Hi gucci, thanks for your post.
It must be pretty challenging to be going through anxiety for so many years and it must be even tougher for you with your recent diagnosis of PTSD. Sounds like you have had to go through an incredibly difficult and traumatic experience with your family member’s suicide attempts – from a really young age and even up until now. We are sorry to hear that you have had to go through this.
Even though you feel you have been travelling ok and have good stability in your life, you are still finding yourself triggered with anxiety by situations that are similar and situations that aren’t as well. This is not unusual – when it comes to anxiety, sometimes people can start to generalise the feelings of distress to other less similar situations like you have mentioned that you are going though.
This generalised feeling of anxiety can sometimes consist of excessive worry about events that may occur but in reality are unlikely to happen. Just know that what you are going through is very common gucci and there are lots of things you can do to help you through this.
One suggestion we want to offer you is that if you already haven’t done so, getting the help of a mental health professional like a psychologist can be really beneficial in helping you to learn positive coping strategies with what you are feeling. We get a sense that you have accessed professional support before given your diagnoses – however we want to emphasis the importance of continuing to follow this up.
We would recommend working with a psychologist that can offer a technique called Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) – this technique will help you to work through re-structuring any unhelpful thought patterns that make you feel anxious. You can get a referral to see a psychologist by your GP under a Mental Health Care Plan.
You may also find some helpful information on the signs, symptoms and ways to manage anxiety on our website so please have a look at our resources there for extra tips.
We are also a little concerned about the fact that you have had to manage someone who has been at risk of suicide – we just want to let you know that if you are feeling distressed by this it is important that you enlist professional supports – if someone is having thoughts of suicide or of hurting themselves, it is really important that they take immediate steps to keep safe. This can be done by:
-Speaking to a doctor
- If unable to see a GP, you can:
-Attend the Emergency Department of your local hospital or
-Call the Mental Health Team at your nearest hospital or
-If you or someone else is unable to keep from acting on thoughts about suicide or self-harm this is an emergency and you need to call 000 (triple zero).
If you are finding that things are getting really hard for you - we would really encourage you to get in direct contact with us so that we can talk to you in more detail and explore alternative options for you. You can reach us by contacting the beyondblue Support Service on 1300 22 4636. We can help 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with counselling support, information and referrals. Alternatively, you can contact us via our Webchat service which starts at 3pm to midnight daily.
We hope that you get the support that you need and please keep us in mind if you need to talk.
