My first post and my story

[seizetheday]

Hey everyone, i joined this forum in hopes that it will help me get over my anxiety and hopefully help others in their road to recovery as well. I am 20 years old and just discovered that i had anxiety about 6 months ago, but have had it since i was about 14. I thought I was actually going CRAZY until i found out that anxiety runs in my family and started putting the pieces of the puzzle together. One question i have for you is has anyone ever had their anxiety totally disapear for any matter of time? Back in september about 8 of my friends and i had weed cookies and usually this makes me more anxious, but for some reason this time it had the opposit effect and the next day when i woke up, i had no anxiety at all. It was completely gone. For the next couple of months i was happy and anxiety free but it slowly started coming back after that. Since then I have had some periods of a few days where i am completely anxiety-free, but i then slip back into an anxious state of mind.. does anyone else ever have that?.. I havn't felt that way for a while though... I went to the doctor last week and i told him i didn't want to go on any medication (just a personal choice) so he told me about an herbal supplement called St. Johns Wort... it actually seemed to help for a couple days but i'm now back to feeling anxious and worried all of the time. I really want to try Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, but don't know of any good therapists in my area.. and thas my story thanks for reading :)

[DiamondSea]

I have my good and bad days. Sometimes nothing really triggers my anxiety either. i woke up today extremely anxious, for example. Some times my fears and worries diminish, but they always somehow embody themselves in something else :( Typical hypochondriac. I would highly recommend trying CBT, I just started it last week and am liking it so far.

[danstelter]

Definitely stay off the weed! It only make the anxiety come back, as you experienced. I also share your experience in regard to St. John's Wort which didn't seem to help so much after a while.

For me, a combination of exercise, healthy dieting (avoiding caffeine/alcohol), positive friends, counseling, and medication helped me to reduce my anxiety to a very manageable level to the point where it rarely bothers me. Medication is not a requirement, and it certainly is fine that you don't go on it. I resisted it for a while, but now that I am on it, it is really helping, but I do plan to go off of it long-term because I am very skeptical of medication and doctors.

Keep working on what you are doing and implement exercise and dieting along with the therapy and you will be okay. Anxiety will come back at times, but if you keep working at it, it continues to reduce. Herbal supplements alone can help, but as you experienced, their effects can diminish also.