So. Over the past couple of months, there seems to have been a lot of threads on the SDMB about anxiety. I used to be in denial about my own anxiety. But the fact is, I’ve been extremely agitated and easily excitable for a couple of years now. I’m a “highly sensitive person”, which means my central nervous system is set at a high idle and it doesn’t take much to wind it up and set me spinning. Several times a day I experience a fight-or-flight reaction, and that doesn’t feel good- your heart pounds, you shake all over, etc. I’m starting to realize that self-medicating by chainsmoking does not help, and drinking just makes me nauseous and dry-mouthed. The central nervous system thing seems to be getting worse as I get older, as I’ve been warned by other family members that are like this. I’ve destressed my life as much as I possibly can, and I allow myself tons of alone time- it’s scheduled into my week, every week.
I have an appointment with my doctor on Tuesday and I hope he understands what I’m saying. I hope there are alternatives to benzodiazepines for this, although they do work very well for me.
I don’t know why I’m telling you people this- I guess I just needed to share.
Hi, Alice, I’m Trouble! (Hi, Trouble!) I have an anxiety problem, too! I hope you can get some help! I need to see my doctor and discuss a med change. Mine doesn’t seem to effective lately. Although, who knows, since the elderly-dog-put-down thing is over, maybe it’ll get better again.
You might benefit from teaching your body to relax on command. The best way to do that is to learn relaxation techniques. The idea is that you learn to relax your body so that when the fight-or-flight response is triggered, you can tell your body that nothing is wrong and head that response off at the pass.
I highly recommend a guided relaxation CD or tape. “Drifting Downstream” is a good one and is available on Amazon. You need guided relaxation, which means a voice telling you what to do to relax your body. Unfortunately, this is something that takes time to learn–as in twice a day for several weeks–but is well worth it.
Have you tried breathing and muscle-clenching exercises? Basically you breathe in and clench every muscle you can as hard as you can, and then you breathe out and relax everything. Breathe out longer than you breathe in. It’s part of some kind of cognitive-behavioral therapy of which I’ve dabbled in.
My therapist recommended “belly breathing”… essentially when you get anxious, your breathing becomes shallow and high in the chest. By focusing on deep breathing so that your belly goes in and out, you can dial down the anxiety reflex.
I have what my doctor calls “Non-situational anxiety disorder”. Unrelated to what’s going on around me, I just get panic attacks. They come in clusters. I’ll get maybe 10 in a day, if I don’t head them off at the pass. The next day, I can bring one on just by recalling the feeling of one the previous day. Then it goes away, and maybe several weeks will go by without more.
About a year ago, maybe a little more, my doctor put me on “prn” Xanax, .25mg. Prn meaning, iirc, “as needed”. I don’t have to take it to head off my anxiety at the pass. At the first attack, I take one. Then I don’t get more. At this dosage, I’m still perfectly functional, don’t feel “high” at all, not impaired in any way. But the anxiety attacks stop. Pretty cool. If I take .5mg at a time (which my doc has okayed), it calms me down and puts me to sleep.
I’ll do some research tonight on relaxing techniques and breathing exercises. For some reason, I hadn’t really thought about it, but they almost surely would work for something like this. Thanks!
I hate the thought of going to talk-therapy, but I’ll go if my doctor wants me to. It’s not a mental thing, it seems purely physical. For example, I’m driving down the street and being tailgated. The person in front of me stops quickly, I stop quickly. The tailgater behinds me stops in time, and I don’t get rear-ended. My brain is thinking, “Whew, I didn’t get hit- I’m safe.” My body, however, has gone nuts and is screaming, “OH MY GOD, I’M GOING TO DIE!” and it can take up to an hour to stop that response and go back to normal. This happens over and over every day in response to every little thing that could possibly endanger me.
If this is what’s happening, then the opposite of relaxation might also be worth trying? When something happens that gets the adrenaline going, try yelling, or shaking, or running/fast walking for a few minutes, see if you can get the tension out.
Well, my goal is to stop doing it. It’s not good for you to produce stress hormones many times a day. It affects your blood pressure, heart health, blood sugar, etc. Plus it just feels crappy. It’s exhausting, which causes one to drink more caffeine, which makes it worse. Ah well, I will have a nice long (10 minutes!) talk with my doctor tomorrow and we’ll see what he says.
