My Panic and Anxiety- CURED! How May I Help You?

[PanicCured]

Hi everyone. It was almost a year ago that I started posting on this site. At that time, I had a massive panic disorder and agoraphobia. I was scared to get into a shower, and walking outside my apartment building at times, was an impossibility. I had been in ERs and ambulances more times than I can remember.

About a year later, I am for the most part cured! I am on ZERO medication, I go anywhere I want and do whatever I like. I go to concerts in big crowded venues, I go to the gym often and get my heart rate extremely fast, and lift weights. I enjoy being alone, and I NEVER have panic attacks! I am no longer scared of not being in a safe place or with safe people. I go to bars and drink and party on occasion. I have even gone to bars alone and ended up being very social and met new people.

When I was having 3 panic attacks a day, I told myself if I ever got better I would do what I could to help other sufferers. I feel I am 95% cured, and if anyone needs a helping hand, I hope I can be there for you, like others were for me. Feel free to ask me whatever questions you want.

Also, I want you to know that if I could get cured and get cured naturally, so can you! There was a time when I needed Klonopin to leave my home. I haven't touched a pharmaceutical drug in over 5 months!

There is hope! Don't give up and don't accept what you have as something you will have to live with. Keep staying on the healing path and know you can get better and put this nightmare behind you. I go days at a time when I forget the word or concept of anxiety. It is barely even in my reality. When it is completely gone from my reality I will say I am 100% cured. Right now, I consider myself 95% cured.

I'm here for you if you need me!

[Schatmeisje]

how did you start going out again? just doing a little each time and then increasing it?

[PanicCured]

Hi there. Well, for me it was a slow process on and off. It wasn't like one day I woke up cured. It came in waves and rose and fell. You know how it is. It isn't linear. One thing that really helped me was always knowing I will get better. I didn't know when but I knew I would.

And of course, courage and logic must be used. I had to break out of the "safeplace" and "safeperson" mentality. Why was I safer in my home? I mean, if I just dropped, I would be better off in public where someone could help me then in my bedroom with my door locked. That helped me. But a lot of it was rebuilding my damaged nervous system and resetting it.

The intense out of control adrenaline-rush panic feelings calmed down a lot when I realized my heavy breathing was wacking out my nervous system. I found Buteyko breathing techniques. I thin if you google it you can probably find some free info on it. Basically, I would do the opposite o what I was dong and breathe less and much calmer. That helped me calm my nervous system down where I could go out and do things.

I also think taking Magnesium helped. I took a chelated form, Magnesium Glycinate or Magnesium Citrate. I took lots of supplements that I thought could rebuild my nervous system. It is hard to know which ones were good and which ones weren't. I was seriously taking a lot! I also took calming Chinese herbs, passionflower extract and drank lots of chamomile tea. I drank chamomile tea everyday.

But the main point I am trying to make is that we all have our own healing path. I want people to not listen to people that say anxiety/panic disorder can't be cured but only managed. "My doctor/therapist said this or that." Don't believe them! You can't get better overnight, but you can get better! But you need to really be on the healing path. Not the maintain your sanity so you can cope path. It may take you days, weeks, months or a year. It took me about a year to heal. I never have panic attacks anymore and I never will again. I can get nervous or worry. That's human. I even get scared at times. But no longer do I get the panic episodes. My heart may beat fast and I make get nervous before a job interview or doing a speech. That's fine. But that is obviously not what I'm referring to.

[Schatmeisje]

thats a great response, and it has really helped me feel like i am on the right path, i am just chipping away at it slowly, and have FINALLY learnt tp accept the set backs, i feel like i am making progress, just seems to be taking forever ! i am definitely better than 3 months ago.

Thank you so much, that will keep me motivated to keep moving forward and never give up :-) xx

[PanicCured]

Schatmeisje,

It sounds to me that you will totally get 100% better one day. You aren't accepting this as normal and something to live with. You aren't believing people that tell you it can only be managed and not cured. Don't accept this. You have your own healing path and you need to stay on it. I don't know exactly what you're going through, but for me, I felt like I was an adrenaline time bomb waiting to happen at any moment. I think this was from an over-sensitized nervous system. So the calm Buteyko breathing techniques I did and the supplements and magnesium, etc., helped rebuild my crashed nervous system.

Do you have a fear of having panic attacks outside? Well, let me tell you that I had this. I was in a very busy shopping mall, and I was on the ground holding some guy that worked at some juice bar's hand. I'm a guy too so you can imagine how embarrassing this was. People crowded around me and some thought I was having a heart attack. People walked me outside and brought me into an ambulance. There were cars and people everywhere watching. Even 2 strangers came in the ambulance with me for support. After hours and lots of money spent at the hospital, they told me I was fine and free to go home. So I was there, it happened to me, and I am ok with it! People were nice to me and very comforting. So if you are afraid of this, just know, if it ever does happen to you, its no big deal and you will get past it. Just like I did.

