Panic Attack/Anxiety Support Group, Anyone?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve been suffering from generalized anxiety disorder for about 19 years now. You name the med, I’ve probably tried it. Finally settled on Lexapro and it was amazing for me…no side effects, very rare instances of panic attacks. Went off of it a year or so ago because I thought we were ready to start trying for a baby. Anyway, now that that’s off the table for now, I’m going back on the Lexapro tomorrow. What with all of the stresses in my life (separation, move, new job) I’ve now suffered 3 panic attacks (one MAJOR) in as many days, which has NEVER happened before. Anyway, it’s going to be a tricky several days before the Lexapro starts to work.

I’m just weary of not being understood and not having a “real” illness and not being taken seriously about what can be a crippling affliction. At it’s worst, it causes people to be unable to work or leave their homes for years or ever; at best, people live in a chronic state of unease and discomfort.

I seem to recall several others on this board in my boat and would love to open a dialogue with anyone who’s interested. What would be the best way to go about this? Any takers? I need someone to talk to who understands!

2

Well, I haven’t been diagnosed with anxiety disorder yet, but I suspect I have it. I have depression and have had it for a while, and am being treated for that. I have also been referred recently to a psychiatrist for additional treatment & diagnosis, which I have not called to make the appointment yet, because due to my deep depression, I can’t get anything done, and it doesn’t help that I have been sleeping until 3 or 4 p.m. (today, 5 p.m.!) Did I mention I was laid off and am unemployed, and have been forced to move back into my parent’s house, and I am 33 years old. Yeah, I am all kinds of f*cked up right now.

The anxiety I’m having mainly affects my ability to get off my ass and find a job, and get my life back together. Whenever I sit down and even start to THINK about everything I need to do, and the uphill battle I have to face, I start to freak out and I just freeze and become paralyzed. Sometimes I will start to become dizzy, jittery, nauseous, my heart starts racing, and I feel this lump in my throat like I am about to cry. So I just have to stop whatever I am doing and isolate myself. This makes it very hard to get anything done. I suspect that what is happening is an anxiety attack.

Hazle, I’d be interested in learning more about how you were diagnosed, and whether you were seeing a psychiatrist or your general practitioner? I’d also be very interested in talking with anyone about what’s going on in my life and in theirs, to try to learn more about what is going on with me.

Right now I share your fear that no one is going to understand, and that is hindering me from taking the steps to get help. I get crap from everyone in my life, who just can’t understand what’s going on with me. They don’t understand that I feel crippled by the fear of feeling this way, and it paralyzes me… to them, I am just a lazy freeloader (well no one has said this in any certain terms, but I can’t help but feel they are thinking this somewhere in the back of their minds).

Anyway, it’s a good feeling to know that I am not alone!

3

Seriously! You’ve brought a tear of understanding to my eye. It’s unbelievable how helpful it is to find even ONE person who can understand what you’re going through. I’d be happy to post more tomorrow on what I’m going through. Feel free to pm/e-mail me. I think that we can help each other! Anyone else out there like to join us?

4

I recently made an appointment with a therapist and had a pnic attack as soon as I saw the paperwork she wanted me to fill out. I canceled the appointment. :frowning: I have anxiety every day. I try not to focus on it too much but it is definately affecting the quality of my life. The funny thing is that I am happier with my life than I have been in years. And at least I’m better than I used to be; there have been a few times in my life that I have ended up housebound for weeks or months at a time. I’m able to go to work now, and I’m attending school, although that is only online. It’s exhausting to feel this way. I would love some kind of informal support group here on the 'dope. I’m here all the time anyway!

5

I’ve been seeing a therapist for the past four weeks for CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) for my anxiety. I have panic attacks and general day-to-day anxiety issues that I’ve only really begun to be aware of; it all crept up on me so slowly that I didn’t realize how far from normal I had gotten until we started to do some basic evaluation.

The most frustrating thing about my anxiety is that it’s almost like a completely physical phenomenon for me, rather than being tied to any thoughts or situations. It’s completely random, too - I can be in an incredibly stressful situation and maintain perfectly, or I can be relaxing in bed reading and be slammed with an attack, or anything in between. It feels almost like I have epilepsy or something like that moreso than anxiety, it’s so random - I’d kill to have “triggers!”

