I’ve heard good things about CBT in the past. I was in therapy recently but it was kind of useless–I will look into CBT specifically and see if that helps.
I had some steroid caused anxiety attacks once, and they were not fun. I hope the suggestions in this thread help.
Have you talked about this with a therapist, preferably someone who knows cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)? Unless your problem is completely physical, a psychiatrist might not be the right person to deal with it.
While there can be physical causes to anxiety, anxiety can also be caused by a wide range of personal experiences. Cognitive behavioral therapy would try to figure out where this overwhelming sense of wrongness is coming from. In my experience, it’s very effective. Especially if you can endure the pain the comes from being honest about your emotions.
Chances are you won’t be able to figure it out yourself unless someone else points it out for you. When I did CBT, I had a real breakthrough when my therapist pointed out that certain past experiences were still influencing my anxiety today, and I realized she was dead right. I would have never made the connection myself.
I can tell you how I deal with my own anxiety, but my methods are tailored to my own personal fears. The best advice I can give you is not to focus on the symptoms but to focus all your efforts on figuring out where it’s coming from.
FWI, before I knew the cause of my anxiety the one thing that I found that helped was Remy Martin 1738. It’s amazing how good cognac tastes when you’re scared to death.
Norinew, repressed childhood memories? That therapist sounds like a flake.
In the anxiety support group that I co-facilitate, it is a common thread that people with anxiety find talk therapy next to useless, but find CBT quite helpful (as long as they’re willing to really work at it - as in all things, you don’t get something for nothing). As Lakai so rightly points out, though, it can be very difficult to learn to be more honest with yourself, but it is worth it.
- Cat Whisperer
Free from medication and anxiety disorder for 5 1/2 years
ETA: I forgot to say that I think that therapist was a flake, too, norinew. People with anxiety are often not dealing with their lives, but it’s far more likely that you’re not dealing well with a job loss or money problems than completely repressed childhood memories.
It sounds like you (OP) have the type that are primarily neuro-chemical in nature rather than psychological. The mental process you go through after the onset of such attacks however can serve to amplify them.
I’ve found that 25-50mg of Seroquel is extremely effective in dealing with such attacks. Tranquilizers like Ativan or Valium were utterly useless. They do seem to help most people but even then there is a downside - you eventually become tolerant of the drug and there is the temptation and often the need to increase the dosage.
I’ve been using Seroquel for a couple of years now as needed and I haven’t developed a tolerance. For the past several months I’ve even been taking 1 25mg tablet before bed. There’s a synergistic effect with Ativan for me and I rarely wake up in the middle of the night any more.
It’s an atypical anti-psychotic, but don’t let that put you off. A normal dose for someone with schizophrenia or similar disorder would be literally hundreds of milligrams per day, so something like 25-50 is really a baby dose.
Tranks like Xanax and Ativan are very good for attitude adjustment in much the way alcohol helps some people. You feel calm and relaxed. It can make most real problems in the real world a lot easier to deal with. But it sounds to me like your problems are coming from a biochemical imbalance and are not precipitated by real world problems or events. I would submit that this sort of anxiety requires a different approach.
I currently take 200mg of Seroquel nightly to help me sleep (it doesn’t work). Baby doses of (oral) medications will never work for me. I have a strong metabolism when it comes to medication, and I have malabsorption due to a past surgery so I don’t even get all the medication that I take actually into my system.
Some people find that the lower dose is more sedating. On the few occasions I’ve taken a higher dose it still quelled the anxiety but didn’t make me as sleepy. However I’ve heard many people say the opposite so apparently there’s a lot of variability.
As for absorption, I vaguely recall something about most meds being absorbed through the intestines - I guess that means the small intestine. If that’s accurate, I don’t understand how one’s entire GI tract could be impaired. I imagine that must suck on many levels.
I had a surgical procedure* done that completely rewired my intestines. I don’t introduce digestive enzymes until the last 100cm of my small intestines, so most things don’t start absorbing until that point.
*I kept my gall bladder, unlike this diagram
I wake up, 9 days out of 10, with extreme anxiety. (I have reasons to be anxious!) Awful when it hits at 3, 4, or 5 a.m. - there goes sleep. I do the deep breathing, focussing on something else, going through a sort of list of mantras (“you went through this same shit yesterday. you are not at this moment in any danger. you will NOT start ruminating over what MIGHT happen today”). It does fade after I’m up, busy, have some coffee, and in the bright light of day my Dark Soul of the Night is forgotten. Next morning: repeat.
yeah, I’ve been dealing with this off and on for a while. about 8-9 years ago, I’d have a panic attack once every like 8 months or so. I didn’t know what they were so I was freaked the fuck out, but that’s what they were. then, pretty much one year ago to this day, I had a major one out of the blue while driving from work to a meeting at my customer’s site. that sent me on a hellacious trip of being on the edge of a panic attack for like three or four months straight, to the point that I had a co-worker take me to the ER. I mean, I stood in my sister’s wedding, and I was up there facing the altar, on the verge of thinking I was going to blow chunks in front of everybody. interspersed within this were times where I would be lightheaded for days at a time, with my usual tinnitus seeming louder than usual.
I’ve been over it a number of times with my GP, but his input is that my complaints (chronic lightheadedness, existing tinnitus seeming louder) are nonspecific and don’t really point to anything. He did refer me to an ear, nose, throat specialist who did an audiogram and ENG which concluded my vestibular system seems normal and my hearing is “really good.”
lately I’ve been better, but fucking shit ass christ piss does it suck.
I’ve been on Xanax about three years now. My doc has me on ‘up to three pills per day, as needed’, so a 1-month 'script is 90 pills. It usually takes me about three to four months to go through a 'script. In fact, I’ve been out for a couple of months now. No, that’s not exactly true; I have maybe three ‘emergency’ pills I keep in the bottle that I keep assorted random pills in. But I haven’t had to take one for a couple of months.
I understand that the benzos can be very addicting for some people, but fortunately, they don’t seem to have gotten to me. I take one pill when I have an attack; if I have more than one more subsequent attack, I’ll take a second. I’ve never had to do more than that.
The fact that the Xanax doesnt’ work is why I believe it likely you have developed tolerance.
I also know that Seroquel can exacerbate benzo withdrawals, but usually in the realm of depersonalization, not anxiety itself.
As for SSRIs–you’re bipolar, right? They are pretty much contraindicated because they often cause mania. But if your problem was just the reduced sex drive–there are augmetn medicines that can fix that. Plus, there are older antidepressants that do not have that side effect, but work similarly–albeit with more side effects.
checking in here. Yes, it is like reacting to an earthquake when there is no earthquake. Very hard to explain to those around you, and physically exhausting. HORRIBLE!
Good luck to you. I only looked for medication when it first started for me, which was in the early 90’s. This was even before prozac, so i am sure medicine has come a long way. Of course, before getting treated, I ruled out:
thyroid
heart attack
brain tumor
siezures
hearing loss
bad vision
demonic possession (don’t watch the excorsist until you feel better jk)
anything else…