OatCrumbles
11-17-2008, 02:07 PM
Hi all!
OK here goes, my name is Jason, I'm 27 years old and I suffer from anxiety. :oops:
I'm pretty outgoing, I go to the gym fairly often, read a lot and play a LOT of Warcraft hehe. I'm an electrician by day and training to be able to teach English by night so all in all I'm quite busy.
I've not really suffered from anxiety for that long. A few months ago I was working in another country for a few days and all of a sudden I felt what I thought was the biggest panic attack I ever had. (Some years back I used to smoke a lot of dope so I had one or two panic attacks then) but from my experience of panic attacks it would subside pretty quickly again. This time though it just carried on and on for hours, I would have little moments when I'd be somewhat OK then I would fall straight back down into another long bout. Night-time was the worst since I was sleeping in a quiet room and neither for love nor money could I get myself to stop thinking negative thought after negative thought. I really felt like I was losing my mind. To make it worse when I thought I was losing it I at the same time telling myself I was going mad. If you understand what I'm trying to say. It's like there were 2 halves to my brain, the "me" side and the other half that was busy trying to talk me down all the time.
Anyway, after a day or so I finally decided on talking to someone, as it happened I was working with my father so I turned to him, he didn't understand what I was going through as he had never experienced anxiety before but what he agreed about having different aspects of oneself. (inner child, guardian, critical parent is what I mean)
So some time passed and I found myself in an unwanted rhythm of being ok for a few days and then sinking down again into a few days of anxiety and so it went. Basically that's where I'm at now. Although this evening I had quite a bad dose of it and couldn't face going into my teaching course which upset me a lot seeing I felt powerless over it and I let it control me.
But the thought of breaking down in front of strangers and crying or having to leave the room was too much really. So here I am.
As things stand now, I'm usually ok for say a week or so, I'm happy, "normal" etc but EVERY time after a while negative thought processes start creeping back in and I find myself fairly unconsciously at first imagining stupid scenarios about things that could go wrong, I try my best to not let myself fall into those patterns but it seems so far I've not been able to stop myself and usually a day or two later I'm back down in the dumps. Some examples of my negative thought processes would be stuff like "I'm going to fail this course" or imagine one of my friends stealing my girlfriend or having a severe anxiety attack abroad (I'm going to Canada and Cuba in 2 days as my girlfriend is from there and her friend is getting married) anything negative and it just starts a cycle I find very difficult to break. I would love to know the reasoning behind my anxiety and have gone down several avenues hoping to at least find the reason if not the cure. From Acupuncture, Reiki, Psychologists, Hypnosis..while they all I'm sure helped in their own way, I still feel like there is an anchor in me and if I could just cut away the strings that hold it there I would finally be free.
Sometimes I'm very angry because of it, sometimes I'm scared of losing my mind, sometimes I cry thinking it will always be like this and sometimes I just tell to just **** right off and sometimes that works!
From what I've been reading on this website and drawing from my own experiences, I think I am my own worst enemy. So I'm trying to bring a lot of meditation focused on self-healing into my life, make peace with myself and let go of any irrational fears that are holding me down. From what I've read on these forums, so much of it seems to be fear of fear itself.
Hopefully I didn't send you all to sleep with my long post.
Thanks for reading!
OK here goes, my name is Jason, I'm 27 years old and I suffer from anxiety. :oops:
I'm pretty outgoing, I go to the gym fairly often, read a lot and play a LOT of Warcraft hehe. I'm an electrician by day and training to be able to teach English by night so all in all I'm quite busy.
I've not really suffered from anxiety for that long. A few months ago I was working in another country for a few days and all of a sudden I felt what I thought was the biggest panic attack I ever had. (Some years back I used to smoke a lot of dope so I had one or two panic attacks then) but from my experience of panic attacks it would subside pretty quickly again. This time though it just carried on and on for hours, I would have little moments when I'd be somewhat OK then I would fall straight back down into another long bout. Night-time was the worst since I was sleeping in a quiet room and neither for love nor money could I get myself to stop thinking negative thought after negative thought. I really felt like I was losing my mind. To make it worse when I thought I was losing it I at the same time telling myself I was going mad. If you understand what I'm trying to say. It's like there were 2 halves to my brain, the "me" side and the other half that was busy trying to talk me down all the time.
Anyway, after a day or so I finally decided on talking to someone, as it happened I was working with my father so I turned to him, he didn't understand what I was going through as he had never experienced anxiety before but what he agreed about having different aspects of oneself. (inner child, guardian, critical parent is what I mean)
So some time passed and I found myself in an unwanted rhythm of being ok for a few days and then sinking down again into a few days of anxiety and so it went. Basically that's where I'm at now. Although this evening I had quite a bad dose of it and couldn't face going into my teaching course which upset me a lot seeing I felt powerless over it and I let it control me.
But the thought of breaking down in front of strangers and crying or having to leave the room was too much really. So here I am.
As things stand now, I'm usually ok for say a week or so, I'm happy, "normal" etc but EVERY time after a while negative thought processes start creeping back in and I find myself fairly unconsciously at first imagining stupid scenarios about things that could go wrong, I try my best to not let myself fall into those patterns but it seems so far I've not been able to stop myself and usually a day or two later I'm back down in the dumps. Some examples of my negative thought processes would be stuff like "I'm going to fail this course" or imagine one of my friends stealing my girlfriend or having a severe anxiety attack abroad (I'm going to Canada and Cuba in 2 days as my girlfriend is from there and her friend is getting married) anything negative and it just starts a cycle I find very difficult to break. I would love to know the reasoning behind my anxiety and have gone down several avenues hoping to at least find the reason if not the cure. From Acupuncture, Reiki, Psychologists, Hypnosis..while they all I'm sure helped in their own way, I still feel like there is an anchor in me and if I could just cut away the strings that hold it there I would finally be free.
Sometimes I'm very angry because of it, sometimes I'm scared of losing my mind, sometimes I cry thinking it will always be like this and sometimes I just tell to just **** right off and sometimes that works!
From what I've been reading on this website and drawing from my own experiences, I think I am my own worst enemy. So I'm trying to bring a lot of meditation focused on self-healing into my life, make peace with myself and let go of any irrational fears that are holding me down. From what I've read on these forums, so much of it seems to be fear of fear itself.
Hopefully I didn't send you all to sleep with my long post.
Thanks for reading!