I feel like ive been given the red pill

[jon mike]

hi, i'm 33 i think ive had anxiety since i was 16, ive only recently found out that my problems i seemed to have always had are anxiety, a friend of mine has sort of pushed towards gettin me help which im in the process of now, ive had 100's of problems over the years with, just want to know if anyone else has ever had this problem, for some reason and i no its going to sound strange but i have started to feel like i have never noticed the sky before?? like i am looking at the world in a different way, it makes me feel so bad and ill when i think that we are walking on the earth that is in space, that the earth is a lump of rock spinning, that directly above us is space, its like i cant accept this anymore?? like before i didnt even notice, i can cope with everything else with anxiety, choking, panics, constant sleep paralysis, no feelings sometimes, emtpiness, none stop pissing! alcohol next 2 days are hell!! panic over hyperventilating, noticing things like colour and pondering on the fact that im sure i have never really noticed it before??? all this but the altered reality thing is really too much, im really a good spirited person, got loads of friends but only one that really knows my truth, realise im rambling now, anyone else ever had anything remotly similar to this? i no everyone gets there own private hell but it would really make me feel less alone if someone has, cheers j

[gaara]

I know exactly what you are talking about.

For as long as I remember I have always been fasinated with space, science, how things work etc.. Up until a couple months ago.

I'm a 21 year old male. My anxiety started off about something...girl problems when I was 19 but at least it was about something and reasonable so I could deal with it.

Now it has turned into some really weird stuff. It started when I noticed one day when i just felt completely empty, emotionless/emotionally numb. I just didn't give a shit about anything or anyone. "ok, this is weird"..I've never in my life felt like that so I sort of just shrugged it off.

A week goes by and I STILL was feeling like this. Ok, wtf. Now I was getting worried..like wtf is wrong with me etc. I then would do things and see if I would get a reaction out of them like I did before i felt this way...So for example, I would go watch a documentary on something I thought was cool but the whole time, thoughts would be RACING through my head like "am i enjoying this?" "did you always enjoy this?" "is this the feeling you got as usual before all this stuff happened"...then the fact that i was thinking about all this crap spiked my anxiety before.

I was like "WTF is the matter with you?? how can you not remember if you liked something? It's supposed to be a natural thing why the hell are you questioning everything??"...then thats when things spiralled out of control. I started to analyze my entire life. Everything, every thought, every action, every mannerism just analyzed it with the same questions as I mentioend above.

Then, I started to question my own sanity, sexuality(lost interest in sex..which is a big WOAH WTF moment for me since i used to LOVE women/sex etc..basically was a horny fucker haha). That sent me into a depression(still am depressed).

I then started to find things really weird. Like I would speak, then i'd think about me speaking and just be weirded out. I went through a phase where I questioned reality, pondered what is reality? I would look at a building and think "so what? it's just a bunch of atoms/molecules arranged in a certain way"...I would watch porn and think "what is so attractive about boobs? i mean, they're just sacks of fat"...like WHAT THE HELL WAS WRONG WITH ME lol why was i thinking in such a weird manner? I've never in my life thought about things that way.

This though is by far the shittiest thing about all of this:

Familiar places/faces felt strange and alien to me. I remember I was with my parents at our local mall, and suddenly teh mall felt like "off" and alien to me. When I looked at my parents I would think "who are you guys? are you actually my parents? do i know you?"..then it started happening with my friends and even my girlfriend.

I still feel like that a lot of the time and it is very depressing. I used to be such a happy/caring outgoing guy that would love to make people laugh and would love to explore things but now i'm just blah.

I lost the sense of nostalgia. I can't feel any sense of familiarity with anything and I don't know why...it's ;like I can't remember being happy? How to be happy, what the times were like before all this started even though it's been 4 months. It felt like everything before January, like who I am, how I acted etc..was a different lifetime, a different dimension, like it was all a dream like I couldn't believe that I could actually be that happy/carefree and outgoing.

I'm still struggling with this stuff but remain optimistic.

[jon mike]

ye same here, im strong enough to remain optimistic, i have a wife who's cool and just gets on with everything around me while im running around like a raging lunatic :-) and a mate who's been through it himself who's really guiding me, saying the right things to me, it makes me feel so much better knowing that its got a god damn name at least, ive been ok for the last 4 yrs too, this all came on from xmas after i drank way to much, the next day it all came back, the old feelings, i went through 7 yrs of shit once, came out of it in 2004 when my last relationship ended, god it felt so good again to get normal feelings, i literally sat there and felt them, i'd open the windows in my house and just wiat for smells to come flying through the window and that would give me normal feelings, the 7 shittiest yrs of my life were total hell though, i did not know it was down to anxiety, never looked into it, went to see specialists and was never diagnosed, i thought i was scitzaphrenic! im going to be getting help now which is great, the worst thing for me is, i was thinking ok if im totally mad why am i aware of evrything around me?? why am i aware that im mad, if your mad arent you supposed to think your sane !? shutter island comes to mind, im a bit like him only im not as rich :-) if people are on this site at least they know they have anxiety issues, its the worst hell on earth not knowing dude, that is alone, real loneliness, trying not to feel sorry for yourself is the best way, dont dwell on your feelings, just be aware of them and observe them to see what they do in certain situations, thats what ive been doing, you sound like your american anyway so im assuming you get sun??? the sun really helps me feel better but i live in england and the weather in england matches my moods, one day the sun is on my face, the next day its pissing with rain over my head! by the way ye i know what you mean about places looking different, believe that goes over time, dont worry about that, you'll be like, what the fuk was going on in my head and you'll feel good about that place/person again, j

[Rachel Magenta]

Important : Be in the moment. All there is is now. Every day is the same day. Breath. Breathing is what connects us to the universe and they are trying to suffocate us.