Are these feelings normal for anxiety?

[Claydo]

I seem to cycle through my feelings/emotions every 2 weeks or so. I’ll start feeling really agitated with a cringy dirty feeling which makes me squirm for 2/3 days and then I get depressed for 2/3 days then I come out of it and start feeling really good and positive for around 2 weeks. I start thinking I’m on the mend and this time I’m going to get better then boom I start feeling anxious/agitated and ruminate over things I did 15 years ago which I haven’t thought about for years.

I really struggle with the dirty agitated feeling and I feel like I have this buzzing sensation from my head down my left leg to my foot. The psych tells me it’s just anxiety but it feels like it’s something different more like BIpolar but I don’t get the upside/manic periods.Sometimes I feel like it my meds which make me feel this way but I know they’ve helped a lot with my anxiety.

i feel like I’ll never get better and this is what my life is now. I guess I could have something worse like terminal cancer but I feel like im a shell of a person to who I use to be before this all happened 2.5 years ago.

Do others have similar experience?

[PamelaR]

Hi Claydo and warm welcome to our forums

Anxiety can be the pits sometimes can't it? I'm not a health professional so really can't advise about whether it's anxiety or bipolar. I have lived experience with anxiety, along with PTSD and depression.

There are a few things I can relate to in your post.

Like those feelings of cyclical bouts of anxiety and depression, I use to get these a lot. For me there were two causes: hormonal and triggers. Now that I've hormones have settled down, I stopped working and identified my triggers , the frequency of these bouts has almost ceased. Triggers can come in many forms e.g. from watching the news, or movies, or tv series. Do you watch the same programs each week? Maybe there is something you're watching that sets it off. Alternatively, if you work, is there anything there that could set it off.

Working out the triggers helps to start to reduce the bodily anxiety responses, e.g. agitation, palpitations, sweating.

I too have experienced the tingling (vibration in my toes in particular). It's very disconcerting but it has ceased now that I've had a change in my non mental health medication (medication for my thyroid function). But it also ceased after a recent bout of health anxiety. So it's really difficult to tell what caused the sensation in my toes.

So - you had this happen 2.5 years ago. Did something occur then that may be the cause for your ongoing anxiety? No pressure to disclose, only if you want to. Maybe it's something you can think about and talk to your psych about?

Recovery and healing will happen. It all takes time and a lot of work. Overall it's taken me 8 to 9 years of fairly intensive work with a psych to recover and heal. But it was worth all the hard work. Life possibly won't be the same as before and in some ways I'm really pleased about that. I feel much better now than I ever did.

Maybe some of this will give you the courage to continue on working with your psych Claydo. Keep reaching out here if and when you want to.

Kind regards

PamelaR

[Claydo]

Thanks for the response

it helps to know other people are dealing with/ or experienced similar things.

My anxiety started while working and resulted in physical symptoms such as muscle twitching and vibrating/buzzing sensations in my body. This then lead to serious health anxiety. After several Visits to Doctors and specialist I was given a clean bill of health and was told it was just anxiety. I still struggled with this as I could not believe the physical symptoms weren’t some sinister illness and was only anxiety.

after 2 years my wife was concerned about my mental health and suggested I see a psychiatrist which I did who upped my AD because I was on a extremely low dose. I then went into a hypomanic state. This really knocked me around because I’d never experienced such uncontrollable feelings/emotions. I’ve now changed meds which I think helps but I cycle through anxiety and depression. I really struggle with these feelings as I think I have a serious mental health condition that I’ll never recover from. I know this is my health anxiety but it’s really hard not to get swept up in my emotions when things start to kick off.

It gets tough to keep positive and ploughing on as I can’t get consistency in my life as I never know what state I’ll be in. I find I’ve withdrawn a lot from social aspects in my life because after work and family commitments I need downtime to recharge and don’t want to be around people.

it is encouraging to hear you got through the other side after 8-9 years as I’m starting to acknowledge this is not going to be something I recover from quickly. I’m starting to identify my triggers. Work seems to be a big one but on the same token it really helps keeping me distracted and my mind off things.

It does help to write things down and out off my head. It also puts things to in perspective.

thanks.

[Alexlisa]

Hello Claydo,

I can relate to a lot of what you’ve written. Sometimes we need to listen to our gut, if you feel like something else is going on it might be worth getting a second opinion. These days it’s understood that bipolar isn’t as tidy as having low moods followed by hypomania/mania. And hypomania/mania doesn’t have to be a wonderful, elated feeling at all. Agitation can be a key symptom, as well as racing thoughts, a busy feeling inside, sleeping and eating less, busy activity, more energy etc.

It might be worth having a look at the symptoms of a mixed episode (or dysphoric mania), which is where you can have both the low mood and all the energy/agitation/racing thoughts etc of hypomania/mania at the same time. Mixed episodes feel really unpleasant. When you wrote about the vibrating and ‘dirty’ feeling, I get what you mean. It reminded me of my mixed states. They are harder for doctors to identify because they don’t look like the classic bipolar pattern. But they’re common and someone who is up to date with their information relating to bipolar would know how complex the disorder can look.

If you happen to live in Sydney, I got assessed for bipolar by the Black Dog Institute. It was the best thing I ever did because they are the specialists in the area. If not, maybe you could find someone in your area that has a good understanding and possibly print out some reputable information about bipolar and also write down how you see it affect you.

Getting the right diagnosis is important because like you found out, the medication for depression/anxiety can be counterproductive and potentially make things a lot worse. It’s pretty common for people to realise they might have bipolar when they have a bad reaction to antidepressants. Getting the right diagnosis can be really tough- in Australia it actually takes on average 10 years from first episode! Also, technically you only have to have had one hypomanic/manic/mixed episode in your life to classify as bipolar.

I hope this helps and is not too overwhelming. I just wanted to tell you that it’s worth continuing on your journey to find answers that make sense to you, and sometimes that can take a while and involve seeing different professionals. Good luck with it, be patient and take care of yourself.

Alexlisa

[Claydo]

Thanks Alexlisa

I appreciate the reply and insights. How do you finds things now that you’ve been diagnosed correctly and got the right treatment? Did it still take you sometime before you got on top of it?

i checked out the mixed states information and some of it feels familiar but I don’t really get racing thoughts or overinflated confidence. I do get good ideas and enthusiastic about things but find 2-3 days later my confidence dips and I don’t follow through and chicken out. I assume this is normal for most people. All I know is I never know how I’m going to feel from one week to the next.

The psychiatrist I’ve been seeing told me I was on the spectrum for bipolar but I didn’t actually have bipolar. I found this confusing but he said things are not always clear cut and that I’m atypical. He sometimes refers to my condition as a pathological illness or say I’m unwell. I know he’s not trying to upset me but it sets off my health anxiety a bit.

im on these mood stabilisers now which seems to have helped the most with my anxiety but still get agitated/irritated and depressed. As time goes on I’m learning more and more about me and this thing I’m dealing with. I’m understanding my triggers and being ok with my feelings and symptoms. It’s not pleasant sometimes and I find it hard to sleep or relax but that’s ok it never lasts.

My life is okay now, nowhere near where I was before I had very high expectations of myself and felt I could do anything. Not sure now, sometimes I feel my old self coming back but it doesn’t seem to last.