that right now. We just moved into our first home! We have been looking forward to this for so long and it is definitely in improvement on where we lived before. However, my anxiety has been horrible the last week, even though this is such a positive thing. I think part of it is living in chaos (boxes everywhere, nothing organised) and the other part is perhaps the fact that owning a home is a huge responsibility and commitment! Same thing with getting married or deciding to have a baby...it is positive but at the same time it is still a huge commitment. Hope you start to feel better soon