Archive for September, 2010

If you don’t know me well you may not know that I suffer from Anxiety.

Anxiety is a normal reaction to stress. It helps one deal with a tense situation in the office, study harder for an exam, keep focused on an important speech. In general, it helps one cope. But when anxiety becomes an excessive, irrational dread of everyday situations, it has become a disabling disorder.

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/anxiety-disorders/index.shtml

So that’s the gist of it.  I have anxiety disorder.  There are 5 major types of Anxiety Disorder. There is Generalized, Obsessive, Panic, Post-Traumatic Stress, and Social Phobia.

The doctor classified me as generalized in the beginning.  I do experience Panic Disorder and Social Phobia.  Sometimes it all plays hand in hand and I can experience it all in the same situation.

It is hard to live with.  As a child growing up I didn’t know what was wrong with me.  It runs through my family but they wiped it all under the rug because they didn’t believe in it. It caused a huge impact on my life.

As a child downstairs, alone, at night I would stay up late watching tv to find out I couldn’t bring myself to go to bed.  Why?  Well when I finally brought myself to go to bed cause I was too damn tired to stay up anymore I would run up the stairs because my brain would imagine that someone would appear out of thin air and chase me with a knife.  Yeah what a fucked thing for a kid to deal with.  I feared death, still do but as a child it was to a point where I thought about it often and would cry hysterically at the thought of my being gone the next day.  I would fear falling asleep, I might not wake up.   In high school I remember having to excuse myself to the bathroom only to drop to the floor, sitting there sweating and feeling like I would have a heart attack.

Fast forward to adulthood. At first I really only had issues at night. Then I was having panic attacks in front of my children.  I remember taking them for a walks and telling them what to do if mom would fall to the ground. I was scared and I can’t imagine what went through their head that their mother had to say this to them.  I hope I didn’t scare them too much!

It took me many years into adult hood to tell my doctor.  I wanted to know what was wrong with me.  In some ways finding out was comforting, in some ways I was devastated.  What the hell do I do now?  We tried two different medications.  The first one was Welbutrin which actually made my attacks worse.  I couldn’t live like that.

I was then put on another medication.  I remember zoning out for almost a week after I started taking it.  I don’t remember much of what happened that week. I spent almost a year on it before I realized it wasn’t good for me.  I was too calm, so calm that I could barely feel when my father died.  Everyone walked all over me, I could have cared less about anything going on around me.  Not good.  I had to stop.  You are supposed to wean off but I didn’t want it anymore.  It took me a good 30 days to feel like myself again.

But was that me?  The anxiety eventually returned.

I have found myself at the ER on many occasions with the overwhelming feeling that something was wrong and I was going to die.  It hits suddenly most of the time so it can be difficult to control.  Nothing is ever wrong with me.  It is all in my head.  While that is true it is a very real problem that disrupts my life.  When will I know if there really is a medical problem?  I feel like an ass with every trip to the ER.

I have luckily surrounded myself with a few friends who have the same issue I have.  I have people I can talk to.  We comfort each other, listen to each other about episodes we have had. I think partially I don’t want to have them around people who don’t understand.  They tend to think your just nuts.

So what works for me?

- Sleep.  It helps if I can fall asleep tho that’s not always possible.

- Water & Air.  I drink water and if possible get some fresh air.  If I am at home I pace a lot.

- Eating Healthy – not only eating healthy I switched to mostly natural and organic food.  I can’t say for sure it’s helped but ever since I do have less attacks.  It has also helped my gallstone not act up.

Why mention this now?  I walked into work this morning and it just came over me.  I got dizzy, sweaty and my heart was pounding.  I thought I was close enough to passing out that I took medication and sat in my co-workers office for awhile. Then went to CVS to walk around and get my mind off it.  Now all I want to do is sleep.

It’s hard to allow people into my world with this over me, but here it is for all to see.  Now that it is out there I may share more of what I have gone through as an adult if I feel people will benefit from reading it.

If you suffer from anxiety disorder know that there are many other people out there like you. Consider talking to your doctor if you haven’t already.