re: Debilitating Anxiety

I’ve dealt with anxiety for most of my life. It has crippled my life in some ways. I have allowed it to keep me from living my life the way I would like to. I desperately wish I could just tell myself to suck it up and make it go away. Unfortunately, I can’t.

I hate having anxiety, but I have very little luck in beating it.

Sorry to hear it.

Is there anything a non anxious friend/colleague/family member could do to help you?

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Is there anything a non anxious friend/colleague/family member could do to help you?

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My family is supportive of me and they really do care. That helps a lot. I’ve done therapy and medication, and I won’t say that those haven’t helped at all but they also haven’t helped a ton (for me, at least). I’ve learned to cope with it, mostly, and I just pray everyday that the things that make me anxious don’t cause me a big panic that day.

I’m embarrassed by my anxiety, so I’m afraid to show it to people. That makes it hard to make very many friends.

Xanax anxiety meds and exercise helped reduce mine drastically. And mine has been bad for most of my life. Definitely debilitating and hopefully one day the opp experiences it after trying to make people that actually suffer from it feel soft/weak lol...

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Anxiety/depression/etc are as "real" as physical pain in the sense that it's all just signals in the brain. Just because you can usually identify the source or cause of physical pain doesn't make it any more real than other signals as far as the brain is concerned. So while most of us might feel anxiety on par with a stubbed toe and we can suck it the frick up, for other people their anxiety might be the equivalent of sawing off a leg.

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It's almost worse than physical pain. When you go into a full on panic attack, often you have symptoms similar to a heart attack... chest tightness, elevated heartbeat, numbness in the extremities, etc. Your mind starts to race uncontrollably, not only from the symptoms, but you also start analyzing every little personal situation or problem you may have going on. You might be tired and want to sleep, but you can't sleep because your racing mind has won't let you. The next morning, your mind and body are likely still in a full or half panicked state, and you've had little to no sleep. Due to the lack of sleep, the anxiety increases even more, and eventually the entire cycle feeds on itself. It can be very scary and difficult to break, especially when you don't know how to recognize the signs, or how to combat it. It took me a good year of therapy before I got the skills to cope.

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NIH

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How fat are YOU?

Just don’t give a frick and pray to Jesus.

I think everyone is trying to figure all this out after Covid.

I don't miss work or flaunt it by any means just trying to live a happy/good life like the rest of yall ha.

I think with anything….there is room for it to be abused.


Overall though….I think mental health issues getting more attention is a good thing though. Yeah you will have those that abuse the attention (hypochondriacs) but then you may also really help those that are truly suffering.

Eta: I wouldn’t wish what my father and those of us caring for him went through with his mental illness on anyone.