My 1000th Post

[raggamuffin]

So here I am with my 1000th post and i figured I might update you all on what's happened during my time here and how i'm getting along with life and my various issues. This'll be quite a long post...



I joined this forum 3 years ago and used to frequent another forum or several years before this. I started searching online for answers when my stress was provoking panic attacks and phsycial symptoms on a daily basis. The first panic attack struck me around 6 years ago back when I used to smoke weed on a daily basis.

I used to think I'd had anxiety and depression for 10 years, but, thanks to my friend Marc I've managed to delve further and see that there were core beliefs that invoked stress and anxiety dating back a lot further into my childhood.

Perhaps not so uncommon with anxious and depressive persona's I tried to hide from negative thoughts and feelings through substance abuse. I experimented with different drugs for a year or 2. The only one that stuck was cannabis and I smoked this daily for a long time. This lifestyle ceased being guilt free after a few years and i realized this drug was taking from me and not providing. It was during this period however that I rekindled my passion for art which had faded after I finished school and was told by my parents and instructed by teachers not to pursue in college or university.

Another means of hiding from my issues inside was socializing and dating. I started dating when I was 17 and seemingly tried to date people one after the other for many years to come. I felt hollow and unstable when I was single. But when I was dating my anxiety and depression seemed a lot more intense. There was always fears of abandonment and loss. My first girlfriend cheated on me with several people and this set about a long period of not trusting other people or my own judgement.

After many years of this I took time out from dating for self introspection. I saw a pattern in those I dated and realized it was better to be single and work on myself. Years later I had my first panic attack. I wasn't sure what it was, I remember the feeling in my chest, the visual disturbances and the feeling of impending doom as my heart raced. I was in my bedroom with a friend smoking a joint. I had to fling open the window and leaned outside to regain my breath.

From then on I started noticing a sensation in my chest in certain situations, especially in my room when I had friends over and everyone was smoking weed. I often asked people to leave, seemingly out of the blue to them, but I knew inside it was because of the severe discomfort I was feeling. Each night I struggled to sleep, fearing a heart attack. I knew weed was bad and had tried multiple times to quit, but it wouldn't ever stick. Each time I tried I managed longer and longer without it.

Things finally came to a head when I had my second panic attack. Again I was in my room, with a friend. Unlike last time however the panic attack didn't last less than a minute, it lasted over an hour. I was convinced i was going to die and asked my friend to leave and told my parents about my symptoms. They rang an out of hours GP who offered to visit me, but I refused. he described the issues I was having as being a panic attack, but i didn't realize stress and fear could cause physical pain.

I vowed to quit smoking that very day and flushed the weed and threw away all my smoking paraphernalia. When I woke up the next day I still felt on edge and still had the chest tightness. So I Googled the symptoms and pretty soon I was stuck reading about all manner of terrifying health issues. Thus began my daily symptoms occurring. From chest tightness to arm and shoulder pains, jaw pains to headaches, leg pains to stomach aches. Some lasted hours, others days, weeks, even months.

A week later I asked my mum to take me to the hospital as the chest pains weren't going away and i was scared. I didn't notice the fear after asking her to take me there was causing even more intense pain. I simply couldn't see the correlation. The pains and panic ggot worse on the way to the hospital. When I got to the entrance I had a panic attack and nearly collapsed. Someone in the queue noticed and a doctor rushed over to me, put me in a wheelchair and took me to an emergency ward. I had an ECG, blood and urine tests and all manner of questions asked. After a few hours with the all clear a doctor told me it was "probably anxiety" and that I should look into therapy and or medication. We drove home shortly after and the word "probably" rung in my ears. my parents told me it was good I had the all clear, my response was "but my chest still hurts".

I tried to take a pragmatic approach, convinced there was something physically wrong with me. A few weeks later I visited a chiropractor. i spent several months doing weekly sessions without seeing much improvement to the aches and pains. I left after several months, several hundred pounds worse off and still feeling no better. I was still addicted to Googling every new symptom and visiting my GP's and hospital when things got bad and when I couldn't take it anymore. Every test came back fine, every Doctor told me it was anxiety. But I couldn't accept it, not once, there had to be something wrong with me I thought.

I took to forums and described my fear and worries and was told by forum members it was anxiety, but I just couldn't believe it was. I thought the tests had missed something. 6 months after my second panic attack I started smoking weed again. I figured things couldn't get any worse and slipped back into a bad habit for another year and a half before finally quitting completely. The first smoke I had caused a panic attack and things didn't improve from that first time. I was hoping to return to that detached bubble I used to find myself in when i was a stoner. Instead anxiety had me trapped inside another bubble. I couldn't see the irrational fears and worries were so far detached from the real world. I didn't understand that if I addressed the stress and fears I could start to feel better.

