Feel like I am in a crisis

Not that it is going to help anything, but today's anxiety has really got me feeling terrible and afraid. I drove on a very busy road today to a store and then had serious trouble driving home. It took me an hour to finally get home from 6 miles away. I kept turning around to avoid traffic situations. It was so scary and upsetting that my anxiety reached a new height that was unmanageable. I have been home 3 hours now and cannot stop crying. There is too much stress going on in my life, trouble with family and serious illnesses.

 

Going to the emergency room does not help in my recollection. You get put in a room and ignored for 6 hours or put in a locked room, guarded by a cop and treated like a criminal for a week if you get admitted to a hospital. Maybe this will pass, but it would be nice to be able to get a little help. Although I'm not sure what I would say that I need. Not sure what is going to happen next, but I sure need some support and relief. This is like a nightmare that won't end. I am not going to a hospital, I don't need that misery. There is not much in the way of mental health where I live, but there should be. There is a population of 500,000 in the metro area!  :'(

I know how you feel and there doesn't seem to be a way out of the stress. It doesn't sound like driving is a good idea for you right now and probably not safe. When it comes to the troubles of others you can not do it for them any more than they can bare you burdens. Shield yourself from the troubles around you. I agree about ER wards, I was arrested at one point for threatening suicide. No compassion, just treated like a criminal, don't ever want to go back there. Comfort yourself as much as you can with pets, teddy bears and camomile tea. I rock myself when I am distressed. 

Not sure this is much help from a practical/solutions standpoint, but I can say I've definitely been there before (traffic being almost unbearable to manage).  Back in 1994 I moved to a city in the Midwest for my job.  It was far from the east coast location where I had lived most of my life.  Within a couple months I developed depression and anxiety.  One Saturday when I had nothing better to do, I decided I was going to distract myself by basically driving a loop around the entire city.  I marked it off on the map.  Before I got more than a few miles, I became so anxious looking at all the new places and having to deal with all the traffic that I came home shaking.  It took me hours to lose the extreme anxiety.  I was doing okay driving to work and back (just a few miles each way), but then we started having staff meetings after work in the evenings downtown every couple months.  I had to drive right through the center of the city, and then drive back in darkness.  The first couple times of that I was so nauseous that I ate nothing after lunch.  Then I started getting better and after a couple more meetings I only found them annoying but not unnerving.

 

Hi frus, How much sense does it make to arrest someone for threatening suicide? That is nuts. By the way, the only way to get in the hospital here IS to threaten suicide or make an actual attempt. Rough way to get help! Actually I was put in a place that did no therapy or groups to help. How do they get funding for that? It was just a place to house people and treat them like animals. Very abusive.

 

There is no official help for this benzo withdrawal that people suffer with for months to years. That shows a lot of ignorance in mental health care in my opinion. It seems truly the only help is comfort measures anyway.

 

No, I do not need to be driving any time soon but I am going to have to do it again tomorrow or at least by the next day. At least it will be to a much less hectic place or I would not attempt it.

 

I finally settled down but feel very foolish about the whole thing. I am going to try to take better care of myself and get help for errands that I absolutely have to have help with.

 

Thanks 

Don't know if I can be of much help but I suffer from terrible anxiety and panic attacks.  I attend counselling with a trained psychologist proficient in depression and anxiety issues and believe me, she is better than any drug I have taken. Is bad traffic the actual cause of your anxiety? If so, you might need to address the reasons why traffic makes you so anxious. Or if it isn't traffic, it is more than likely the family stressors you are trying to deal with at the moment which are in your subconscious and manifest as anxiety about traffic.

 

Once you get down to the root cause of your "traffic" anxiety, you can then go about finding ways to manage this cognitively and behaviourally. But in the meantime, I find that mindful breathing helps a great deal. Look it up, it really helps.  All that hyperventilation we tend to do in anxious situations causes serious distress and physical symptoms. Once you can defeat that, you're on your way to defeating anxiety. It sucks I know. But you WILL get better.....without those drugs!

The "root cause" of traffic anxiety may or may not be particularly relevant.  If traffic anxiety is the main symptom, that's one thing.  But in my case, it was just that my nerves were sensitized, and traffic or anything else could cause panic.  I didn't have to get to the root cause in this case; the traffic anxiety went away on its own once my nervous system started to be more calm.

I've found that every period of intense stress has been followed by a period of me feeling totally exhausted but also just awash in anxiety and ramped up symptoms. I think the stress you experienced in traffic probably has triggered a sense of crisis in you. Please try and relax and let you mind heal. It takes a while for one's nerves to settle back down.

 

The good thing is, even though this is stressful for you, over time it becomes less stressful. I used to be terrified to drive half a mile to the grocery store, and even more terrified to walk around looking for things. I thought everyone could tell "something is wrong with him." Well, it's been almost seven months now and I don't even think twice about going to the grocery store. The more you expose yourself to stressful stimuli, the less of a stressful feeling you will have in the future.

 

Hang in there. Let this stress wash over you and out the tips of your fingers and just TRY AND RELAX. You'll be OK.

 

 

Hi Tex,

 

You are right, It took me a long time to relax yesterday and I had to go back out in the mess today. I kept trying to freak out but I kept distracting myself. I got stuck in traffic. It is just a weird freaky feeling that makes no sense. I cannot wait for the day it just goes away, still I am planning to not drive unless I have to for a few days now.

 

I don't think I am fully relaxed at all. Also started having a new symptom the last few weeks which seems to be directly related to feeling more stress, having heart palpitations which are kind of scary. I went to the doctor last Sunday for bronchitis and told them about them but they did nothing about it. I will get it checked out as soon as I can get to the doctor next month. If I can find one!!!

 

It is reassuring to hear of your success, thank you.

That was a large daily dose for a long time, it will take a while for your system to adjust to that it would seem. It's just frustrating while it's going on. I was enjoying meditation for a while there, myself. I figured that even if it didn't help THAT much, at least it was 20 minutes morning & night in which I wasn't thinking about anything related to this. Anything related to ANYTHING. Thinking of nothing at all. I don't know, it helped a bit, in terms of focusing off of the problem while I wasn't doing it. Don't know if that's your cup of tea or not, though.