Hoping to find hope

[wordmistress]

Hello all. It's 3am and I am sitting up. The anxiety wins again. I'm away from home right now and feeling so uncomfortable that I can't even go and lie down. I suffer from anxiety with agoraphobia, as they put in the reading material.

So, why am I here? Well, I need help that I am just not getting. Like others out here, I have pushed everyone away except my fiance, who can be overbearing. I look at my life sometimes and I don't know how it got this way. I should have graduated college in 2004 and I am still trying to finish...three credits left that I can't get done because I get so anxious about going to class that I end up quitting. I spend at least 30 minutes every day trying to find something physically wrong with me online because I just can't believe I can control this. I can't believe that I would let myself live like this.

I've tried three different meds...no help. I've tried therapy twice...I find therapy for agoraphobics ironic. If I could leave the house, I wouldn't need therapy. I'm at my witts end. I feel like I am watching myself wilt away sometimes. I think about who I used to be and I cry. I miss me. I was that wild friend that would do anything. I guess in the grand scheme, nothing too crazy, but I was the one who everyone took the road trip with. I was the one who would go to the club and dance by myself because all I wanted to do was have a good time. I was that outspoken girl in class who drove everyone crazy because I had an opinion on everything and I made it known.

Now I see myself finding it hard to go to the gas station. I can't go out with my friends. My fiance hasn't seen a movie in the theaters since he started dating me nor has he eaten in a restaurant. I can't walk the dog. I miss me. I miss life. Not all days are bad, but the bad ones are enough to cloud the good ones. I spend all the good days waiting for the bad to come. Sometimes I honestly feel like I am dying. I don't drink, but I do smoke and some days, I smoke so much (like yesterday) because I am so anxious all day that I spend the next day (like today) not being able to breath...which causes anxiety.

I am here because I am hoping someone out here can offer me hope. I am hoping that someone can show me that maybe one day I can get better.

Love,
Mandy

[kpettey]

Hey Mandy,

I too suffer from anxiety with agoraphobia. I am 36 yrs. and my first attack was when I was about 16 yrs old. Of course, at 16 I had no clue what had happened and I still didn't know what was going on with the second and third, etc. attack. I went through all the usual heart tests, and more tests and different doctors and more tests and finally I read an article of a famous football player that had panic attacks and it was the first time I had ever heard of this.

This was in the early 90's and panic and anxiety disorder was not really talked about much and most doctors wanted to brush the idea aside. However, to make a long story short (because my story sounds like everyone else that has this disorder, sickness, disease, syndrome or whatever the heck we call it) I have finally gotten better. I have suffered with the panic attacks for 20 yrs and I developed the agoraphobia when I was about 24 yrs old, so that's been 12 yrs ago.

I can tell you it will get worse if you do not seek help. It grows and mutates (that's how I refer to it) because not every attack is the same and through the years I developed more and worse symptoms and more and more avoidance behaviors. Not to mention my world was gradually shrinking and fighting it was draining me.
I always thought myself to be very outgoing, I love people and laughing and life and this disease began to slowly suck out my life as I knew and love it. Because of fear I gave in to its demands.

So, here is how I have overcome this monster (for now!) and hopefully for good! I finally got serious about hating the way I was living. I am the mother of two beautiful girls, I am a successful business owner and basically I had everything going for me and I got real mad at this disorder!

I went to a general doctor and basically told him exactly how I was feeling and all the history and I admitted to how bad it had really gotten. Such as I would have to leave my house sometime four hours before a meeting that should take someone 20 minutes to get to and I had to have all this extra time to drive this maze of a roads, I called, “over the river and through the woods to grandma’s house we go” just to make it to the meeting. Plus I wanted extra time to be able to pull over and breathe if I had to. I had always avoided taking medicine because I had read and been told that this was a demon I had to fight within myself and I felt week that I couldn’t “handle a little stress” The funny thing is I wasn’t stressed. I had tried Paxil before and had a very bad experience with it (definite thoughts of killing myself and anyone who knows me knows I love life too much, I’m very optimistic!).

So this new doctor, who by the way is just a general MD gave me Lexapro and it has truly been my miracle. I was and I am like most people that suffer with this disorder for some reason I resisted taking the medication. I guess mainly because I kept thinking if I can just find the root of the cause I had rather fix it naturally than with medication. I went to physiotherapists and did the cognitive behavioral therapy to no avail. I will say this after suffering from this sickness for over 16 years in the most severe way to go from having approx 5 to 6 major attacks a day for the last 6 years, to not having a single attack, two weeks after I started the medication, all I can say is that I am amazed. My doctor said I had a very severe case of anxiety with agoraphobia, plus I had begun to develop other phobias and symptoms of OCD trying to do rituals to prevent the attacks and of course a little depression from all this crap! I know now that I would have never been able to control all this by myself!

No book or self help tape would have ever stopped the onslaught and I was within months to being Howard Hughes and locking myself up in a bed. Oh by the way, through the psychotherapy I did learn the root cause of the disorder, which was much more complicated than I thought but even knowing the roots of the beginning couldn’t help me save myself. If I had maybe caught the problem in the very beginning, I mean within the first year maybe no more than the second I maybe could have used the breathing techniques and other things to help me slow it down, but after it begins to snowball and once the AVOIDANCE BEHAVIOR begins you really must get extra help because you have to unlearn that avoidance behavior.

Lastly, I will say that life has been daylight compared to darkness. Now, that I do not had any attacks in over nine months and I have no fear of an attack I realize how much I had given up trying to fight this all by myself. (Sorry to say, friends and family, although mean well – do not understand or have a clue how severe this condition is!!) That’s why talking to a doctor about this is so important and the first month be ready to not be able to function good at all on the medication, even the Lexapro that has helped me in the end, made me even more paranoid that first month. I guess because there is a list a mile long of all the side effects and you are just waiting to feel them all and you will have some!! However, they do go away and the pain is worth the reward. When you decide to take the medicine make sure you have a good support system of family and/or friends around and I suggest take a little time off from work until your body adjusts. After, I had begun taking the medicines I took the smallest does and then gradually he raised me to the maximum does. The funny thing is, I almost didn’t tell the doctor, after the third month that I was still have the avoidance behavior (I hadn’t have an attack) but I was still avoiding certain streets and lights and intersections but I happen to tell him that I was so grateful for not having the attacks that I would be okay if this was all I could get from the meds. He then gave me a script for the next does up (maximum) and that made all the world of difference. I went from no attacks but still had fear of having one. To literally 100% well within a few weeks!!

The only regret I have is waiting 16 yrs to seek help and not continuing until I was better, sometimes it is the doctor and sometimes it is the medication. There are a lot of different types out there and if you have a close attentive doctor and a support system you will be okay and don’t be afraid to try a different med if the first one doesn’t work, however all of the meds take a little time for you body to adjust.

If you want to ask me more questions I have plenty of experience and suffering under my belt and will gladly share my experience and research knowledge with you.

Thanks
Kimberly Pettey

Hi,
your entry is very encouraging to people thanks,
I have aspecific question. I have tried a lot of differant meds to no avail. Three of these were ssri which had no affect. Lexapro is an ssri drug, did you take any other ssri meds before this one ?