A year or 2 later someone on this forum who I spoke to regularly recommended a local therapist. he lived near me and actually dated someone from the same village as me. He told me how to go about getting seen by a therapist. I only then realized that at my job (which I had worked at for 6 years by this point) had free private healthcare. I started the ball rolling and had a psychiatric assessment with a consultant psychologist. He spent an hour with me asking all manner of questions and told me that I had multiple anxiety disorders and depression. He booked me in with the therapist my friend from here had seen.

To be continued....

[raggamuffin]

By this point I was 3 years into the current 5+ ntotal of daily physical symptoms. I had learned a lot from forum members and anxiety sites and self help books. but I still responded to the pains I got with fear. There were too many "what if's" I asked myself when a pain came around. I didn't rationalize or simply allow my body to go through the motions. I responded with fear and continued to let the fight or flight response fire off more adrenaline and other chemicals prolonging my aches, pains and misery.

When I saw the therapist she was rather astounded at how much I knew about anxiety. She told me outright though that the CBT couldn't begin until I fully acepted it was anxiety causing these symptoms. This was a tough thing to accept. I don't think I ever fully accepted it to tell the truth. But after a few sessions I did as I felt like we were stuck in a quagmire if I didn't say I accepted. Truth be told I wasn't keen on this therapist at all. but she helped me rationalize things further, but we did no homework or workbooks and exercises. It was simply talking which, my second therapist said was not actually CBT.

It was around therapy and a year before that I had started trying to date again. But not real world dating, online. People who lived abroad. People i'd never met. Some I had booked tickets to see and then "broken up" with prior to leaving my home to see them. This was a recurring pattern and no online relationship I had with anyone ever amounted to a real tangible one. This made anxiety worse, as with other relationships I'd had in the past. A year after my CBT had ended I met someone from work. She was wonderful persona wise, but there wasn't a physical attraction or spark. She fell for me, but I didn't feel the same. 6 months later I ended it as i realized I couldn't date someone where love wasn't reciprocated by me.

So let's get closer to where I am now. I must've had 50+ GP appointments and 5-10 hospital visits. Every test came back fine. Every time I was told it was anxiety. Every day I would had aches and pains and sometimes I conceeded to panic and had panic attacks because of my worries and fear around my symptoms. Convinced I was deathly ill but always waking up the next day. A new day but an old habit and way of thinking. It was destructive. Slowly but surely I was more and more convinced I wasn't ill. There was a realization that if I continued with this way of thinking I would eventually make myself ill. My body deserves more and I felt bad for how I'd been acting.

With this realization I decided to try and change my diet and exercise. I started to feel better inside. This was a new energy and zest for life. I quit my job I'd held for 9.5 years. During the times when anxiety hit me with physical symptoms I found the workplace evoked more symptoms than at other times or locations. Managers who didn't understand and were pressuring me to stop taking time off for Dr appointments and through ill health. Being away from work helped me with reducing stress and anxiety. but the lack of structure led to an increase in drinking. This had slowly increased since quitting weed and became a daily habit for 5 or 6 months. Thankfully the day after drinking hits a lot harder than weed ever could and I started to see it for the poison it really was.

I was put on a waiting list for therapy which was 6 months long and started CBT once again about 3 months ago. I have found the therapist to be a lot better than my last one. However she has recommended counselling as there's a lot of issues in my past that need addressing and will help my present self. I have rang the counsellor today and have my first appointment next Wednesday. because i'm on ESA benefits I get the sessions for only £10 each instead of £40+

I met a girl in August online. We met in january and started dating. I finally did meeting someone online right and we see each other once a week. We'll be moving in together in May. She has gradually pushed me out of my comfort zone and now I go out a lot. I used to stay locked away in my room day in day out. When i'm with her we go out to new places, eat in restaurants a lot. When this first started happening I had severe anxiety symptoms. Dizziness, disorientation and panic. 3 months later and I barely get these symptoms. Situations have arisen where i've felt out of control and panic has hit me, but I always get through it. The more I face these fears and issues the sooner they resolve themselves.

I believe counselling will help heal the past as well. Prior to moving out I'd like to have a good go at healing the past and the issues around my parents before I leave home and start a new chapter in my life. I had wanted my time off from work to help me focus on my art and photography. I have done some work on this but i've been working a lot more on myself. As I get myself closer where I want to be the desire to be creative is more apparent and less held back by the shackles of my past.

