Living with anxiety

[Fifgrl]

Hi, I am 20 and I have been living with anxiety for as long as I remember. Even in primary school I used to throw up every single morning. I ended up leaving school as well and I did not finish my further studies all due to anxiety I just could not cope anymore.  I have tried everything. I have come to the conclusion that I will always have to live with anxiety. The people around me tell me I am just being stupid but I know that this is not the case. I tried medications but they made me feel so sick. I also tried therapy which was extremely hard to go to because my therapist would just continuously ask me how I felt which I could not explain because I am just numb. All I feel is either numbness or anxiety which can range from mild stomach sickness and that lump in the trout feeling to full on panic attack. There really is no reason for me to feel this way but I do and I have for as long as I can remember. The only child hood memories I retain are my parents screaming at each other and always making me pick sides when they finally split when I was 7. I'm to a point now where I feel like I am stuck down a hole with polished concrete walls and there is no one or nothing to help me climb my way out. I always had hope to get away from anxiety but the longer life goes on the more it seems to settle in. I have NO friends left I pushed them all away. When they would ask me to go places I would agree to go and just not turn up because I could never build up the courage to go. My whole life I have been drowning with anxiety. Is there anyone out there who has suffered anxiety for their whole life and come out alright in the end? 

[Dwwmills]

Hi Fifgrl.

I have suffered with generalised anxiety disorder on and off
the last 40 years. I believe that I’ve beaten it now using cognitive-based
therapy and medication. Two years ago I decided enough was enough and finally
accepted that I needed to take medication. The medication had some side-effects
for me but I put up with them to gain the benefits of slowing down racing
thoughts and a generally calmer mood. The side-effects of the medications
became less the longer I took them and stayed at the same dose. If I change the
dose up or down I would experience slightly more side-effects for a while. The
main thing that pulled me through was cognitive-based therapy. I learned to do
this through seeing a psychologist over the years but what made the biggest
difference was I took charge of learning how to use CBT myself daily. I read
everything I could find on the subject and found a good CBT app, for my phone. I
am now off medication I no longer seeing the psychologist and I’m doing well. I
still use CBT every day.

CBT only works if it is used over and over again. What you’re
trying to do is reprogram the way you think. You need to do this daily and over
a long period of time to set new thinking patterns. CBT itself is simple to
understand you just recognise irrational thinking patterns and challenge them.

I think probably the hardest thing about tackling anxiety is
finding a trigger that allows you to commit to doing therapy for as long as it
takes. Finding that unswerving, dedicated commitment to give it 100% has been
the most difficult part. Once I made my mind up it was fairly easy from there.
It was lots of work but the benefits came very quickly. I could have done what
I did in the last two years any time in the previous 40 years but I didn’t.

Another valuable lesson I learned is that I could not trust my
gut feeling on a lot of issues. I avoided situations that I felt anxious about.
I had to learn to mentally say to myself the anxiety I am feeling is not based
on anything real. I had to ignore my gut feelings and use my rational mind to
assess each situation. There is a saying “feel the fear and do it anyway” I
like to think of it as “Ignore your gut feelings because they are wrong and use
your intelligence to assess the situation.”

I would urge you to have a look at CBT again. The most
common reason it fails is it is not used often enough. You have to use it
enough to crowd out your negative thoughts.

[Fifgrl]

Hi Dwwmills, 

thank you for post. Congratulations on your success. 

I think I do need to go back to therapy, I went for over a year however during this time I really made no progress. I may need to find a new therapist. I am generally best with researching myself so I am going to give that a go aswell. I have an appointment with my doc again tomorrow and I will talk to him about going back onto medication I was only on this for a few weeks but it made me dizzy and nauseous I see now that it was probably not long enough. Your words are exactly what I needed to hear I have hope. 

 Thank you.  

[Dwwmills]

Hi Fifgrl.

A new therapist may just be the trick.

I like doing research myself and it’s interesting that you
mention this. I do best with this method as well. I found a site called, “Excel
at Life”, which has been put together by a psychologist in America. It has
stacks of information that you can learn from. It also has several apps for
your phone that are all connected to this information and make it easy to
access it daily. I used a CBT diary app which leads you through challenging
your own thoughts and helps to keep track of what you’re doing. There is a
central app called “Cognitive Styles Test” which runs through about 150
questions and gives you scores for different areas of your thinking. It then
refers you off to different apps and articles depending on those scores. It’s
all free to download and cost you nothing to use.

I talked about using CBT in my last post but what I really
did was to tackle anxiety with everything and the kitchen sink. I use CBT,
medication, relaxation techniques, mindfulness, exercise and improving my sleep
patterns. The above website has all these factors integrated into it and
explains why they are important to help in your recovery.

I wish you all the best. Just stick at it and you will get
there.