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View Full Version : Can somone help me??? Im so scared!



soilworker12
05-02-2009, 05:15 PM
Hello everyone, my name is Dustin and im 23 yrs. old.

I was first told that I may have anxiety disorder when I was around 15-16. I was prescribed paxil and clonazepam. I was also abusing a LOT of illegal drugs and didnt take the anxiety seriously. So I basically used drugs as a crutch instead of taking the prescribed medicines.

By 18 I had quit doing everything EXCEPT smoking marijuana. My anxiety was still there but smoking weed helped a lot.

When I was 20 I began my first serious relationship with a girl. We were together from the time I was 20 up until about 5 months ago. This girl cheated on me several times, was an emotional wreck, turned out to have a body image/eating disorder, and was very emotionally abusive to me. I loved and cared for her through the entire almost 3 years we were together no matter what horrible things she did to me. I became more and more anxious every day and unhappy. I gained lots of weight and spent all my time worrying about her and the state of our relationship. All the while, my anxiety was getting worse and worse and worse and worse.

5 months ago I broke up with her and stopped smoking pot. I needed and wanted to get rid of both of them for once and for all, in efforts to live a happy and healthy life and get a grip on my anxiety.

I figured that in due time, without the stress of the relationship, and being sober, the anxiety would start to get a little better. I was wrong. Over the past 5 months its gotten so bad that its interfering with my daily life. Ive had to miss entire days of work due to non stop panic attacks. SO, as a result of all this, about 5 weeks ago I went to the doctor. He told me that he definatly thinks I have anxiety disorder and prescribed me 20mg pills of Paxil. Ive been taking them exactly as prescribed and even started to feel a little better up until 2 weeks ago.

for the past 2 weeks ive been getting real anxious all over again and this time, I am getting heart palpitations everyday. There is no real rhyme or reason to them.. it seems like they even happen when Im not particularly stressed or thinking about anything. I am now at a point of terror. Im so scared I cant even take it. (I have a follow up appointment in a week with my dr for the paxil and ill be telling him about the heart flutters on that day) My question to all of you is....

Can ANYONE tell me if the heart palpitations are a normal symptom of anxiety disorder? Has anyone in this forum had this experience or is currently dealing with this? If so PLEASE tell me ur story.. shed some light on this for me. Ive done some research on the internet (which has made me more scared than before) It does seem that medical websites do cite heart palpitations as a symptom of anxiety and stress disorder. (they also list a million horrific physical problems that could cause them too which isnt helping)

Again im getting the palpitations a few times a day randomly... sometimes when im anxious and sometimes even when im not....
My dr has done an ecg which came back fine, my blood pressure has been normal at most visists in the past couple months.. except a few times it was high but the dr said it was probably because of the anxiety, and ive had my cholesteral checked and it came back perfect (even though im out of shape). he also hasnt heard anything abnormal when he listens to me heart (again i havent spoken to my doctor about the fluttering yet cuz it just started 2 weeks ago but i will be in a week on my visit.)

PLEASE, if ANY of you out there have had this happen to them can u help me out? Let me know how your dealing with it ..... is the heart fluttering im experiencing normal as part of anxiety disorder?? Im ready to get my life together and live healthy and happy ( i even bought a tredmill to do some excercise) but because of the worrying and the now heart palps I am at a stand still.....

-Dustin (scared out of my mind)

Tywrap
05-02-2009, 06:16 PM
Dustin,
First off welcome and glad you quit abusing drugs.

Heart palpitations are part of an anxiety attack. First time I had them I was just in bed dozing off and then it felt as if my heart was going to go threw my chest and couldn't catch my breath. It scared the hell out of me so I went to the ER. At the time I still had not been diagonosed with anxiety. They hooked me up a EKG and said to lay off the caffeine. I know how you feel. I had several more attacks until I was diagosed correctly.

What worked for me is called Progressive muscle relaxation. You do this by tensing and relaxing each musle group.
http://www.guidetopsychology.com/pmr.htm

Good luck!!