When I look back on my progress it seems a little slow, but I have to admit I didn't go at recovery tooth and nail. I endured a lot seemingly needlessly. if I had really addressed issues after my first hospital visit when the dr said these issues were probably anxiety I might have healed quicker. but everything happens for a reason, and I wouldn't have met the people I have in my life now if I hadn't taken the path I chose. Nowadays the symptoms are still daily, but a lot less intense and frequent. I used to go 24/7 with symptoms and never got a moments peace. Now around 70% of the day is symptom free. Sometimes I do respond to symptoms assuming it's something sinister. But I always go back to rationalizing the situation, realizing that the symptom is nothing new and telling myself and my body that it's ok to hurt and that I am working on healing myself.

I'm now able to exercise without crippling chest pains and panic. Sometimes pains come along, but as with many anxiety related concerns the pains come and go or hop around the body. My dr told me that if a pain was something physiological it wouldn't come and go or change location and distraction and keeping busy wouldn't lessen a pain like it would one caused by anxiety or stress. In fact when I get pains when exercising I challenege myself to push harder to proove the worries around my health are a figment of my imagination and fear.

I know there's still a ways to go to fully healing, but I feel more empowered and capable of handling what life has in store for me. I've met many wonderful people along the way and I've been told by many that I helped them with their anxiety and fears along the way. I always tried to share what I'd learned with other people. But in a way that became a safety behaviour as I realized it was easier to help others and wasn't dedicating enough time to myself. This continued for quite a long time, I felt this guilt when I thought about helping myself, like it was selfish to want to focus on me. I didn't realize that if I treated myself with love and helped myself heal that would in turn mean I was a better person and better able to help and nourish those around me.

So here I am, 3 years later on this forum. 28 and moving out of home in may with the woman I love. Finally able to experience love truly. My past issues with my parents made me question love ever existed, but now i know i've found it. I have a bright future ahead and a lot less baggage from my past that i'm holding onto. I have learned a lot about myself on this journey with anxiety. I initially thought I was a weaker person with all this stress and negative thinking. I didn't realize my anxiety and depression was trying to push me in a new direction and to eventually better myself.

I know this was a long read and possibly a bit all over the place narrative wise. This is a condensed version of the past 5 years experiences. But I hope it helps give some insight into my story. Regarding insight I must thank Im-Suffering. I know not everyone appreciates what he says on this forum, but he has selflessly helped me more than anyone else has and i'm truly thankful he's here helping people.

Ed

[Spiggot70]

What an amazing post! And I'm glad you're on a path to recovery.
I hate taking a post, a comment, or a conversation, and making it about me, and it's not with this next comment. Reading your post helped me realize that there are quite a few similarities in your historical battle with this demon called anxiety as there are in mine. And some of the words and ways you described how you dealt with things and made me think... and say, "wow, dude, this is you." The hardest part that I've come to realize is that we're not alone - we're not the only ones in the world dealing with our fears and anxieties and the power of them to produce physical symptoms - if we let it....and allow ourselves to believe it.

I thank you, and I will use your post(s) as a reminder when I'm having troubles myself.
There's several threads in this forum that I go back and read when I'm having a bad spell, and this is one that I'll definitely read again.

Thanks Ed!

[raggamuffin]

No problem at all, I'm glad you can relate. i often think i turn posts from someone else into my own format so to speak. Things certainly do get better with regards to anxiety and stress, you just have to learn to accept and love yourself regardless of the struggles you face. Understanding anxiety and stress and more importantly, yourself is what's most important. Core beliefs that were formed in the past often have a lot of effect on who we are as a person in present day. Often when we're faced with stressful situations it's the core beliefs which often react and respond and it's that which must be tackled. CBT can certainly help with dealing with anxiety and symptoms in the here and now, but to truly heal the past is often something that needs to be addressed too.

I'm glad you found my post useful though, be sure to keep people informed on here of your progress or questions you have. We're a community here and people are all too willing to help. Another person's perspective is often invaluable.

Ed

[jessed03]

That's some way to mark your 1000th post!

Welcome to the quadruple digit club.

[gypsylee]

Well done Ed

I'm on my way!

[raggamuffin]

Glad to hear it. I know in the early days we all search for an instant or overnight cure for anxiety and not really realizing it's a long journey. But anxiety wasn't exactly an overnight occurrence either. Sure, a lot of us probably had a panic attack or horrid symptoms that we thought was the start of it all; robbing us of a sense of safety and normality within our own mind and body. Truth be told, our emotional and irrational responses to stress and situations in life have probably been ongoing for a long time and that takes time to unravel and process. It's nice to start feeling empowered by the journey in overcoming anxiety rather than constantly belittled and afraid of anxiety as I was in the early years on my road to recovery.

Ed