6

What has the CBT been like so far? Does it seem helpful? I done some reading that indicates amazing improvement in a very short time. Does that fit with your experience so far? Also, how did you find a CBT therapist ?

7

I’ve dealt with some form of anxiety all of my life. My major diagnosis is complex-PTSD, which is an anxiety disorder. I’ve also (at one time or another, not all at once) been diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety, panic disorder and agoraphobia. I would worry about virtually anything there was to worry about, from my grades to a total collapse of civilization. My therapist called these more grandiose episodes fears of ‘‘catastrophic world devastation.’’ It got bad enough that I quit going to work and class and ended up taking a medical leave from college for a couple years.

I can’t speak for Freejooky but I’ve had incredible results with CBT. I had it for three months and what we worked on was very minor in the context of my life situation (we addressed my fear of heights) but just working on that one minor thing ended up spreading to all the other areas of my life. From a research standpoint, CBT is the most solid thing we’ve got (with a combo of CBT/meds having the best, most consistent results.) I most highly recommend Albert Ellis’ Guide to Rational Living and David Burns’ The Feeling Good Handbook. Both of these guys are masters in their field. Also, if you want a more spiritual perspective, try Thich Nhat Hahn’s No Death, No Fear.

I’m not currently medicated and haven’t been for a few years. This week I’ve been having some significant anxiety issues, most likely because I have a graduate school interview tomorrow afternoon. I keep worrying my train is going to crash on the way to work. I keep worrying the high-rise building I work in is going to collapse. I worry my boss and coworkers hate me and think I’m a slacker. I can’t fall asleep at night because I’m terrified someone’s going to break in and stab my husband while I watch. I keep having nightmares. I’m so keyed up I’ve been waking up around 4 or 5 o’clock even when I don’t have to get up until 7. Sucks a lot.

Part of this I have learned to recognize as my typical response to stress. But in a way it’s on me, because now that I am educated, I am fully aware my brain is doing this to myself. I can even point to an external situation acting as a catalyst (i.e. grad school pressure.) I can hear my own thoughts making things worse. The only way to get out of the cycle is to break it–thought stopping. So I’m wearing a rubber band on my wrist today and snapping it whenever I get carried away. I know eventually I’m going to have the replace the negative thoughts with positive ones, but for now I’ll settle on stopping the negative ones.

To be fair, I might have a lot of anxiety this week, but if it weren’t for learning the tools of CBT, it would be one hell of a lot worse. I probably would be too afraid to leave the house, which would then result in the self-fulfilling prophecy of losing productivity. At least now I can tell myself, ‘‘Come on now, this is just your anxiety talking. You’ve been frightened eleventy million times and not once has that horrible outcome you feared taken place. This is not a rational fear.’’ breathe Then I will go on with my business, having established the fear response as mostly benign. One of my CBT therapist’s favorite phrases was ‘‘discomfort, not danger.’’ Fear does not indicate imminent death. It only indicates fear. The more we learn to experience our fear fully, the less afraid we’ll be of it, as we’ll find it’s just a collection of physical sensations that has no ability to predict the future, and often goes away after a time.

8

I have generalized anxiety, too.

I’d like to punch anyone who says anxiety disorders or depression aren’t “real” illnesses, or who thinks we should “just snap out of it”.

IANADoctor or psychiatrist, but that sounds a lot like one of the anxiety attacks I’ve had. Fortunately, I don’t get them very often.

9

Can anyone give me any tips on finding CBT therapy? I suffer from Social Anxiety. I have a great therapist, and I’m taking Effexor, both of which help, but I feel like I’m ready to be more aggressive about my treatment options.

I’m in Dutchess county NY, about an hour and a half up the Hudson from NYC, if that is relevant to finding CBT.

10

Have you had your heart checked out?

I’ve had issues with anxiety and panic attacks for years. I even tried to get in to see a therapist many years ago, but as someone else said above, I got panicked and just left. My GP had me on effexor for awhile but I hated it and just stopped taking it.

