Lack of Effective treatments for Anxiety

[PickoB]

I am in my 50's and suffer from childhood onset anxiety

During my life it became so severe I ceased my working life 10 years ago and fell into the grips of depression just to add to the fun.

Over my journey I have tried psychological treatments such as CBD, psychoanalysis, mindfulness etc - all of which were of no assistance with my anxiety.

I have also exhausted the pharmacological avenue via multiple psychiatrists giving me every med under every relevant medication class and also off-label meds that were designed for diverse illnesses.

It is pretty damning that the last class of meds specifically aimed at anxiety came out 60 years or so ago.

I am left with having to accept that there is simply no meaningful help out there for treatment resistant severe anxiety. My lot in life is to endure the continual suffering for however many years I have left.

It is a blight on medical research that with all the advances made in multiple areas anxiety is the poor cousin with no progress for many decades.

[therising]

Hi PickoB

From what you say, it sounds like you've been a deeply feeling person from a young age. I wish there was someone who had helped you feel in ways that made a difference to you over all those years, so you wouldn't have had to suffer so much for so long.

I'm actually a newcomer to the challenges of anxiety. As a 53yo gal, I've found a number of revelations over the years (since my late teens) that have led me to better understand periods in depression and manage those periods but anxiety was a whole new experience for me last year. I've actually taken this year off work in order to manage a less stressful number of challenges and regain some sense of energy and peace. As you'd know stress/anxiety can become pretty physically and mentally exhausting.

I think when we're such deeply feeling or sensitive people we can feel/sense a lot more than some people who just can't relate. Just so much in life can have a feel to it. So many triggers. Certain thoughts have a feel to them, just as certain things that run through our imagination do. Certain words from people can be a trigger and certain sounds too. Wasn't until recently that I realised I can feel the ring of my mobile phone through my nervous system. Last year I was the 'go to' person for a lot of problem solving and help for certain members of my family. So now every time the phone rings I feel a problem coming. Next level feeling is when you can feel other people's feelings too. When you can feel other people's stress, anger, anxiety, frustration, intolerance etc it can be an ability that feels more like a curse at times. So, when you're feeling your own emotions, your nervous system, certain challenges, certain sounds, particular words, other people's feelings and a heck of a lot more, the question becomes 'How to feel strategically?'.

Not sure if will be of any help but I found a good book to be 'Sensitive Is The New Strong' by Anita Moorjani. She acknowledges the ability to feel comes with a lot of challenges. It comes with certain mental, physical and even soulful kinds of challenges. While there are some spiritual elements to the book, if that's not your cup of tea there's still plenty to get from it. It kind of comes from the angle of 'What if I was always led to believe my sensitivity is a fault as opposed to an ability'. Then the question becomes 'How do I learn to better understand it and master it and do some amazing things with it that no ones ever led me to do before?'. For example, I wonder how good you are at reading people. Can you sense the stressful people compared to those who lead you to feel a sense of peace? Can you feel the degrading people, as opposed to those who lead you to feel inspiration? People definitely have quite a feel to them. The anxiety inducing and depressing ones are often the most challenging.🙂

[PickoB]

Hi therising,

Thank you for your thoughtful response to my post, it is much appreciated.

To answer some of the concepts you raise, I would first say that in the past I have "felt" other people to excess. I have been excessively worried about the impact my interactions with people have on people. Compounding this my extremely low esteem leads me to fear other people as, ipso facto, they are better than me and can thus inflict harm on me - this fear has led me to isolate myself increasingly over time to the point that the only person I interact with is my wife. I have drawn my world in progressively to just be my house. I do not go out of it, I do not answer the doorbell, I do not answer the phone (I note what you said in relation to your phone ringing, for me the first ring of the phone induces a panic attack).

My illness has progressed to such a pervasive extreme that I do not have the capacity to feel strategically. To draw an analogy, if you imagine a person who is in significant physical pain 24 hrs of every day, their capacity to feel or think of anything other than that pain is eliminated. The pain centre of the brain effectively dominates all the other aspects of what the conscious brain does. My anxiety is similar - it affects every thought, every emotion. It is omnipresent. The only relief and control I can get over that is via the consumption of alcohol (on a "drip" basis - that is I drink constantly but it is a constant sipping, not an attempt to becoming intoxicated) and taking Bz's. The combination of the two dulls the frenetic activity of my brain and gives me temporary respite.

It is a very primitive/basic mode of treatment. It is sad that more appropriate treatment does not exist.

[therising]

Hi PickoB

You offer a great analogy, comparing the anxiety to pain, which leads me to understand how truly unbearable your anxiety is. I can understand the alcohol too. While classed as a 'depressant', this relates to its nature to suppress certain activity or processes in the brain and body. If emotion can be seen as energy in motion or e-motion, it is energy that can be felt on a variety of levels in a variety of ways. Slowing down such incredibly hyperactive energy to the point where it's bearable becomes the goal. With you having worked so hard to find better ways in managing such unbearable hyperactivity in your body, it would be unreasonable for people to say 'You shouldn't drink', without offering an alternative.

I think people are inclined to judge heavily until they've walked a mile in another person's shoes. Take medical cannabis for example. While one person could say 'You shouldn't be dependent on that stuff' another who's experienced severe anxiety and/or PTSD would label it as a godsend that helps them manage their nervous system and life.

Emotion is such a strange and fascinating thing. While I enjoy researching it from a psychological perspective and a chemical perspective, I also enjoy researching it from a natural perspective (the way it used to be acknowledged and treated before psychology and modern medicine were developed). I also find the connection between emotion and quantum physics fascinating too. With QP being all about the nature and behaviour of energy, it's an area of research full of incredible theories when it comes to how we experience and feel energy, whether it be within us or around us.