NO HOLIDAY FOR ANXIETY & PANIC

[Punk Rock Steve]

Well, just because it's Christmas Day, and I'm at home and not (I thought) stressed, I thought that maybe my panic and anxiety would take a breather...SHIT NO! Now I may have had too much coffee (which I KNOW is not good for this disorder), and my Xanax that I took earlier had definitely worn off, so it shouldn't have surprised me that I got a sharp, one second long pain at the top of my stomach (though I second guessed myself and thought was that a heart attack?), which in turn led to the panic switch being turned to "ON". Felt woozy, shaky, and had strange sensations on the skin of my chest as well as some numbness in the face, and started to take deep breathes to make sure I could breathe well, even though I really had no problem breathing at all. Getting little electric shock type jabs too....all these are some of the crap I sometimes get when the anxiety/panic mode is initiated. Decided I'd better come on here and share it. It's been overall, a good day today, though I DID hear some bad news about a close friend of the family, which did bum me out and caused me to stress. I've also been sick for about a week and I do have stomach issues. It doesn't take a real lot to set me off...THIS SUCKS!!! My wife and I have a couple of friends coming over in a few hours, so maybe that will help me to stop obsessing. Just had to let this all out...I won't let this ruin my day. Happy Holidays to everyone...and thanks for listening :)

[northstar]

hi steve, merry christmas to you :) christmas day is just over here now (it's 00:17) and compared to my last christmas, which was riddled with anxiety and panic) i've had quite a nice day. i hope yours starts to get better.

reading your post i think you pretty much have the answers as to why you're feeling so on edge today. firstly, you've been sick for a week, so naturally you're gonna be run down and on edge from that alone, if you're already a bit worn out from anxiety then add a sickness to the mix and you've got a recipe for some trouble. throw in stress from christmas and your bad news, lots of coffee and the natural amounts of extra sweet foods and alcohol that we consume at christmas then i'm really not surprised you're having trouble today! (by the way, i'm assuming your christmas to be like mine where there's a lot more chocolate, wine, beer, sweets and other temptations around! - if your holidays are different then i do apologise :) )

the best thing you can do is just to be aware of all of this, it's totally natural for you to feel stressed out right now, remembering this may help you to stop panicking about how you feel. then to help you deal a bit better with the stress maybe take it a bit easy on the caffeine, keep yourself topped up with healthy foods and snacks, try some camomile tea or peppermint tea, have a nice relaxing bath if you can when your friends leave and try to get a good nights sleep :)

i'm not sure if this will help at all, especially since you seem to have written this ages ago, but i hope a little of what i've said will me helpful. i really do hope your christmas gets better, don't put yourself under pressure to feel fantastic, just take things as they come and be kind to yourself.

[Punk Rock Steve]

Thank you once again for your kind words and advice. You always calm me down with your posts. Made it through the rest of the day OK. Besides the coffee, there WERE a lot of sweets consumed :) No booze, as I've been sober for almost 8 years (in about 3 more weeks), so I at least have one thing that I do right that won't trigger anxiety & panic. Today is a new day and I'm off from work, which believe it or not, sometimes isn't a real good thing for me. Gives me time to obsess...today it's my color. I'm a bit on the pale side, and of course, I started to think "Uh Oh". I have been diagnosed in the past year as being a bit anemic, so I'm gonna take an iron supplement along with my vitamins, fish oil etc. Need to hydrate myself more today too. I am still somewhat sick and feel a bit crappy, but I'm going to get out of here for a while, get in my car, and do some things. Distraction is the prescription for today I think. Too bad my band isn't recording today (we're working on a new album)...THAT always seems to make me forget about how I feel...or THINK I feel :) Judging by your reply, I'm guessing that you're in Europe or the UK? Well, I hope that you're having a great day after...I already prayed this morning that mine will be...Thanks once again!
Steve

[northstar]

good to see that the rest of your christmas went ok :) it's totally understandable that you're a bit off colour today, you're sick and stressed - but i understand all too well how worry works and how hard it can be to think rationally about these kinds of thing, even when you know you're being irrational lol. it's hard to break the cycle!

yes i'm from europe, ireland to be precise :) i'm enjoying the holidays but my family are starting to drive me a bit nuts, i rather like peace and quiet and well, they're not very peacefull and quiet when they're all together & there's only so much i can handle lol! on top of that my mum tells me i'm antisocial when i'm not acting quite the way they all want me to and it makes me frustrated and stressed, i dislike being accused of things when i'm just trying to be myself! look at me venting, this forum is great for that! sorry to go on about silly stuff :?

what kind of music do your band play?? my boyfriend & i are kinda musical too lol, he likes to play guitar and listen to folk-type-stuff and i'm learning to sing in a classical way, like opera. he's far more musical than me, been writing his own stuff for years :)

[Punk Rock Steve]

