Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Mine always gets worse this time of year. Exercise ( which I don't do regularly enough) definitely helps. I tend more towards agoraphobia, which really makes me a homebody when not at work. Even simple things like going out with my wife trigger an attack. But rambling aside, I just came to this board to search this topic, and yours was the first thread! Interested to see others methods of dealing with this.

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anxiety doesn't ever really go away.

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It doesn’t. Your goal is to learn to manage it.

I was a hermit for the latter half of my 20’s due to anxiety.

No medication did the job. Ultimately it took a lot of counseling and me learning about how my mind works. What are my triggers? Why are they triggers for me?

I continue regular counseling to this day and I don’t ever want to stop. I’m on no medication for anxiety and haven’t been for over a decade.

When I run into a problem, I have the tools to work it out.

Miner, your are experiencing symptoms of panic disorder with agoraphobia. There are excellent treatments for that if you find the right clinician. Specifically, a combination of exposure therapies are 85% effective. I don't know if you have already sought help for that or not, but I wanted to let you know that those disorders have a high success rate when the best therapies are employed.

No joke: the steamroom was out of order. I felt like Woody Allen.

I was about to swim instead, but just as I grabbed my goggles, they removed all the lane dividers for happy family free swim (a/k/a fecal-matter hour). I didn't panic. I laughed and got in the hot tub, while listening to Body by Bill Bryson, which induced a germophobic panic attack.

I'm no Analrapist, but my guess is, pretty much everyone has or is at least very susceptible to generalized anxiety unless he simply ignores reality somehow. We're on a comparatively infinitesimal sphere o dirt spinning until we ourselves become part of that dirt.

It's all in the treatment.


I've always been a bit of a worrier. I went through a lot of shite as a kid, including divorce at age 4-5, when my brother was a baby. I felt like I was responsible for everything at way too young an age. A kindergarten-aged dad. [Insert various bad shite here that followed. ]

I treated the anxiety with alcohol and an odd sense of entitlement, for decades.

Ironically, cancer jolted me out of it in my early 40s, and my first kid at age 44 created a new joy, purpose, and yet new and different anxieties.

I share all of this just so you know, you are not alone in this. And everyone has his own factors contributing to anxiety.

My personal checklist for sanity:
--mindfulness (mine is Christianity-grounded but I'm not proselytizing here--just leave it as mindfulness)

--Pareto's Principle: eliminate the 20% of shite causing 80% of your shite results (this is broad, but it works as a framework). This can include dumping "friends," clients or whole careers.

--exercise every day even if just a short walk (and I was serious about sauna--some great real scientific results)

--diet: I personally don't eat sugar or simple carbs (unless for a race) and utilize endogenous (i.e., my-liver-made) ketones, via diet and fasting. I don't want to proselytize this either, but fasting has a very long history of synergism with mindfulness in many, many societies and traditions.

--tackle loneliness: I say as I type on an anonymous internet forum, but discipline yourself with devices and internet time and plug into real live friends, family and community, including serving others. Get outside your own head. And, related...

--get outdoors and get some vitamin D. Huge.

--turn off the news. We are so inundated with negative information from all over the globe and we don't have the community structures to process it. Unlimited bullshite with very little support systems.

--tackle any addictions, obviously: as I mentioned, I can't drink alcohol any more. Even a little gives me anxiety in the middle of the night now. And it perpetuates poor sleep. Others: porn and internet in general.

--sleep. Deep sleep. Read Matthew Walker's book on sleep

--experiment with supplements: I'm not pushing snake oil, but there is science behind some supplements and the placebo effect is real, so as long as it doesn't have negative side-effects and isn't hurting your bank account (or creating some new obsession and anxiety via worrying about taking it), then it can't hurt. You mentioned Mg. Definitely on my list. I'm not going to list mine. They're pretty obvious ones though.

--this isn't on my list because I don't need it, but the work on PTSD and traumatic brain injury with psychoactive drugs is promising.

--music

--don't neglect the hobbies that bring you joy, even if they seem silly to others or even to you.


I'm not saying to forgo therapy, but there is a lot you can do physiologically and with good habits to at least give yourself a head start and make therapy more productive.

When I first started seeing her I was going once a week. At the suggestion of the therapist she states she has seen improvement and recommended we only see each other biweekly.

Long Story short for those wanting to know the back story. I didn’t know how to handle the stress from work playing music on the weekends and having my first child in my 30’s. I would drink more and more frequently to escape reality. I noticed myself becoming overweight(190 to about 215) A friend turned me on to smoking Marijuana(CBD oil through a vape pen) to relieve some of my stress and maybe replace my alcohol consumption.(I realize this was stupid) I have smoked maybe a total of 5 times in my life. On the 6th session home alone I smoked too much and had a panic attack. Discussing this with my therapist it was determined that smoking was probably the catalyst for a panic attack but not my disorder. She believes that sooner or later I would have been diagnosed with this based on the way I have processed stress. My entire life I have excessively worried about things.

Thank you for sharing this with me and for the tips. While I do believe my disorder is psychological I should mention the last blood test I had it was determined that my vitamin D levels were low. In a result panel of 30ng/ml-100ng/ml being acceptable my result was 30.7ng/ml I don't think Vitamin D will have some magical transformation on me but I don't think it would hurt to supplement as it may have a positive effect on my mood.

Thoughts?

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Dear God when did so many men become fragile?

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You and people like you are part of the problem.

I got chills over here. Such a badass.