I am seeing a psychiatrist for other issues and we have talked about this, and he thinks I may be right, so I’m not asking for medical advice here, simply venting and asking for other opinions and folks with experience to chime in.
What happens to me is that I’ll get insanely nervous sometimes for apparently no reason. Sweaty hands and feet, tingling all over my butt and the backs of my legs, knots in my stomach, and this overwhelming sense of something being wrong. I immediately start wondering if I’ve forgotten something vitally important or what the fuck it could be making me feel so terrible, but in the meantime I get more and more nervous and uncomfortable. I sometimes get to the point where I’ll need to vomit.
Almost always I fail to find a reason for the feeling, or the reason I find is so puny that it doesn’t explain the depth of my feelings.
Has anyone else had similar experiences? Have you found anything that helps?
I’ve suffered anxiety disorder for years. But it’s only been the past few years that any doctor has bothered medicating it! :smack:
Here’s how my attacks go: an immediate, overwhelming sense that something is drastically wrong; heart pounding; sweating; nausea. Unmedicated, they usually come in clusters. I may not have an attack for months, but when I do, if I don’t nip the first one in the bud (Xanax, thanks!), I may have as many as 15 more in the next 12 hours or so. The day after a bad panic day, I can induce one simply by remembering what they felt like on the previous day.
A low dose of Xanax (.5mg) is enough to stop them in their tracks, though.
However, before I was medicated, I developed a couple of coping strategies that worked for me; YMM, obviously, V. One is to physically touch another person. Don’t know why this helps, but it does. Another is to watch the sweep second hand of a clock. I don’t know if this helps by re-focusing my attention, or by reminding me that time is passing, and therefore my attack will, too.
The worst is when you wake up in the middle of the night with one. Ugh.
One therapist I had theorized that the attacks were due to repressed childhood memories, and whenever one part of my brain would try to recall whatever it is I’m suppressing, another part of my brain would keep that from happening by short-circuiting it (so to speak) with an anxiety attack.
They’re no fun, that’s for sure! But there are both drugs and behavioral therapies that can help!
Have you gone to a regular MD and ruled out other things (e.g. blockage, thyroid, hormone imbalance)? My husband suffers from panic attacks (just had one this past weekend that landed him in the ER, as a matter of fact) that are quite scary, but they do stress tests and CT scans to rule out other more nefarious conditions first.
Not for the anxiety specifically, no. I did have a bunch of different bloodwork run about a year ago for some other problems I was having, and I know thyroid was one thing they checked. I will talk to my PCP when I get back home from my trip.
Have you thought about having a stress test? I read somewhere that a sense of impending doom often accompanies a heart attack. Don’t mean to scare you, or add to your anxiety, but it might be worth checking out.
I deal with a lot of anxiety. Lately, when I feel anxious, I just do something physical. Even if I’m at the office, I’ll walk up and down the stairs a few times. If I’m working at home, I’ll go for a run. Now, I’m not usually a runner, so I don’t run for very long. I’ll sprint, then walk, then sprint again. Sometimes that helps.
I was recently diagnosed with an anxiety disorder (although I’ve probably had it for a good decade but to be honest I thought that it was always normal to feel this miserable.) I get the fast heartbeat, impending feeling of doom, paranoia that everyone is secretly watching me, talking about me, and waiting for me to mess up, self-depreciation and overly self-criticizing, the list goes on and on so I won’t bore you with the details. I was prescribed 10 mg Prozac and bumped it up to 20, I’ve noticed that 10 mgs doesn’t have the affect that it used to.
I like the medicine. When I take it, I don’t feel so stressed. The physical stomach pains disappear, the overly-criticizing voices in my head are muffled, nobody’s watching me, I can make a mistake or be a minute late without having a heart attack, I feel almost normal.
Exercise doesn’t work for me. I wish it did. It takes an hour straight of hardcore cardio just to get that endorphin rush now.