Hanino
05-02-2009, 06:25 PM
Please read my post about amino acid in Anxiety Forum Forum Index -> General Discussion. Yes heart palpitations are symptoms. There's not need for you to have to cope of suffer with Anxiety when you can cure it...

soilworker12
05-02-2009, 08:36 PM
Thanks for the quick responses guys, I appreciate that! Im going to check out both of your suggestions as soon as Im done writing this.

The heart palpitations im experiencing are completly random and every day so far for the past two weeks... it happens when im worrying most often it seems, but it also happens when im not thinking about anything in particular and not necessarily stressed out. For instance, when I woke up this morning, the first thing I felt was a heart flutter...which was followed by a general uneasy feeling and turned into full blown anxiety that remained for half the day. I talked to my mom about it for sometime today which calmed me down (she assured me everything is fine and its just anxiety)

Its just so scary....it was difficult before to cope with the anxiety itself..but now its getting even harder to not worry and get all worked up with my heart randomly palpitating. I never used to have that problem when I got anxious until now. I just want to get on with my life and be healthy and happy for once!

-Dustin

Hanino
05-03-2009, 04:29 AM
Dustin

You’re quite welcome

Palpitations always seemed to get me in ways that didn’t make sense. As you said when you woke up the palpitations happened or being wake not thinking about anxiety then going into a relaxed state (such as getting in bed ready for sleep) then having palpitations occurring, kind of like the body would shift gears going from state to another and the brain or heart could not keep up almost like they were out of sync with one another. I hope that made sence.. lol As you said they come out of no where for seemingly no reason being with stress or without. I wish I could give a way to reason palpitations away by just thinking about but I could never find a way to do that, just telling myself everything was ok didn’t help at all. When palpitations occurred my right eye and it was always my right eye would jitter back and forth from side to side really fast so fast I could see it when I looked in the mirror, purely an involuntary muscle movement due to distorted brain waves, just as heart palpitations are. I had so many related anxiety symptoms I could probably write a book on them all. As I said before, with the use of amino acid and magnesium that’s all a thing of the past for me. I could talk for hours about amino acids. I am still amazed they did in two weeks what Doctors and Medication could not do in 12 years. I’m Happy everyday that I wake up and know that I don’t have anxiety anymore. Do your research come to understand about what’s going on in your brain then reverse the problem.

Google Distorted Brain Waves and Anxiety

Hanino

Obelysk
05-04-2009, 12:34 AM
Hey Dustin, I know what you are going through, I too had the weird heart palpitations with my anxiety. From reading your original post I can see a lot of things that I did when I first discovered anxiety. I used to go online and read about it but I soon noticed a trend in which everything that I read actually made me feel worse so I eventually stopped reading it. As for your 20mg Paxil, well I was actually on it a few weeks ago but I went about it differently; my psychiatrist started me off with 5mg (half the pill) to see if I felt better which I did but after several months it sort of wore off and than she decided to increase it to 10 mg. After that it sort of felt weird because I actually started to feel anxious because of the pill so she told me that she was going to take me off of it. She explained to me that she started me on a low dose because I was prone to panic attacks and thus I am very sensitive to the medication (or something along those lines). What I wonder is if the Paxil is actually giving you more anxiety just like it did to me, you should check with your psychiatrist.

SqueakyLibber7
05-09-2009, 11:51 PM
Hey Dustin,
I'm also 23 and also a former drug addict so I can definitely relate.
Now before I say anything else I want to tell you one thing: STOP GOOGLING YOUR SYMPTOMS!!! When my anxiety symptoms first started, I was constantly Googling all of them and the hits that came up were always the symptoms of serious stuff that we DON'T have! As a 23 year old with no pre-existing heart conditions, you are not having a heart attack or dangerous heart rhythms or anything to that effect. And by the way, I started Zoloft about 2 months ago and just a week ago or so starting getting the heart fluttering thing. I haven't seen my doctor yet either but I'm still positive we are both fine. :)
Just hop on this forum next time you're having symptoms instead of using the Google magic. :mrgreen:

coops025
05-11-2009, 05:00 AM
You want a solution like everyone else :)

List all your symtoms even if you no longer have them so i can have a look and see if i can help you with any.

Now with heart flutters, just keep your heart happy so you know those cups of coffee you keep drinking? Stop!! Stay away from caffine and suger as much as possible.

By the way do you have muscle twinges by any chance?