Fast forward to recently: I’d been having palpitations on a constant basis for months and my husband finally convinces me to go to the doctor. My GP refers me for an echocardiogram, and then to a cardiologist. Long story short, I’ve got a couple small congenital issues (nothing major) but they are symptoms of a problem with the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system controls your fight or flight response, adrenaline, heart rate, and all of that. When it’s not able to regulate itself properly you get a fast heart rate, and you are prone to anxiety and panic attacks.

I was put on a beta blocker and it’s made a world of difference for the anxiety and panic. I’m off of it for a week before I have some more testing and the anxiety has come back in full force.

Might be worth looking into.

11

I started having panic attacks when I was eighteen, wow, that’s a long time ago now :slight_smile: I had no idea what was happening at the time. At the beginning my doctor diagnosed me with hypoglycemia when I walked into his office one time with a massive panic attack, thinking I was having a heart attack. So I regulated my diet, and seemed okay.

Then I did a couple of irresponsible things, and they started coming back. My triggers were very clear, and I stopped doing those things, but it was too late. The triggers that start panic attacks morph, you know, and soon it started to be connected with me driving. I couldn’t drive for more than half an hour without having horrible throat-tightening panting anxiety. And it just kind of went on from there. I had one notable one in the middle of a Chinese restaurant and it ruined my week.

After years (!) of this I went to the doctor and told him I couldn’t take the attacks any more. He gave me Celexa, which made me gain weight – about 30 pounds. I took that for years, and gradually weaned myself off because I wanted to lose the weight. The side effects from coming off of SSRIs are not fun!

I was okay for months after, but then panic started setting in again, and after battling that for months and seeking emergency help a couple of times I went back on it. Gained even more weight.

Then I went off again, and have been off for about a year and a half now, make it two years. My original diagnosis of hypoglycemia seems to be the key for me. If I don’t drink coffee or eat too much sugar, or drink too much liquor I tend to be okay. Yesterday I messed up a little and drank way too much strong black tea (with fruit sugar) and I was anxious and stayed up until 3:30.

I did get my heart examined a couple of times, once with a heart monitor for a couple of weeks. I had been having heart palpitations since about 20 years of age. They told me a few times that everything was okay, and I was just “super sensitive”. I still don’t really believe them. My dad has had a heart attack and my uncle died from a heart attack, and my mom and grandmother both have atrial fibrillation. Thinking about this is a major trigger of my panic attacks, and I try to avoid it, but it’s hard when my heart goes BANG and I get dizzy.

Right now, however, I haven’t actually had a full blown panic attack for a couple of months. Diet is really the best thing for me. Dropping sugar and caffiene might help, and it couldn’t hurt, anyway.

This also seems to run in my family. My sister has panic attacks and my brother does as well (although not officially disgnosed). I wonder if that’s common?

12

I have GAD, and spent months at a time feeling dizzy and like my throat was closing up…even when nothing appeared to be stressing me out. I had occasional panic attacks, but my problem was mostly chronic.

I feel like a doofus for admitting this, but I found that the Midwest Center for Stress and Anxiexty CDs by Lucinda Bassett worked wonders that no drug ever did. My insurance even paid for it. IIRC, it’s 16 weeks of listening classes and workbook exercises. It’s a little like CBT but much less expensive. You nice to be able to work it into your schedule, and if I start feeling those old problems creeping back, I just pull out the CDs and take a refresher course.

13

I have phobias as well (mainly needles), and those definitely run in my family. My father and sister both faint at the sight of needles or blood. I don’t faint, but I shake and cry, and get nauseous if I watch something with needles or something gory in a TV show or movie. My dad’s father got very upset if he rode in a car over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

My mom, on the other hand, thinks it’s funny to tell us horror stories about trying to get blood drawn. Thanks, Mom :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: I try to keep the topic of conversations with her as far away from anything to do with doctors or needles or blood as possible. Mr. Neville, on the other hand, is helpful. If we’re watching a TV show or movie with something gory happening, I will look away (if we’re at home, I’d probably leave the room), and he tells me when it is safe to look. He takes a medicine that he has to inject, and if I’m at home when he’s doing it, he’ll tell me “Don’t come downstairs for a while”, and lets me know when it’s over.