In the morning, before I take any medication, I wake up from the physical pain that my stress has turned into. Feels like repeated jabs in the stomach. Nothing I do helps them go away. Sometimes I’ll have a mini-panic attack, where there’s this impending sense of doom, an evil force is watching me, and like my soul is almost being sucked out of my body. They last for about five seconds. I’m kind of new to all of this, too.
Does this sound like you? Perhaps you can talk about the circumstances in which this came on, which will help us talk about it with you. These things pretty much always have a root cause, although it may be quite some time in the past and it can take a small thing to bring it into significance in your life right now.
At first I thought my stress and anxiety was just normal and related to school (I had gone back to college) and expected it to go away after I graduated. I graduated in May 2009, however, and the stress and anxiety seems to be about the same. I find myself grinding my teeth and clenching my stomach muscles and waiting for some unseen hammer to fall.
It’s happening right now as a matter of fact and I feel all freaked out
I’m lucky that I found out what was happening very early on. Within a few weeks of my first panic attacks, I’d found out what they were and learned relaxation techniques. They work very well for me, and I rarely suffer panic attacks now.
Although to be fair, I usually avoid stressful situations too.
I’ll have a random physical anxiety attack every couple of months or so. I don’t get many thoughts that go with it, but I get the racing heart, heavy breathing, etc. It freaked the heck out of me the first few times it happened, but eventually I figured out what was going on.
In my case it lasts at best a half hour, and while it’s not fun, it doesn’t really hurt me. I figure it’s kind of like a nightmare, except I’m awake. Being able to say “Hey look, that thing is happening again” makes it a lot easier to get through, as do some basic relaxation techniques. As long as it’s not interfering with my work or having effects on my life outside of a few unpleasant minutes now and then, I don’t see why I would categorize it as a "disorder’ or use chemicals to change it. It’s just a weird thing that happens to me.
I had panic attacks while driving on the freeway
I thought I was gonna pass out while driving and end up getting in an accident and dying. It was a feeling of impending doom, dizziness, limb numbness, sweating, heart pounding. Not fun. They were horrible. I took medication and learned a couple of techniques from group therapy.
They’re gone now (for the most part) but in the end I never found out what triggered them or what made them stop. I no longer take the medication but I’ll still use a couple of the techniques I learned when I feel like I’m getting one. It’s been a while since I had the last full blown one.
This is what worked for me
The medical explanation (IIRC)
You cannot pass out during a panic attack because your body is in a state of alert. Your brain thinks something is wrong and gets your body ready to get out of the (false) situation of danger. Nothing is wrong but your brain thinks there is.
The other one was to try to “enjoy the rush” of said state of alert while it lasts.
From what I understand, having been diagnosed with agoraphobia myself about four months ago, is that it is a physiological condition and is totally treatable with medication ( I take an SSRI and very small dose of Xanax when needed). Some people like even sven and others seem to be able to manage them without meds, which I can’t even imagine (but good for them!). Maybe I have a more severe case of it (?) but there’s no way I could function without meds; my brain chemicals got all hinky and they simply had to be readjusted or I wasn’t going to be able to leave my house. I’m glad yours isn’t that bad and I’m not sure how you feel about medication, but I think sometimes it really is as simple as tweaking your brain chemistry a bit. The first week or so the meds made me a bit sluggish but now I don’t suffer any adverse effects and I’ve lost about ten pounds (though that may be a coincidence). Good luck and please don’t suffer needlessly; there are easy, available solutions.
I have had panic attacks. The thing to remember is it starts out small and grows. What happens is you become afraid of being afraid. The anxiety feeds on itself.
As another poster said, the first thing you need to do is get a thorough medical exam and rule out any physical cause. And there could be things, like low blood sugar, thyroid, etc etc.
This is vital cause when the attack happens you need to be able to reassure yourself, “This is distressing but not dangerous.”
There are a variety of med to treat this. Usually antidepressents are helpful long term while other drugs like Valium and Xanax help short term (under a month).
