Is there a happy ending?

[ruby-leigh]

I have been suffering from anxiety for a long time. And one of the saddest thoughts that some times goes through my head is what if i dont out grow this, what if is it doesnt get any better or what if i cant beet this. So i was wondering if anyone on this forum had a happy story to share? about how they managed to overcome their anxiety problems. And also any advise would be useful. Thanks.

[Crush]

I have been suffering from anxiety for a long time. And one of the saddest thoughts that some times goes through my head is what if i dont out grow this, what if is it doesnt get any better or what if i cant beet this. So i was wondering if anyone on this forum had a happy story to share? about how they managed to overcome their anxiety problems. And also any advise would be useful. Thanks.

Yes I have a happy story to share. I am now pertty much recovered.

What will ensure you have anxiety is worrying that you will never get out of it. Worry causes anxiety for people who are prone to it.

To remove the worry, I took medication. This almsot blocked the worry. I toke a very small 5mg dose of a mild SSRI caled Citalopram. I didn't think it was working then I noticed (wow a whole day went buy and I wasn't thinking about my anxiety despite all the usual symtoms like crazy light headedness, palpitations, etc).

After I stopped worrying, I noticed things started to slowely get better. Then that allowed me to finally accept my diagnosis.

I'm being honest here. I did not have faith in my medical system (i'm in Canada here so trust me). I fealt that our doctors where more interested in their associations and getting me out of the office than treating my health. I didn't trust their advice and fealt they were against me. I fealt that only *I* knew my symptoms best. After all, when I'm being cut off and not given a chance to even communicate my symptoms, it's not very re-assuring. When I'm at the ER and being told 'I dont know why you have chest pains' it's not very re-assuring. I can go on and on.

I couldn't even read these websites because they would give me panic attacks right away.

So I would Google my own symtoms. I think everyone knows what that wil do. I became a basket case and got the point I was so light headed I coudln't walk. I was in the ER a second time and in 9 hours I never got up once to go to the washroom because I thought I would fall over.

I was finally diagnosed and to make a long story short, after taking medication, it allowed me to stop constantly worrying, and then finally accepting my diagnosis once I wasn't such a wreck.

The more I accepted that every new thing happening was anxiety, the better things got.

The anxiety shifted to new areas like muscle twitches/cramps etc and each time I would think it could be this, or could be that. But it was just anxiety.

Today I'm a ok and enjoying life. I'm out at restaurants again, shooting youtube videos, I'm still taking 5mg of Citalopram (very low dose) and I'll take it hopefully for the years to come seing as anxiety runs in my family.

I guess when you finally learn to accept your diagnosis, things will get better.

But eh, a lot of the responsibility is the available litterature. If wikipedia just had a listing of detailed side effects, things for me could have turned out differently.

A small paragraph of single words describing symtoms is not even close to re-assuring someoen with anxiety. 'Shortness of breath'.. what exactly does that mean? I'm 'starving for air'.. 'feel like I need to take deep breaths'. 'I dont have short breaths.. it feels like I'm not getting enough oxygen'. That sort of thing.

So the litterature available needs to be over hauled as the standard anxiety descriptions are way too vague causing people to become confused and scared because their symtoms don't match the basic listings.

People really need to be able to match up their symtoms exactly to a list to feel re-assured that they are suffering from anxiety. Only then they can accept their diagnosis.

In this day and age, a doctor telling you that you have something is not good enough. Especially in certain countries where there is lack of confidence in the medical systems and professionals.

People need to know that their symptoms really are the anxiety, but unfortunately takes time. But you will get there. When you do, THEN your anxiety will get better. And medicatoin is the big helper to get there.

[forwells]

Hi ruby-leigh

Sorry to hear you are having a hard time.

First off i want to let you know that no matter how long you have suffered you can get past this and move on to live a health and happy life .

So you would like a positive story , well 18 months ago i crashed and completely lost the plot with anxiety and panic attacks. I was so scared , i had most of the symptoms that are on the anxiety list , i got to the stage i couldn't eat , couldn't sleep , In fact i got to the stage were death was looking like the only way out from the pain i was in .

Well today 18 months down the track i would have to say i am 95% better than i was but infact i am 150% than what i was before i crashed . I still have some symptoms of high stress but thats ok , i know what they are and they do not worry me .

How did i do it ? Well i did it drug free . Why drug free ? Because i wanted to know that it was me doing it , i wanted to walk away from anxiety knowing that it was me alone that controlled my anxiety , yes i know that many don't think they can do it without drugs but let me tell you we all have the power to and there are many , if not a high % of people on drugs that are in fact worst because of them . Proff suggest that taking drugs is a palcebo effect . See now i know that if i get a bit antsy pantsy then i know that i don't have to rely on anything other than myself and what i have learnt to control it .

You have to understand and alot of people don't see this but we have a limit , a breaking point so to speak . Everything does ,anything that is place understress over a long time will crack , the advantage of people is that we can repair this crack .

I researched anxiety , i found out everything i could about it and the way it worked , by doing this i took away its power , why because the unknown is scarey , why would someone not be scared when their heart is racing at 100 miles a hour or they are shaking and don't see the reason behind this . I now have the power within me to see how this is working and what is causing this , It is this power that stop anxiety in its track . I told my minister that i could not even start to explain how scared i was about anxiety and panic when it started , that is how much of a effect it has on me 18 months later , so you could guess how scared i was when it happened . Today i can see why it happened and how .

People take about treating the underlying causes of anxiety and with each of us that is different and yes you should treat them , but the one thing in common with everyone with anxiety is that we are scared and don't kid yourself buy saying oh i know its anxiety and i know what caused it so i will be right. You have to learn to live in the now , it doesn't matter what happened in the past , we can learn to live with that , or cope with what may have happened to us . What we need to learn is to except the now and not be scared of it . You have to learn to accept anxiety 110% as what it is just stress that has built up and bitten us on the bum without us noticing it was coming .

Anxiety is nothing more than a warning , a built in alarm in the body that is telling you that it is stressed and you need to change things to help it destress . ANXIETY IS STRESS . Once you remove this stress you no longer have anxiety , its that simple .

So lose the fear of anxiety , it is not some nasty monster , some thing that the doctors have missed It is just stress . Yes in many ways it is unnatural for us to suffer from it but then again it is the most natural thing in the world and it is truly a blessing that humans get a warning to let them know things are not working as they should . Many people miss this warning and end up dieing from a heart attack or a stroke becuase they didnt take notice of the stress they were under . So if you can , see anxiety as a blessing , and just as that warning and learn to change the things you can .

You need to remove the stress from your life , weather it is the way you think , what you eat or drink , people around you , but most of all you need to learn not to react to things in life the way you do .

See we are all the same , everyone has stress and everyone will get high stress but it all comes down to the way we react and move on with our life that maps the outcome of that stress

So no matter what you will get past this , you just have to accept it for what it is so you don't feed it with more stress and put the hard yards in on changing the way you life and react to life . There is no magic pill it is all up to you and believe me that power is within you .

I wish you well and god bless
kev :D

[ruby-leigh]

Thank you both for the advise.
Its intresting to see that one of the messages above you got through it with medication and one of you without. I have been considering medication for a while now and im still not sure how i feel about it, i supose im trying to keep it as a last option. Right now i feel like im bearly keeping my head above the water and i feel like i could sink at any moment. But im just trying to keep faith that someday i will overpower this.