It was at the start of the year, it felt like i had been stabbed in the heart by an adrenaline needle, i was completely wired, couldn't sleep, chest tight with deep spikes of pain and panic.
I'm 28, I've been prone to the fussy, overly analytical kind of anxiety in the past and i've been repairing myself from a rough childhood for years, but making progress. I had pulled my self out of depression years before, and i was doing better then ever, looking forward to the new year, to pushing further.
At the start of the year my parents separated, it wasn't a dramatic situation, a bit distressing for sure but it felt normal, at the time i thought i had, and was, processing that situation proportionally. But a week later these attacks started and just ripped through me. I wouldn't be able to sleep for days, would recover a little, and another wave would hit me, i would claw at my chest to get it out. Despite the timing it didn't (and doesn't) feel like it was about anything, it was just a raw kind of hell that i could, and did, attribute everything under the sun.
After about three weeks of violently coming and going the feeling plateaued into a more level discomfort, a stress and pain in my chest, an unease in my stomach. My thoughts would be anxious, circular and worried. The feeling would rise and fall a little punctuated by more sever attacks, but it would never go away completely. I became obsessed with trying to influence the feeling, diminish it through breathing, exercises, mindfulness, positive change. But nothing would work. I saw some doctors but they found nothing physical.
A few times it diminished almost entirely, both times for about a week, and both times I was completely confident that i had found an answer, as if the confidence itself reduced the feeling. But each time i would be proven wrong, I would get anxious about an unrelated situation and my coping mechanisms would fail the feeling would rise and the theory would fall apart leading right to another attack.
I don't know what's wrong with me, I think it is some form of extreme anxiety but i don't know why? I've been looking to go to therapy seriously but it's hard to find someone good. My last psychologist told my "it's a mystery" and recommended some breathing exercises i already knew. I want to find someone better (Schema?).
Does any of this seem familiar to anyone? what do I do? I can get through the day but I am unhappy, and my work is suffering.
Please help if you can.