This is tricky 'cause not all drugs work for everyone. I took Prozac and it did nothing for me. It didn’t hurt me, but it didn’t help. I swear I was just taking a sugar pill. I found Paxil worked great and so did the older drug Imipramine (not used much cause it has some annoying side effects like dry mouth and constipation, but they are just annoying not dangerous)
The thing is to get treatment as soon as possible. If you want to treat this without meds, I strongly suggest the book “Stop Running Scared”. It’s out of print but it’s an excellent read on how to overcome fear using behaviour therapies
All I can say is what I said before. Newly formed anxiety disorders happen, but I believe you were also taking a benzo for sleep. Withdrawal from those can cause these symptoms, whether it is caused by stopping taking it, or, worse, by tolerance.
I’m curious how long norinew has been on Xanax. But I do understand that occasional use is less likely to develop tolerance.
The withdrawal from benzos can be both long and brutal. If that is your problem, you need to do everything you can to deal with it properly. Check out the Ashton Manual for more information about what I am discussing.
As for what I’ve used for panic attacks–distraction is a big one. It’s why I’m here so often. Lately I’ve been trying a method of accepting the panic, but it’s hard as all get out. My brain does seem to bounce back better than it did, though, but triggers are still very minor.
Relaxation techniques, like progressive muscle relaxation and deep breathing are also good. Look them up. Generally they work best when you first start feeling something, and before you do anything else. Meditation or hypnosis are also supposed to be good, but I’ve not tried them. And then there’s biofeedback, which trains you to slow down your heart rate consciously.
I’ve had anxiety and panic attacks for a few years now. And yes, it’s frustrating. But I view it as similar to having asthma. You don’t always know when attacks will happen, but sometimes you can get clues that it’s coming and can act accordingly. It can interfere with your daily life, but careful management can keep it to a minimum. Medication helps, but it won’t completely erase the symptoms. When an attack does come, all you can do is take steps to make sure the attack doesn’t get any worse, then ride it out.
In short, it can suck, but it’s a manageable, livable condition.
P.S. Although it doesn’t completely relieve anxiety, medication is a big help.
Many of you talk about a mindset that I strongly encourage with my clients who have anxiety, which is to not take it that seriously. Anxiety feeds on anxiety, so if you can minimise its importance, it will go away. I get them to think of anxiety as a bully. It is trying to frighten you and to make you cry or stay at home or whatever. What happens when you give in to a bully? It torments you more. What happens when you stand up to a bully and tell him that you won’t be bullied? He goes away. Just like a bully, anxiety finds your weak spot (“you’re fat” “someone is hurt” etc) and torments you with it.
That’s what makes anxiety that comes from an anxiety disorder different from normal anxiety. With normal anxiety, you can generally pinpoint something that is causing the anxiety. If whatever it is you’re anxious about were shown to you to not be so bad, the anxiety would get better. Anxiety disorder anxiety is not like that. People who have phobias can’t always tell you why they’re so scared of whatever it is they’re scared of, or the reason they give might not make a whole lot of sense. They know it doesn’t make sense, too, but that knowledge doesn’t do anything to get rid of the anxiety. It’s frustrating.
Just knowing this is helpful for me. It’s not that I’ve forgotten something vitally important, or that something is wrong with me and I’m going to die, it’s just that my mind is doing this thing it sometimes does again.
A technique I learned from a book on ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) that I sometimes find helpful is to mentally step back from the anxiety. Say to yourself, “I notice that my mind is feeling anxiety”, or “I notice that my mind is feeling anxiety over whatever-it-is”, if the anxiety is attached to something specific. Don’t try to do anything to get rid of the anxiety, just wait for it to go away on its own. It always will. Nothing lasts forever, including mental states like anxiety. This too shall pass.
I’ve been getting this lately, too. It may be connected to something women of a certain age experience that starts with an “M.” I have anti-anxiety meds and take them almost every night so I can sleep, but I avoid taking them during the day. I find that if I’m busy, the anxiety isn’t as bad as it is when I’m alone, quiet and thinking or reading or watching a movie or something.
Meditating helps me through it, similar to what Anne Neville said.
I’m currently taking Xanax when it happens but it doesn’t really help. I refuse to take SSRIs again as last time I took them (for bipolar disorder) they removed my sex drive completely for many years.
