New to BB old slave to anxiety

[Hippychic]

Hi,

well, here I am! On the outside people see a calm, caring, supportive, educated, creative mother and health professional.

In real life I'm a terrified, totally dependant mess and shell of a person.

I have experienced anxiety and panic attacks that I can remember from my early teenage years, I'm told I was always an anxious child. I have had several negative experiences in childhood, and a strong family history of undiagnosed mental health conditions - so yay me - the trifecta for risk of developing a mental health issue!

I was in denial for many years, then I stepped into seeing psychologists, psychotherapists, did mindfulness, meditation and started telling friends and family that I have anxiety.

I have two beautiful sons ages 8 and 11, I'm now in my early 40's and after an emotionally taxing 7 years of divorce issues finally have a supportive ex husband and unbelievably supportive, strong and secure current partner.

After re-establishing my career (after kids) that I always found stressful, I now have a job that I love (but don't feel good enough for) and am financially on the up.

By all accounts, my life is in the best position it's ever been - but I'm far from it.

I got to a point where I became frustrated that I could not take my kids anywhere on my own, I can't even take myself a decent distance from home alone. I stress if I am at home alone with the kids, though they have been an amazingly mature support for me recently. But even that stresses me to not burden them with the emotional distress of me not coping. My recent career advancement has involved my studying the impacts of early childhood experiences both relevant to mental health and family violence - too close to home as a previous child and current parent.

I hit breaking point and saw a psychiatrist to try medication which I have always been adverse to - also because taking medication triggers anxiety as I have experienced a number of adverse reactions to various meds in the past - I also have health anxiety!

So, I tried a ssri knowing it would exacerbate anxiety initially. First three days were awesome - placebo effect! Then I crashed, the anxiety became unbearable, I lasted 6 days. A referral for dose titration as an inpatient is now in process.

Im terrified. I don't know what's right for me. I don't feel like I can go through the med effects again, I can't stay like this either. If I take the meds again for longer and it still doesn't work or gets worse will I ever be ok again?

[blondguy]

Hi Hippychic

Welcome to the forums and good on you for have the courage to post too!

Im sorry that you have been going through this awful illness of anxiety.....I understand where you are coming from as it seems to be like superglue sometimes and just wont let go....

I have had anxiety since 1983 when I was 23 and it took a small dose of SSRI's to provide me with a platform on which I could heal more effectively.....Just a note fyi....I thought I could self heal and I was so wrong. I started the AD's in 1996 and they kicked in immediately...and kept doing so. I new nothing about the initial anxiety phase when I started taking them but this is my 21st year on them and they gave me my career and personal life back

I am not a doc as you know...just a long term sufferer of this mongrel illness. If I may ask you Hippychic...do you have a couple (or one) good GP's that are helping you during this difficult time?

I took the AD's but I had weekly therapy with it at the time every week for six months.....and yes it was a pain but the mental health worker gave me my life back.....(psychiatric nurse)

you are not alone by any means. There are many gentle people on the forums that also suffer from this awful illness. The anxiety does reduce in intensity with super regular counseling combined with meds......from what I have learned since 1996.

The meds cant hurt you....even though I was very anti-meds at the time 21 years ago when I started my AD's

Please be 'gentle' with yourself

Paul

[Mathy]

Hi Hippychic and welcome 🙂

I live with anxiety/depression and PTSD.

It must feel like a bot of a blow that you’ve got life heading in the onward and upward direction, only to be thwarted by anxiety, which I know can be quite crippling, and yes, one can look and be very competent, whilst screaming inside 🙂

Regarding your ADs, I couldn’t tolerate ssri’s either, so I take an old fashioned tricyclic (I hope this doesn’t get removed, but it’s not a brand name, so fingers crossed). So my experience is that it helps with sleep, anxiety and depression. I tired 3 of the well known ssri types and I had side effects with all of them

I don’t know what a dose titration exactly means (I can guess), but I hope the information I gave you above is something you can pop in your back pocket - in case your current ADs don’t work out and you want to speak with your psychiatrist about an alternative.

Wishing you all the best and hopes for improvement. This thread is the space for your story, for you to post safely in. I’ll keep an eye out and see how you’re going, cheers M 🙂