GhostProse
06-22-2011, 03:59 AM
Hello all,
I have been lurking on the forums for roughly a week now, and reading all the similar experiences and good advice so far made me feel I really ought to introduce myself and give you my story. Whether you choose to read it or not is up to you, and I won't be insulted if you don't! :)
I am now 25 years old, and have been struggling with my anxiety and panic attacks for the past six years, although it feels like an eternity. I'm sure many of you will be able to relate to that feeling that you don't remember what it is like to "feel normal".
I am in the slightly unusual position that I am fairly certain I know where, when and why my anxiety started, but am still struggling to manage it/keep it under control. Just before Christmas of 2004 (when I was 18 years old), my mother was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. She died in April of 2005. Now, in the one or two years leading up to this event I was what you might consider a typical teenager (by Belgian standards, where I am from), in that I had already had roughly 5 years of experimenting with alcohol, and in the later years some drugs as well. While by no means a heavy user, before and during the time of my mother's illness, I started using weed. My usage increased during her illness and particularly so after her death.
In hindsight I can identify this as a (rather bad) coping mechanism, but at the time it didn't occur to me to think of it in this way. The grass allowed me to escape, to forget about what had happened, and to postpone having to deal with all the tough emotional issues I would have been better off facing straight away. Add to this the fact that my mother and I had a very close and complex relationship, and I was destined to be heading for disaster.
Where did my anxiety and panic start? Looking back now I think the seeds had been sown during my first days experimenting with weed. I never enjoyed it on the social level that many people associate with it. I think this was largely because as my usage increased, I started having more and more mini panic/paranoia episodes, which at the time I attributed to the drugs. I felt more and more uncomfortable smoking with others, and became more and more secluded. This became a very slippery slope, but I don't think I need to go into this in much detail as it is quite obvious!
When did the panic first start boiling over into everyday life? I can remember the exact moment. I was sitting in a lecture room at University, and all of a sudden the room started spinning uncontrolably. It felt like I was going to faint (as I think that was the closest thing I could associate the sensation with at the time, not knowing much about panic attacks). I excused myself, left the room and went home, thinking perhaps I needed to lie down. Here is the strange thing though, the spinning, wavy sensation that rushed over me so suddenly didn't go away. For the next three months I struggled to find out what was wrong with me, went to see several different University doctors who all prescribed various different things, attributing the spinning sensation to a bad ear infection. Nothing seemed to help, and the longer it went on, the worse I became mentally. I became paranoid that I was going to pass out at any given moment, because of the uncontrolable swaying motion. It got so bad that I didn't feel I could leave the house. I waited as long as possible to go for trips to the supermarket as they were so unbearable to me.
It was at this point I decided to stop University and sort out my problems. I went back home and went to the doctors to try and find out what was causing me so many problems. As it turned out, I did have a rather bad ear infection, but further inverstigation after the infection had gone (including MRI scans) revealed anything out of the ordinary. I think at this point things should have clicked that my problem was psychological, but because things slowly seemed to be getting better on the panic front, I didn't put two and two together at this time. I got a job to earn some money, and when it got to the right time I reapplied to try again at University.
The first day of University, everything came rushing back in one powerful wave, and I was back at square one. The next one and a half years of University I spent making excuses and hiding from what was going on, until I got to the point where I realised I couldn't carry on like this any more, I was not living a normal life for a 23 year old who should be in the prime of his life, so I decided to seek help. I was referred to a cognitive behavioural therapist at the university health centre, and although she was good at explaining the basics of the fight or flight reaction and the fundamentals of how the human body deals with stress, we did not get the chance to move on to coping mechanism (as there were a limited number of free sessions I could have). So I continued my education with a basic grasp that my problems were almost exclusively psychological, and miraculously pulled myself through my degree with a reasonable result, even though things like exams in a large exam hall were absolute hell for me. Imagine the normal stress of a panic attack, and add onto this the anxiety of examinations! A yummy panic sandwich for sure ;)
After I finished my degree, I made the decision to take several months to see a specialist CBT therapist and try to get to the bottom of the underlying issues of my panic attacks and anxiety. I found these sessions extremely helpful, and did go some way to giving me tools and techniques to combat my problems. And for several months I did see some real improvements, to the point where I had one of those mini epiphany moments at a rugby match, were for the first time in years I had a normal day, and caught a glimpse of what "normal life" could be like for me again. Although this gave me more determination to carry on, the therapy sessions were extremely expensive, and I could only afford to go to so many before the money ran out.
So I have since carried on with what I would consided to be incomplete therapy. Although we got to the point in the sessions where a lot of the work I was doing was independent, I probably could have benefited from carrying on. I have since gotten a job, and have been OK.
The problem now however is that things are still only OK. I have days where I am really not feeling well, and I have periods of time when I still have relapses. I still have problems with busy environments, that creeping sense of not being able to find an escape route etc. I try and stay calm when I feel the panic coming on, but it can still be incredibly difficult to be rational and remind yourself to breathe.
So, what do I hope to gain from participating in this forum? Primarily I would like to get better. I don't know if it will be possible for me to go back to being completely how I was before all my problems started, I can certainly try. I imagine I will make some good friends along the way, and maybe even help others using my experiences. For the most part I am extremely glad to have found such a great source of inspiration and information, so a big thank you already!
If you have gotten to the bottom of this very long post, thank you very much for reading, and I look forward to meeting you all in the forums.