Worry is my middle name :) I don't know...this being off from work has not been as peaceful as I thought it would be! Tonight, I've got yet another symptom I sometimes get: numbness and tingling in my toes and fingers/hand on the right side. It comes and goes...Now I'm sure that I'm not having a stroke or have a blood clot or anything like that (the rational side of me), BUT, I AM thinking just that anyway (the irrational me). Now I DO have nerve and muscle issues going on in my lower back, neck, and right shoulder and THAT is probably caused by anxiety that I'm having for no damned good reason...which is most likely causing all this...Ah, yes, this IS a mental disorder :) For me things really are peaceful here, just me and my wife, yet here I am, as you say, venting on here. Thinking of going out for a ride or to an A.A. meeting to (once again) distract myself....I'm sure this WILL get better. As for music, I'm into a lot of stuff depending on my mood and have played many styles. I'm the bass player in a reformed late 70's NYC garage punk band named The Victims. We used to play Max's Kansas City and CBGB's back in the day. Music always helps me, so I think I'm gonna run out and either throw on something in my car like Nick Drake, if I want to mellow out, or The Sex Pistols or my own band, if I want to release some of this shitty anxiety in a more noisy way :) Thanks for replying to me again!

[northstar]

i'm sorry i've not heard of your band, but punk isn't really my thing so i guess it's not surprising lol. excellent that you play bass, i've always loved bass but never learned how to play! music is a great way to get the anxiety out too, i always find that singing makes me feel really good, it's so expressive and joyful :)

i know exactly what you mean about the worrying, all those irrational circles are exhausting. for me it used to be things like i've got AIDs, cancer or a brain tumour, going crazy, or i was pregnant or my boyfriend didn't love me or i didn't love him - all kinds of bizarre things. eventually i realised i needed help with it, because the circles of worry were starting to control me & i was driving my boyfriend a bit nuts lol, it was then i knew i had to do something. so i started to see a psychotherapist once a week, eventually once every 3 weeks and now i don't see her at all. i also went to a couple of sessions of neuro linguistic therapy. both were incredibly helpful in getting me to build up and trust the more rational side to myself.

the results constantly surprise me, i'm not half the worrier i used to be, i let things go that once upon a time would have me freaking out or obsessing. it's great :) it took hard work though, and at the beginning i thought the therapy was a really bad idea because i was unlocking parts of myself i had wanted to squash away and not ever deal with & felt like i was opening floodgates of sorrow. eventually i realised that releasing things was waaaay better than keeping them in lol.

for me the real key to getting better was discovering the whole diet-mood connection, with the therapy on top of that the anxiety was blasted away lol. i really hope that you find your own key soon :)

oh btw i love nick drake! :D he's one of my favourties!

[Punk Rock Steve]

Hi - Doesn't surprise me that you haven't heard of us...we were sort of an underground type of band, though our My Space site has about 25,000 hits on it. We have a vinyl EP from 1978 that goes for at least $400 a copy on eBay when it rarely shows up on there. Now about my anxiety...On to day 3 of my holiday weekend off from work, which has become a pretty bad anxiety holiday. Woke up this morning with sweaty palms, upset stomach, chills, numbness in different parts of my body, and feeling just plain jittery all over. Can't sit still! Probably didn't help that I had a bunch of chocolate truffles last night :) But that never affected me like that before. I'm going to have to take my Xanax a few hours early I think....or I'm gonna go wacky. Still sick, so the queasy stomach could be post nasal drip. I'm DEFINITELY anxious, however, and need to find a way to get my way through the day. Think I'll pray first, and then probably take my meds...NO CHOCOLATE today! I'm going to lay low on the coffee today too, though I will need to have my first morning cup so I don't have withdrawals. Can't wait to see my therapist on Monday. My wife is not feeling well either, so I don't need to drive her nuts with my anxiety issues today (like I often do). It's only 9:30 in the morning here and I feel like I want it to be at at least that time at night. I've got to hang in there. I really just want to enjoy today....hope you're having a good day with some peace and quiet :)

[northstar]

you know waking up with anxiety can often be down to low blood sugar due to you not having eaten anything all night long. the best way to solve it is to have a good healthy breakfast as soon as you can when you wake! this used to happen to me all the time, and often i just couldn't eat because of the anxiety not realising that i was only doing myself more harm!


maybe you've read this post already, but if you haven't then take a look here for more information on the whole low blood sugar thing: http://www.anxietyforum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4087

one thing about the coffee, just keep it to that one cup if you can. coffee is a stimulant, it won't actually help you to relax it'll just put you more on edge. some people claim that coffee makes them feel relaxed, but this is simply the coffee relieving the withdrawal symptoms, it's not actually doing anything to relax you! i can't drink it at all, it makes me all jittery and gives me headaches, even just one cup. which is a pity cause i do like a laté! lol