Any of you friends have suffered from anxiety?

Used to get anxious in crowds.
It was odd though, i'd convince myself i'd be physically sick or someone in the crowd would become ill and this would make me feel terrible.

It's not as bad now.
I still stand at the side at gigs and get isle seat if i can :icon_mrgreen:

 

Just got a call from the doctor way sooner than I expected I freaked out at first but he said everything came back normal and i dont even have to go in the clinic till next month to check how I'm doing...

I feel so relieved but feel weird at the same time I'm hoping this is the beginning of the end of this horrible phase in my life.

Thanks again to all of you who replied to this thread

 

hey, sorry to hear about your anxiety but just wanted to share my story for you. i'll be honest and say i'm glad i'm at the stage now where i can share this with people to give them hope because i remember the stage where i thought there was no hope for me.

I've went through two serious bouts of anxiety/depression in my life and i'm only 28. the first time was when i moved to uni in September 2007 and after a heavy night of drinking i woke up and went to my induction lecture only to feel suddenly like i was going to spew everywhere in the lecture hall, i couldn't breathe and i needed to get out of there. I went back to my room and called my mum in a panic with no idea what was happening to me felt like i was going to collapse and that made me panic because it was the second day of uni nobody knew me so if i collapsed in my room nobody would know. I ended up leaving to find help and went to the hospital. I was told because i had a joint two nights previous to ignore the symptoms as they would leave my system. Well they never and this really effected my life for around five months, during the first three i couldn't make it through any of my classes. I'd always bail out during the half way point if i even went at all. They only way i could cope at night was by getting * which seemed to do the trick. However, the method of success for this was just to plow on and not let this get the better of me, i went to the classes and forced myself to sit through them and i forced myself to go out and enjoy myself. I'll admit that it was very very difficult to relax and enjoy life during this time but just by doing things i suddenly just seemed to get better and by the February i was back to full health.

The second time was last year in may, i was on holiday in holland with mates at a football tournament, four days for drinking, partying and playing football. On the last day we went to visit the amsterdam arena and mid-way through the tour i suddenly got a very dry mouth and found it very difficult to swallow, i desperately wanted some water to drink, however i didn't want to interrupt the tour as the guy was speaking in dutch to some of the others who were on the tour. Then we went outside into the stand and i felt woozy like i might collapse. i then started to freak out, thinking things like what if i can't get home, what if i pass out here, what if i panic on the airplane, what if, what if, what if......

This anxiety/panic has been with me since may last year. However, i must stress it has not stopped me from doing anything in my life, i refuse to let it beat me.

The main things that made me panic was what if this never goes away, what if i end up with high blood pressure due to panicking and give myself a stroke, what if i have cancer, what if i can't work and loose my job. The main difference from this bout and the first one was that this time i was getting physical symptoms like pressure/tightness in my chest, as if someone was pushing down on me, sometimes i would get very hot all of a sudden or i'd feel my heart kinda beat funny/flutter or something and i'd freak out.

I felt like this for five months before i decided to tell my girlfriend and for first time went to see a doctor about it, she gave me some anti depressants. Three months on from taking the anti depressants I must say i'm back to a level where i can now look back at this and see how crazy it all was but at the time you just can't help but feel this way no matter how crazy or irrational you know it all is, your brain just keeps on going over it all. I wouldn't say i'm fixed since i'm still taking the anti-depressants but when this all stated i'd say i was around at around 55 percent feeling normal, now i'd say i'm about 98 percent normal me.

Again i've found the more I do the things i panic over the less i panic over them and the better I feel, so i guess for me a willingness not to be defeated and time have been a great healer, that and the anti-depressants this time too

 

Thanks for sharing your story mate and I'm glad you're feeling better, I also find hard to swallow I now see that that is probably due to the anxiety, this whole time I was thinking I had some kind of desease in my throat or something.

One real problem I do have is that i have high blood pressure the doc says I need to relax and hopefully it will get normal, I feel like today has been a good day after so many months when I heard that my results are normal I should believe them and try not to thing of stupid things.

Also I have anxiety medication but I felt like it was making me feel worse so I stopped taking it I was also scared that it might become addictive maybe it need to give it a shot again.

Thanks again

 

no worries man, hope it helps in some way to not feel alone about this. I Know for ages i would think about people i knew and work with and wonder if anything like this had happened or was happening to them but it's not the kind of thing you can or want to talk to people about.

I know what you mean about the call too, I stressed for ages about perhaps having high blood pressure which could result to having a stroke or heart attack, even though i'm a fit and healthy guy, just focused on something crazy as i said tumors, cancer, strokes etc and the moment i went to the doctors and she said your totally fine, i never thought about it again......it's funny how the mind works like that. For me this all stemmed from one stupid panic attack.

I don't know how much of my recovery has been meds and how much has been me, i think alot of it stems as we've been saying from peace of mind. Like i felt before that it was getting on top of me despite how hard i was fighting it and when the meds came along it was like mentally giving it the finger and saying well now i have these and this is going to beat you. Best way to describe it is like you have more control over the situation and so feel more at peace.

Best advice I would give is to not let it defeat you, when faced with anxiety we have a built in fight or flight mechanism and I always choose fight. I suppose for myself that over time, however long it takes, the things that triggered my anxiety become less of a worry for me after all the times i face them and conquer them and so i become more stress free, the more stressfree i get the happier i get and so the more stressfree i get. Much like when your down its hard to stop going further down or imaging getting better, but once you start to go up, you climb up faster and faster back to health and before you know it, it's all a distant memory.

 

also the meds take a few weeks to settle into you system, so some days you might have a good day and others you'll dip again as they try to get into your body but after two weeks or so the body kinda evens out and the meds will work and you should notice the difference with them if you're struggling the now.

 

Thanks again mate this is really helpful

 

If you can go to your doctors again and ask to have a complete physical check up done. Say about how you are feeling and about other injuries you have. Also ask, if you are on meds that you think are making it worse, to change them to different types as this may help. It did for me.
Have you had a scan done on your neck and spine as well as brain scan.
With the bike accident you may have done some damage that hasn't been noticed and you may need a further check up. That's what i did after mine.
Just ask the doctor. If they are decent they may refer you to a specialist for the help.

Good luck