Noodle
05-27-2015, 11:40 AM
Hello to everyone who will take the time to read this post, I'll start by writing a little about my situation, i'd be greatly appreciative for any responses i may receive.
Ok so i'm an otherwise healthy 27 year old male from the Midlands in the UK. A year ago if you'd have asked what anxiety was i am ashamed to say I would only have been able to mutter ill informed opinions showing a complete ignorance of the suffering anxiety can cause. However over the past 12 months i have come to understand better how very wrong I was as my symptoms started to appear. At 26 i was doing ok, i had a good life and was engaged to my fiance of 7 years. I had graduated from university and secured a good job, i had bought my first house and traveled a fair bit too, even managing to climb Kilimanjaro for charity.
However it was at this point that i was hit with a sledgehammer, i found out my partner was being unfaithful to me with a work colleague and my world collapsed. After several months of attempting to fix things and hold us together i decided to let go, we made the decision to let out our house, to rehome our dog and to end the relationship. A few months into this process i met a new girl who was to become my current girlfriend of one year (more on that later), and i saw light at the end of the tunnel, it was here when my anxiety struck. Playing football i suddenly became dizzy and sick, i had to withdraw from the game and ever since that day i have never been the same. As the split became more and more painful and things became more stressful my anxiety got worse. After visiting doctors over and over i was in denial about it being anxiety, (there must be something physical wrong with me right?) Wrong. I started to develop a fear of crowded places, of attending meetings at work, of watching tense television programmes, going for meals or even sitting as a passenger in a car. These symptoms began to subside until I was due to travel to Germany with my new girlfriend, I couldn't sleep the night before and felt an incredible nausea and sense of dread. Despite this managed to make it through the holiday which i can only describe as the single hardest thing i have had to do, due to this i now have a completely irrational fear of airports! This completely kills me as one of my life's ambitions is to travel as much as my financial situation will dictate.
After the holiday i briefly tried propranolol to no real effect, i have tried CBT which has seemed to help a little, my symptoms slowly subsiding now that the split is complete, my life is back on track and work has become less stressful. I have managed to go to meetings and go out for meals making very slow progress into beating this thing. I even managed a weekend in London for my birthday last month with only mild symptoms. But this last two weeks have been a hell, with no triggers that i can identify i seem to have gone right back to the start. I'm completely confused, lost and downhearted. My girlfriend has been absolutely amazing through everything but i feel so pathetic and weak that i cannot function in the way i would like to, i feel as if i'm a failure and that i'm letting her down. I panic that if it came to it i wouldn't be able to marry her in front of people because of my anxiety, that i'll never get to travel again, that i'd be a horrible weak father if i wanted children and that i'll get sacked. I have always had a very poor opinion of myself and limited confidence in social situations but this has only worsened.
There it is, apologies for the long message,
Thanks again guys
Ok so i'm an otherwise healthy 27 year old male from the Midlands in the UK. A year ago if you'd have asked what anxiety was i am ashamed to say I would only have been able to mutter ill informed opinions showing a complete ignorance of the suffering anxiety can cause. However over the past 12 months i have come to understand better how very wrong I was as my symptoms started to appear. At 26 i was doing ok, i had a good life and was engaged to my fiance of 7 years. I had graduated from university and secured a good job, i had bought my first house and traveled a fair bit too, even managing to climb Kilimanjaro for charity.
However it was at this point that i was hit with a sledgehammer, i found out my partner was being unfaithful to me with a work colleague and my world collapsed. After several months of attempting to fix things and hold us together i decided to let go, we made the decision to let out our house, to rehome our dog and to end the relationship. A few months into this process i met a new girl who was to become my current girlfriend of one year (more on that later), and i saw light at the end of the tunnel, it was here when my anxiety struck. Playing football i suddenly became dizzy and sick, i had to withdraw from the game and ever since that day i have never been the same. As the split became more and more painful and things became more stressful my anxiety got worse. After visiting doctors over and over i was in denial about it being anxiety, (there must be something physical wrong with me right?) Wrong. I started to develop a fear of crowded places, of attending meetings at work, of watching tense television programmes, going for meals or even sitting as a passenger in a car. These symptoms began to subside until I was due to travel to Germany with my new girlfriend, I couldn't sleep the night before and felt an incredible nausea and sense of dread. Despite this managed to make it through the holiday which i can only describe as the single hardest thing i have had to do, due to this i now have a completely irrational fear of airports! This completely kills me as one of my life's ambitions is to travel as much as my financial situation will dictate.
After the holiday i briefly tried propranolol to no real effect, i have tried CBT which has seemed to help a little, my symptoms slowly subsiding now that the split is complete, my life is back on track and work has become less stressful. I have managed to go to meetings and go out for meals making very slow progress into beating this thing. I even managed a weekend in London for my birthday last month with only mild symptoms. But this last two weeks have been a hell, with no triggers that i can identify i seem to have gone right back to the start. I'm completely confused, lost and downhearted. My girlfriend has been absolutely amazing through everything but i feel so pathetic and weak that i cannot function in the way i would like to, i feel as if i'm a failure and that i'm letting her down. I panic that if it came to it i wouldn't be able to marry her in front of people because of my anxiety, that i'll never get to travel again, that i'd be a horrible weak father if i wanted children and that i'll get sacked. I have always had a very poor opinion of myself and limited confidence in social situations but this has only worsened.
There it is, apologies for the long message,
Thanks again guys