Dealing with stress, anxiety and trouble moving forward

[Miag17]

Hi all,

i am new here and just need some advice on how I am feeling.

This year has probably been one of the best years of my life. I accomplished so much, put myself out of my comfort zone and made new friends in/out of school. I grew in confidence and learnt so many new things. My life was amazing until my first year 12 exam hit on November, I didn’t do it to the best of my ability because for the past 3 weeks before the exam I burnt myself out so bad. I messed up the exam, but right now I am looking at it as a learning lesson for year 12 next year.

anyway, since that day, I have been struggling on and off with feeling anxious 75% of the time, mostly when I am at home and have nothing to do. I had some trouble concentrating on my work after the exam and just felt more down than I have felt before. Sometimes it goes away for a couple of days than comes back for a day or two.

nowadays, I am on holidays and I have never felt this low in my life. I don’t even know if I have anxiety or depression, but I have had trouble sleeping this past week, I have trouble being independent, and just sitting on my own because I am so prone to catastrophizing how I feel. I worry a lot and don’t know what to do when I am in that state, constantly feeding onto those negative thoughts.

i know that this is only temporary, and I know that there are a few reasons why I have been feeling this way:

- loads of stress, especially throughout my exam period, don’t know how to deal with it

- lack of self care. I literally did so much this year, was so busy every single weekend, went on camps during holidays where I was meant to relax. I forgot to take care of myself

- my favourite teacher at school leaving for another school. She helped me more than anyone could this year, she’s my role model and she knows that her leaving has made me feel scared of next year.

Anyway, I have got a mental health plan and went to headspace to get my sh*t together, because I want to stop feeling so low. I have the support of my family and my friends.

my question is, how do I get motivation to keep going, what strategies can I use to get better sleep, and have you felt something similar to this?

Thank you all so much, I’m so glad I found this space to share how I am feeling. 🙂

[smallwolf]

Hi Miag17,

Welcome to beyond blue. You have certainly thought this matter through quite thoroughly, so I tip my hat to you on that.It is also good to hear that you have the support of your family as well. There are a couple of points you made in your post that I hope to reply to. You mentioned about getting better sleep and dealing with stress during exam time. So...

My psychologist got me to install 2 apps on my phone. One is called relax melodies and the other is virtual hope box. The good thing about relax melodies is that you can layer sounds on top of each other, so I could be listening to a fire inside a cave, and rain outside, as well as crashing waves. These sounds combined help to distract any negative thoughts I might have before going to sleep.

One other app you could try is called smiling mind, which was originally targeted at children and adolescents, but now included adults and includes various exercises or meditations to bring you back to the present moment and stop thinking about the negative thoughts again.

My last 2 ideas are... you might be able to get a book from your library called "The Happiness Trap" which is another thing (book this time) that my psychologist wanted me to read. Have a look at it. 🙂 And my last idea relates to worry beads. When things on your phone do not work, these work for me as they are something that I can look at, touch, feel, etc.

And if you need any more ideas, jump across to the threads on grounding and mindfulness for many more ideas. What works for one person may not work for another. So it's a case of working out what works for the individual.

Hope this makes sense,

Tim