But I know for sure now, that could never happen to me again.

[Brad72]

Glad you have found your path to fixing your anxiety. I am about 85% I reckon. I haven't had an attack for about 7 months but still do get some uncomfortable feelings, like my body doesn't quite know what to do in a situation where before a panic attack would have happened but now doesn't.

For me I found that once I got off medication I began to get better. The medication for me always felt like a band aid that never really found the root cause, and because of the incorrect medication in the first 2 years my anxiety got worse, not better because we later found after 6 different types of drug I was intolerant to all of them. This was just me however.

So after 15 years I found a psychologist that gave me true understanding of what was happening to me, enabled me to take back control of my mind, plus healed the inner child where a lot of the anxiety started from. I was an expert at turning everything into a catastrophe, from smells, sensations, feelings and thoughts. Walking from a cold room to a hot room would cause anxiety. Watching people on TV having a hard time would cause anxiety as I would feel what they were feeling. Driving to the coast, which I have done 1000's of times would cause anxiety every time. Feeling my heart flop in my chest or smelling something I perceived as odd would cause anxiety and the list goes on. . I never let the anxiety keep me house bound and I always tried to do things but as we all know that is often easier said than done. I would often be in tears as it was just so hard to do some of the simplest things in life, like going out to dinner or going on a camping trip even though after the event I would return feeling proud that I was able to do it.

Anyway my therapist uses ACT therapy, mindfullness, CBT, Schema therapy and a few others and all of them together worked beautifully. I have now got control back of my thoughts and I can notice when my mind starts to drift off into a anxiety state and catch it before it does. I also began to realise that a lot of what I was feeling were just an over reaction to normal human emotions, sensations, thoughts and situations.

I guess a the end of the day I realised that I am not mental and I won't go mad. None of us are. In simple terms we just over react to what our bodies perceives as a threat and need to learn to turn down the panic switch so it only goes off when it's meant to. This does take practice, there are times when it is not at all fun but it can be done. We will have setbacks but that's ok because every step in a right direction, however small is a positive one. We all have the power to get better and we are all much stronger than anxiety would lead us to believe. Once you can believe that anxiety is just a story teller it's power slowly starts to dissolve.

Good luck to you all. You can and will do it.

[PanicCured]

Yeah I understand. I also went to a therapist and then at some point I realized there wasn't much else for me to learn from her.

I look at my problem as a crashed nervous system and overbreathing causing a crashed respiratory center in the brain. Little by little through therapy, breathign techniques, lots of supplements and herbs, and changing thought patterns and using courage, I was able to rebuild myself back to health. When I got addicted to klonopins I was battling anxiety plus withdrawal. That was terrible! I know how hard things can be and it is hard to not reach for the drugs, but it needs to only be a temporary solution, while you work on your long term healing. Unfortunately, most doctors do not understand what healing is. I have considered opening up some type of anxiety/depression treatment center.

The worst part is some people are convinced they can not get better. It really makes me sad to see that so many people feel so defeated.

I think that in a panic attack, you are convinced you are dying, because your brain wants you to think your dying so you run from the saber tooth tiger. If you thought you woulnd't die, you wouldn't have a need to fight or flight. So you are told you are dying by your brain as a motivator to fight or flee or freeze. This is what I came up with on my own. I don't know if its true, but it is what I believe.

[Brad72]

Mate the Cave man mentality certainly had it's place. You are out hunting with your spear and flint knife when a sabre tooth tiger jumps out ready to attack you. Instantly you body prepares you for action. Rush of adrenalin, increased heart rate, pupils dilate, blood pressure increases, blood is taken from your digestive system and sent to you muscles, mouth becomes dry so can can fight, flight or fright.

Obviously if you fright you just stand there frozen, and become lunch for the tiger. In flight you run like the wind but can tell everyone how dangerous that tiger is so have learnt an important survival skill. In fight, well you could win or loose but if you win then you get lunch. The problem is in those days the flight, fright flight response was quite valid as the threats were real but in today's world we just don't have them. Anxiety just responds to the wrong triggers and causes the same response even though there is no danger.

Learn to control the anxiety thoughts and triggers and the anxiety will not control you. Also once you learn that what you are feeling is just a physiological response to stress (anxiety) it certainly put your mind at easy. But it still takes time to retrain the nervous system to be no so sensitive.

[PanicCured]

Yeah I agree with what you said, but there is a physical component to anxiety that many doctors do not recognize. That is the nervous system is tuned to a way higher frequency. That is why I recommend the right vitamins, minerals and supplements to replenish this, in addition to breathing retraining. I think this is not just a mental thing, physically you're brain and nervousu system is sensitized.

Another program besides Buteyko breathing that I used were these CDs. I forgot the name. A guy in New Zealand. David something.

[Martintlane]

I agree with you guys completely. My anxiety issues reduced after i started to deep breathing exercises and re focusing my thoughts. Finding natural methods really has improved my life