Anxiety Disorders. If someone would just tell you how you feel.(please read)

I have dealt with anxiety for the last 20 years. I was diagnosed with GAD, PTSD, and moderate depression. Some if not all of you will be able to relate to this to one extreme or another. GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder) is not anxiety that comes and goes one day to the next or even in the course of a day. This is something that last all day, everyday, month after month and a lot of times, year after year. You walk around every day scared to death. Then it gets to the point where it is so bad that you will talk to just about anyone in hopes that they will understand and that it might make you feel better. Do you ever find anyone that does? Probably not. You wake up in the morning an as soon as you open your eyes, there's fear. As if it started before you woke up. You bail out of bed and walk around wondering what to do because your not even awake enough to even start to rationalize, not that you really can even when you are awake. So you sit down, with your arms folded tight, rocking back and forth, hanging on for life. At this point some anxious thoughts or some physical symptoms start in. Then you might scour you body for lumps and bumps and if you happen to find something that just doesn't feel normal, OH no, i have cancer. Then some might feel tightness in there chest or their hearts beating fast or its beating so hard that its actually moving you. Then you think your having a heart attack. The next thing you know your talking to someone you trust about what you found wrong with you in hopes that they can convince you that its all in your head or its nothing at all. Some of us know that the last thing we want to do is go to the hospital because that's where we know that they are going to find something wrong with us. This is a fear that a lot of us carry around and only wish that someone could tell us, for once, how we are feeling instead of us trying to explain something that they are never going to understand anyway. The nice thing about ALL of this is that, its NORMAL for anxiety. If i died because of all these fears i would have been dead over a million times, 20 years ago. I posted this in hopes that it might help someone out there. If its only one then I'm happy. For a lot of us, these sort of problems are why we took benzo's in the first place. Good Luck All.

I think talking about your fears is good, talking out loud especially. I don't know why that makes me feel better, but it does. But I rarely do this because others will think I'm crazy. So I keep my fears bottled up or turn to this forum.

 

So many of us here do what you do. I used to jump out of bed in the morning from the fear. It's not like that anymore, but I still have a terrible time with doctors. That's my main fear. And my blood pressure. There used to be so many more things I was frightened of, but I think the nerves have healed to a certain extent, and I don't have those fears so much.

 

I have to believe we heal from this. I certainly didn't have tremendous fears before benzos. Since benzos, I've been diagnosed with GAD. I have PTSD. I get very depressed from the type of life I'm leading, but I try to make the best of it. I make a mental note of my body every day. It's natural with benzo withdrawal/recovery. I do wish I could turn off obsessive, intrusive thoughts. They can be very hellish, especially during stressful times.

 

Good luck to you, too!!

 

 

I was never this way before benzo's. I for sure had some health anxiety and social anxiety, but it was never all encompassing for me to the point that I couldn't live my life or enjoy myself. Now my mind is just filled with horrible, negative obsessive thoughts and I am stuck in a constant state of fight or flight. I mostly don't allow myself to dwell on it and I force myself to ignore it or distract, but it doesn't ever seem to really change anything. I actually tend to wake up sometimes with very little anxiety, but it progressively gets worse as the day goes on and a severe chemical fear/terror state hits me in the evening, bringing with it some pretty gnarly DP/DR and fog.

 

I think anxiety before the benzo withdrawal was far easier to manage that what I am currently experiencing. I feel like my brain isn't mine anymore. It's just a constant engine that throws out intrusive, obsessive anxious thoughts against my will. And makes me feel hyper-focused and hyper-vigilant about everything and I can't seem to remove my mind from any of it. I never used to feel like I had to struggle against my thoughts, I was quite able to talk sense into myself and move on.

Hi LiveAboveIt I am exactly going through what you have described, Fighting to keep my thoughts under check has become very overwhelming but one thing I have noticed is that if I sleep well at night then the next day over all anxiety is way less .So I think if our insomnia is cured then rest of the symptoms will automatically fade off

YES, as far as sleep is concerned, if i dont get enough sleep it seems like my thoughts get away from me and my whole day seems to go down hill. If i get a good amount of sleep then im ok. this is like clock work, with sleep. it never fails. As far as the other comment, when i tapered to a lower does of benzo's i started getting some extreme anxiety. i felt just the way your describing. Its pretty normal to get anxiety or rebound anxiety from a benzo taper. i went back up a dose and its working out ok for me now, and im still a dose lower then my original dose. So i would say thats progress on a positive note.