GhostProse
I have been lurking on the forums for roughly a week now, and reading all the similar experiences and good advice so far made me feel I really ought to introduce myself and give you my story. Whether you choose to read it or not is up to you, and I won't be insulted if you don't! :)
I am now 25 years old, and have been struggling with my anxiety and panic attacks for the past six years, although it feels like an eternity. I'm sure many of you will be able to relate to that feeling that you don't remember what it is like to "feel normal".
I am in the slightly unusual position that I am fairly certain I know where, when and why my anxiety started, but am still struggling to manage it/keep it under control. Just before Christmas of 2004 (when I was 18 years old), my mother was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. She died in April of 2005. Now, in the one or two years leading up to this event I was what you might consider a typical teenager (by Belgian standards, where I am from), in that I had already had roughly 5 years of experimenting with alcohol, and in the later years some drugs as well. While by no means a heavy user, before and during the time of my mother's illness, I started using weed. My usage increased during her illness and particularly so after her death.
In hindsight I can identify this as a (rather bad) coping mechanism, but at the time it didn't occur to me to think of it in this way. The grass allowed me to escape, to forget about what had happened, and to postpone having to deal with all the tough emotional issues I would have been better off facing straight away. Add to this the fact that my mother and I had a very close and complex relationship, and I was destined to be heading for disaster.
Where did my anxiety and panic start? Looking back now I think the seeds had been sown during my first days experimenting with weed. I never enjoyed it on the social level that many people associate with it. I think this was largely because as my usage increased, I started having more and more mini panic/paranoia episodes, which at the time I attributed to the drugs. I felt more and more uncomfortable smoking with others, and became more and more secluded. This became a very slippery slope, but I don't think I need to go into this in much detail as it is quite obvious!
When did the panic first start boiling over into everyday life? I can remember the exact moment. I was sitting in a lecture room at University, and all of a sudden the room started spinning uncontrolably. It felt like I was going to faint (as I think that was the closest thing I could associate the sensation with at the time, not knowing much about panic attacks). I excused myself, left the room and went home, thinking perhaps I needed to lie down. Here is the strange thing though, the spinning, wavy sensation that rushed over me so suddenly didn't go away. For the next three months I struggled to find out what was wrong with me, went to see several different University doctors who all prescribed various different things, attributing the spinning sensation to a bad ear infection. Nothing seemed to help, and the longer it went on, the worse I became mentally. I became paranoid that I was going to pass out at any given moment, because of the uncontrolable swaying motion. It got so bad that I didn't feel I could leave the house. I waited as long as possible to go for trips to the supermarket as they were so unbearable to me.
It was at this point I decided to stop University and sort out my problems. I went back home and went to the doctors to try and find out what was causing me so many problems. As it turned out, I did have a rather bad ear infection, but further inverstigation after the infection had gone (including MRI scans) revealed anything out of the ordinary. I think at this point things should have clicked that my problem was psychological, but because things slowly seemed to be getting better on the panic front, I didn't put two and two together at this time. I got a job to earn some money, and when it got to the right time I reapplied to try again at University.
The first day of University, everything came rushing back in one powerful wave, and I was back at square one. The next one and a half years of University I spent making excuses and hiding from what was going on, until I got to the point where I realised I couldn't carry on like this any more, I was not living a normal life for a 23 year old who should be in the prime of his life, so I decided to seek help. I was referred to a cognitive behavioural therapist at the university health centre, and although she was good at explaining the basics of the fight or flight reaction and the fundamentals of how the human body deals with stress, we did not get the chance to move on to coping mechanism (as there were a limited number of free sessions I could have). So I continued my education with a basic grasp that my problems were almost exclusively psychological, and miraculously pulled myself through my degree with a reasonable result, even though things like exams in a large exam hall were absolute hell for me. Imagine the normal stress of a panic attack, and add onto this the anxiety of examinations! A yummy panic sandwich for sure ;)
After I finished my degree, I made the decision to take several months to see a specialist CBT therapist and try to get to the bottom of the underlying issues of my panic attacks and anxiety. I found these sessions extremely helpful, and did go some way to giving me tools and techniques to combat my problems. And for several months I did see some real improvements, to the point where I had one of those mini epiphany moments at a rugby match, were for the first time in years I had a normal day, and caught a glimpse of what "normal life" could be like for me again. Although this gave me more determination to carry on, the therapy sessions were extremely expensive, and I could only afford to go to so many before the money ran out.
So I have since carried on with what I would consided to be incomplete therapy. Although we got to the point in the sessions where a lot of the work I was doing was independent, I probably could have benefited from carrying on. I have since gotten a job, and have been OK.
The problem now however is that things are still only OK. I have days where I am really not feeling well, and I have periods of time when I still have relapses. I still have problems with busy environments, that creeping sense of not being able to find an escape route etc. I try and stay calm when I feel the panic coming on, but it can still be incredibly difficult to be rational and remind yourself to breathe.
So, what do I hope to gain from participating in this forum? Primarily I would like to get better. I don't know if it will be possible for me to go back to being completely how I was before all my problems started, I can certainly try. I imagine I will make some good friends along the way, and maybe even help others using my experiences. For the most part I am extremely glad to have found such a great source of inspiration and information, so a big thank you already!
If you have gotten to the bottom of this very long post, thank you very much for reading, and I look forward to meeting you all in the forums.
GhostProse