For anyone who thinks it’s funny or amusing to upset someone with phobias: I hope you try it someday on someone like me who gets nauseous, and they actually vomit, and they make you clean it up. It really does bother us, and we know our phobia is totally irrational, but that doesn’t make any difference to how frightened and upset we’re feeling.

I do IT work for a group of psychiatrists studying anxiety disorders, and they tell me that phobias, social anxiety, and generalized anxiety all seem to be closely related. The other anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, seems to be something different, at least according to them.

14

OK, I’ll play, too. :wink:

I don’t have GAD, but I do suffer from panic attacks, instigated by childhood trauma. It makes absolutely no difference that everyone immediately involved with those hellish years is dead now. When I get anxiety attacks, I get them in clusters. I can have as many as ten or twelve on a bad day. The day after a bad day, I can trigger another one just by calling to memory what yesterday’s attacks were like.

I’ve always, always, always told every doctor I had about these attacks, and my current doc, whom I’ve had for about three years now, is the first one who ever offered me medication. :rolleyes:

Now I have Xanax. The pills I have are pretty low-dosage, .5mg, but I have clearance to take two at a time if I really need to. I almost never need more than one, though (and don’t like to take two, anyway, as it makes me too sleepy at that dose). These days, at the first sign of an attack, I take one Xanax, and it nips it right in the bud.

Like Freejooky, mine are pretty much random. They can happen any time for any reason. They do seem somewhat more likely in high-stress situations, so sometimes when I know something high-stress is coming up, I take a ‘preventative dose’, so to speak. For instance, I’m having surgery tomorrow. It’s pretty basic stuff, and I’ve had about a billion surgeries before, and you would think it wouldn’t freak me out any more, but it does. So I will take a Xanax when I get up in the morning, and probably another one just before heading for the hospital (I don’t have to be there until 11AM, and my surgery is scheduled for 12:30, so my morning dose will probably be wearing off by then.

I tried, for a while, just taking a half a Xanax, three times a day, regularly. Didn’t seem to make any noticeable difference, though, so now I’m back to “as needed”.

15

This is definitely the most personal thing I have posted on the SDMB but as I was just having a conversation with a friend about anxiety I feel like I might as well go ahead and post it.

I’ve been having problems with anxiety for my entire life. I’ve never been diagnosed with anything in particular but I know that I have had anxiety attacks, and I’m fairly sure that worrying about something enough to give myself a fever on one occasion and enough to make myself throw up on another is probably not a good thing. Recently it has not been as bad as in 2006-2007 when those two particular things occurred, but I still experience it in once sense which is not being able to sleep because I can’t stop worrying. Even the most mundane things become monsters when I’m lying in bed with my eyes closed; I begin to go down frightening trains of thought and I become nauseated and my heart starts beating so loudly I’m convinced it’s audible from outside the room. And then I can’t sleep at all.

I should probably see someone about this, but the problem is that when I am not worried about anything (and I’m generally a pretty happy person) all the symptoms go away. I start to think I am ‘cured’ but then it comes back.

16

I developed PTSD after the death of my mother when I was 21. At first, I had no idea what the hell was going on - I thought it was a medical problem, then I just determined I was going crazy. It took me a long time to work up the courage to talk to my husband about it, and when I described what was going on, he said “Oh - you’re having a panic attack.” Turns out, he been having them for years.

I never attended any therapy, even though I asked my GP for a referral (and you have no idea the courage it took to even ask him for one…)

Once I figured out what was going on, I started to research it, and started working on my own “therapy” - identify triggers, recognize an attack, and work through it logically. It took some time, and a lot of work, but I’ve mastered it.

My mom died in 1999, and it wasn’t until I got pregnant in 2004 that I felt normal again. I still have lots of reminiscent anxiety, along with the occasional full blown attack. For example - I can’t watch American Beauty without some anxiety, courtesy of a really bad attack at the theater, and driving at night gives me the jitters. But, thanks to this snowy winter, and some further work, driving in the snow doesn’t cause an attack anymore. As a bonus, keeping on top of my anziety issues has allowed me to open the door on the pain that my mother’s death caused, and I’ve started, very slowly, to deal with those issues as well.