I never thought much of this type of thing until I went to a stress-relieving seminar for work. Yeah, yeah, guided imagry, so what. Except…
I’m so buying those CDs! I never realized how much they could help. I encourage you to try talk, try guided imagry—I don’t see how it coiuld be bad.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy helped me a lot with my anxiety. It’s not “lie back and tell me about your mother” type stuff. Instead, you develop mental tools to help you through your anxiety without going into that “fight or flight” mode. A good therapist can also teach you deep breathing, muscle clenching, and other relaxation techniques. Even though you say it’s a physical thing (and boy, can it be a strong physical reaction), you’ll be amazed at how much you can control it when you train your mind to think differently.
Meds can help too. The SSRIs worked for me. Unfortunately, they don’t work for everyone, and they can be problematic if you get the wrong one. You may or may not need them. Try CBT. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to keep up with it.
I went to the doctor. He says there is definitely something physically wrong with me, and that it’s not normal for anyone to have no tolerance to stimuli. He wants me to have a bunch of bloodwork done, like b12, glucose, and thyroid antibodies, and if that doesn’t show anything then I should spend $150 to do this saliva cortisol test. If that came back whacky then he’d put me on a herbal regimen. Herbs?! I don’t know, my doctor’s pretty woo-woo sometimes, but I’ll at least do the bloodwork and see what it shows. For the meantime, he gave me a scrip for Toprol XL, which is for high blood pressure but apparently also can help with excess adrenaline surges.
I’ve already started some imagery/relaxation techniques I found, and they do help me to calm down quicker if I do start to spin.
Hi Alice! I’m glad you’re getting the blood tests and such done. I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder as well as random panic attacks about 8 years ago. About 2 1/2 years ago I developed what was later diagnosed as anxiety with agroraphobia. Bleah!
What’s working for me is Paxil plus coping strategies.
I hope you can figure out what’s going on and find something to work for you!
Hi Alice, I guest registered today just to respond to your post. IANAD, but have had anxiety problems for almost 13 years just had to respond. The fact that your doctor has said that there is “definitely something physically wrong”, really makes me scratch my head, considering that no blood work has yet been done. But getting any possible physical causes out of the way is obviously the first step. This may sound awful, but in many ways you may be better off if the cause is physical rather than psychological. As long as itS not too serious, and easily treatable of course.
On the other hand, if nothing physical is found, I strongly recommend you find the best cognitive behavioral therapist, (that specializes in anxiety) you can and work through a one on one 16 week program - minimum. I don’t want to come off as a zealot here, and CBT is not a “magic bullet”, but it did change my life and it did it after I had struggled on and off for years. As MaddyStrut said, itS not touchy feely type therapy. It teaches you to recognize how your mental state is affecting you physically and then how to change the way you are thinking. In 16 weeks I was able to fly again, something I hadn’t done in almost 5 years. And I did it without taking any anti-anxiety medication. If your doctor is like most out there he/she will put you on the first SSRI they can think of, top it off with a benzodiazepine for good measure and wish you luck. I’m not discounting medications here, but they are only treatment. For many, many people, CBT is very close to a cure.
If nothing physiological shows up, I will try CBT. It’s going to be a huge pain in the ass, and lots of time off work, I imagine, but I don’t want to live like this so I’ll do it. I asked my doctor, “So what if nothing shows up in the tests, and I’m just like this?” He said, “Oh, there’s something wrong.” We shall see.
Sorry to keep bumping this thread- I’m not trying to be an attention whore. But I just read this about high Cortisol levels. Wow. I’m not saying I have that, but I do have every symptom. I was telling the doctor that I also felt hot a lot, but I don’t think it’s hot flashes because I’m not old enough for menopause, plus it’s not flashes. That does correspond with lowered immunity and inflammatory responses, as my doctor said. I don’t know if I want to pay $150 for the test, but it would be nice to know.
I used to use number 9 on the list of ways people deal with stress, but that’s not an option for the moment, so guided imagery it is! Oh, yes, guided imagery! Coincidentally, this all started right about the time I wasn’t having regular sex. Who needs herbs? I may know the cure, and it ain’t Xanax, if you know what I mean. And I think you do, because let’s face it, we’re all adults here.
After reading that article, I think I may have some clue as to why my anxiety has been unexpectedly out of control recently. I’ve become a Halloween candy whore. If cortisol has anything to do with regulating blood sugar as the article suggests, mine’s been flying full throttle for weeks now. Hmm . . . maybe I’ll try cutting out some sugar. Damn Halloween.