my strange anxiety?

[bigfin]

hello.im suffering from an anxiety which is interfearing with everyday life and its getting me depressed.i suppose ive always been a little anxious but nothing that ever realy bothered me.it all realy started about ten years ago when i was 19 and started going out my girlfriend who im still with to this day.i used to get realy nervous when meeting up with her to go out and stuff.i used to be sick with nerves for some reason.it was very upsetting for me why i was so nervous.it was the aprehension of seeing her.it was crazy but that was the begining of the questioning of my own mind.it soon went on to not being able to go out for meals for fear of throwing up.it was so confusing for me and i wanted to break up with her to make this go away but i coudnt because i loved her and i wouldnt let this spoil my life.after a while i began to control all this suff and managed a care free life together realy.we then tried for a baby nearly 4 years ago and were successfull and she gave birth to our beautifull son who is the center of our world in april 2005.
having our new son was great but very hard at the same time.we found it very demanding as do every new parents.we started to argue alot more with the tiredness and stuff but we got on with it.when he was three i was finding it very hard to stay in the relationship due to constant arguing.i was finding it to be the hardest thing to have to contemplate leaving my family as i was lucky enough to be brought up with both loving parents so it went against everything that i believed in to leave my son.to cut a long story short i ended up with a bought of depression and massive anxiety over this.it was awfull.i thought i had lost.it felt like all my surroundings were new.the place i grew up and everything i new was now strange.this for me was the most scary.it did go away but we went for a weekend in edinburgh so we had a drink and stuff.the day we came home i had a hangover which made my anxiety rocket.the drive home was horrible.that strange feeling had come back and my heart sank.when we got home our house felt strange which made me feel wierd and anxious.now nearly 2 years later that weekend has left me with a kind of phobia of going to new places and weekends away from home incase those strange feelings come back.can anyone relate to this.thanks.ps.sorry this was a bit long.

[northstar]

hi bigfin :)

you might find it comforting to learn that alcohol can cause anxiety, so the reason you felt so bad the next day with your hangover is really likely to have been because of the night you spent drinking rather than any other psychological thing. here i'm going to copy and paste from another post i wrote about how alcohol makes us feel bad:


1) dehydration, which is pretty easily fixed by sipping from a bottle of water throughout the morning smile

2) when you drink you burn through your body's supply of vitamins, especially the B vitamins. B vitamins are responsible for keeping your nervous system happy and helping you to stay stress free - so naturally if you've depleted them with alcohol you're gonna feel bad and anxiety & panic will ensue if you're prone to it. the best way to solve this is to take a B vitamin complex the morning after, something like Berocca or lots of hangover cures contain B vitamins, ask your pharmacist about it smile

3) alcohol acts like liquid sugar within your body and will play havoc with your blood sugars. the blood sugar crash you get after a night out in the pub can give you all kinds of symptoms like sweats, shaking, ringing in your ears, anxiety, panic attacks, heart palpitations to name but a few. again there's an easy way to combat this: make sure you eat before you drink or even while you're having a couple of glasses or when you arrive home. and i don't mean typical after-the-pub-fare like kebabs and chips lol, but things like wholegrain bread or toast or nuts & fruit. if you eat pretty healthily the next morning too it will help with the hangover, complex carbohydrates will keep your blood sugars stable for longer so try to get some in smile

so basically i'm not telling you not to drink at all, but just to remember that it can cause anxiety and panic problems that are easily fixed by just simply taking care of yourself. i find that the knowledge of what physically happens when we drink and how exactly it causes anxiety really takes the power away from the panic feelings - i know that if i drink i may feel anxious, but i also know that i can solve this pretty easily and that i'm not going crazy it's just my body giving out to me, so i don't freak out if i feel bad the next morning, i just start doing the things i know will help me to feel better.

i really hope this helps you to feel a bit better - now you can go out and enjoy a drink and also know how to take care of yourself the next day so you can handle the anxiety it can create without it getting too much for you smile

i hope you find this information a little helpful, it may make you feel a bit better about going new places, all you need to do is to take care of yourself a little when you're drinking, or to cut out alcohol, and you probably won't feel so strange.

this is not an unusual thing, people have a panic or anxiety attack related to low blood sugar & because they don't know whats actually happening they end up associating the fear with wherever they were at the time, e.g. if they had a panic attack because of low blood sugar when they were in their car they may come to associate these feelings with driving and develop a fear. perhaps the same has happened to you and you thought visiting somewhere new was what upset you & it has made you fearful.

i've written another thread with lots of information on the different things you can do to help with your anxiety, you might like to have a read to see if you find anything helpful in it: http://www.anxietyforum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4087

i hope this helps you out a bit & that you start to feel better soon :) [/i]