topic A prisoner within myself in Anxiety

A prisoner within myself

Wobbles — Tue, 20 May 2014 03:42:08 GMT

I don't know if anyone here can help me, i just really need to talk.

I've had severe anxiety for longer than i can remember and depression for just as long as a result of the anxiety and my excessively low self-esteem and confidence. I'm 34, i have a 6 year old son and a 3 year old son whom are my reasons for living and breathing.

They go to school and kindy during the week and i spend every day locked inside my house, by myself, no friends or family, no mental stimulation, bored and lonely. My anxiety means i cannot bring myself to go out and meet new people, I have difficulties connecting with others and social situations scare the crap out of me. I have an essential tremor which gets worse when the anxiety hightens and so i'm self conscious about it. I feel completely inferior to the rest of the population, and don't feel like i belong any where.

My anxiety stops me doing everything in life i might enjoy. I have no hobbies and do not allow myself to indulge in activities that i might possibly enjoy out of fear, fear of failure. I have no dreams or hopes and live day by day just getting through and trying to make my boys happy. I am in a relationship with a man that struggles with communication, as much as he loves me dearly, he just isn't the emotionally supportive type.

I've tried connecting with the other mums at my sons school, but they're all very clique, judgmental and snobby and i get ignored. My opinion of myself is so low that i don't take care of myself and my health properly. I have severe chronic anaemia that is currently being investigated. I have an auto immune disease that affects my back and joints and i'm in pain every day.

I'm an intelligent woman, have a good sense of humour, and i'm sure i may have other positive attributes, but i just can't see any of them, and none of them are helping me. I'm a shell of a person, i pretend to be normal and fit in, but i'm far from it. I feel like i'm dying inside. Counselling hasn't helped, self talk doesn't work, medication doesn't help and i genuinely feel like a prisoner inside myself. Trapped, chained up and it's a life sentence.

I'm too scared to be myself, whoever that is. I'm too scared to allow myself to let go and just be. I want to be happy, i need to be happy and healthy to be a good mum, i just don't know how. My core beliefs and feelings about myself are so deep seated that i don't know if i'll ever be able to reach them and change them.

I don't know what to do.

Thanks for reading.

A prisoner within myself

JessF — Wed, 21 May 2014 04:26:09 GMT

Hello Wobbles, that is a big big lump of worry, stress and depression laid out there. I suffer from social anxiety and for periods of time have also suffered from hand tremors which have made me very self conscious. I'm not good at meeting new people either, I often have little voices in my head that tell me what I think they think of me.

I say all that because I hope you'll now forgive me for using a cliche, 'a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step'. If you take everything you've written above as a whole, it must feel overwhelming and hopeless. But if you decide to focus on one thing at a time, then you can begin to make changes.

There's a lot you've written above, about yourself and about others but I'll just focus on you here, because I have found that in order for my relationships to improve with others I had to work on myself first.

You say "My anxiety stops me doing everything in life i might enjoy"... what might some of those things be? Can you think of three things that you would like to do, if not for anxiety? Having specific goals to work towards makes things easier than getting caught up in abstracts, I find. As specific as you can possibly be. It might be, I want to learn the piano. Or I want to play tennis. I'm just pulling out random things here and hope you might get some inspiration.

A prisoner within myself

matt4556 — Thu, 22 May 2014 04:19:50 GMT

have you tried yoga/meditation?