I encourage you to see a therapist, or to investigate the Lucinda Bassett program. It seems like, with PTSD-type anxiety, it’s a matter of rewiring your brain around the problem sectors until you can work on the unlying issues. If, of course, you cannot function, medication might be appropriate, but it seems like the “right” way to do it would be to work through the issues that cause the anxiety, instead of just covering it up.
ETA: (TMI Warning!!) You may want to work on your diet - one of the things I discovered through my research that held true for me was that, if I was gassy and had diarrhea, I was anxious as long as I had a bowel full of liquid.

17

I’ll join in too. I was diagnosed with Social Anxiety when I was about 10 or so. It was crippling, I broke off all my friendships, which is pretty awkward at that age. I’d stay close to the supervising teachers at recess and would get panicky about the littlest things. I was 11 or 12 when I was put on Paxil and I’ve been on it ever since (I’m 22 now).

I sincerely believe that even though Paxil has some bad side effects, I would not be around without it. I don’t know how much of the changes in my body were puberty or Paxil - I’m overweight, chronically tired and not interested in dating. But I’m a fat tired chick with friends, a job and living away from my parents. I’d rather be that than a slim, energetic chick too anxious to ever come out of her parents’ basement.

18

I know that feeling! People, like friends from my hometown who I keep in touch with via Facebook and see in person twice a year, see me as a happy person and can’t imagine that I have these problems. When I’m sitting in a restaurant, joking around with my childhood best friend, I feel like I’m describing a different person when I confide that I had a horribly embarrassing panic attack in front of my class. The situations that trigger a real panic attack are rare enough that I persuade myself that it’s okay, that next time I’ll buck up and get through it, and I never do. :frowning:

I have social anxiety disorder, and I get panic attacks when I’m asked to speak in public. I did my undergrad degree at a huge university where presentations were necessarily rare, in a humanities discipline that mainly involved writing essays. I went to grad school and found myself in classes of ten, and a supervisor who was contemptuous of my fear of speaking.

I went to a doctor, finally, and went on Cipralex and beta blockers. The SSRI was okay, and it did help with the more general anxiety (I no longer felt my heart rate increase when I stepped into a store and was being watched by a salesperson), but the beta blockers were GREAT. They were like magic, really. Everyone I knew noticed a difference when I was asked to speak in class after that. The problem with the SSRI was that I gained a pretty significant amount of weight, and while I know that’s complete vanity, I hated feeling fat and not able to run as easily.

I’ve currently kind of (unofficially, so far) quit my grad program, because I have panic attacks whenever I think about my thesis. I’ve gotten remarkably good at ignoring the fact that it exists, or rather, the fact that it should exist and it doesn’t.

19

The problem for panic attacks/anxiety sufferers is that its most severe, life-wrecking forms tend to be mixed up with less severe ones. Mostly everybody knows what anxiety is. And many many people had bouts of chronic anxiety or panic attacks occasionally or at some point or another in their life, that they could medicate away relatively easily. Which results in the overwhelming majority of the population (medical personnel and sufferers of milder forms included) not realizing the severity, and devastating and incapacitating effects, of its worst forms, and their resilience to treatment.

20

I had anxiety attacks linked to hypchondria. I started on anti-anxiety meds, went through a couple and found my way to lexapro. I saw a therapist and found talking about it a huge relief, but what really helped was the Midwest Center for Anxiety and Depression tapes. My SO ordered them from a late night informercial and I was skeptical, but they worked quickly and very well. It is a sixteen week course of CBT therapy designed for anxiety sufferers. Each tape features people who have overcome anxiety disorders. It was such a relief to hear from people who had the same symptoms and worse and got through them. I no longer keep up with the program and have an occasional small relapse, but nothing close to being as bad as it used to be.
Lots of people suffer from anxiety, and lots of people have learned to control it. Do not let yourself think this is something that can not be controlled. Keep looking, until you find something that works.