Anxiety/Panic as an abnormal response to stress

[SickofIt]

There is a lot of talk here about the symptoms and overcoming them, as well as support for those of us who suffer. However, I have just started seeing a counselor and I want to get to the bottom of what causes these unnerving responses.

For example, I woke up feeling kind of drained and somewhat panicky. I thought for a moment (after deep breathing exercises) "why now?" "why today?" I have been having at least 5 days of feeling pretty good and normal (normal w/o anxiety) and now this. I see a lot of posts like this here and I haven't really seen anyone address the cause. For me, yesterday was stressful, but in a good way. My oldest son was involved in many extra curricular school activities, my youngest had his activities and my husband and I spent quality time with them. Then last night we had friends over for dinner. Everything was great! I did feel stressed yesterday about some things, but not in a bad way. Do you think that my anxiety/panic of this morning is a direct result of stress I felt yesterday? Has anyone ever had this happen? I still feel pretty good about today's activities. I don't understand this. My counselor likened the anxiety/panic to us being like a sponge. We absorb everything and sometimes we just get squeezed out. I've been thinking of that analogy and relating it to my life.

There has to be a more healthy way of "being squeezed" than to suffer like this.

I have one more (somewhat unrelated) question. Does anyone ever feel that during a panic/anxiety attack like they just don't want to talk to anyone? I am going to have to start telling my husband when I am feeling the anxiety so he doesn't expect me to have intense conversations with him during this time.

Ok, enough rambling for this morning.

[lisarose]

Hi Sickofit,

I can totally relate to how you are feeling, I have suffered anxiety/Panic attacks/depression since 2000 but since August of last year started to take medication, stopped drinking alcohol and started to feel better than i had done in years, I even started a part-time college course doing psychology and loved it. I started dieting and walking lots and lost 331bs in weight and felt really good about myself and my confidence returned. Since January have started to feel ill again, feeling stressed with life and feeling like everything is getting on top of me and feel totally desperate. It has got progressively worse in the last 3 weeks, I have had both my children ill with chickenpox and i have had shingles on my face which looks hideous at the moment. I have started to drink again to try and cope with the stress and anxiety I feel and have put 4 pounds in weight back on and have dropped out of college because I cannot cope with the work. I feel like I am back to where I started and don't know how to get my life back on track again.

I also feel when panicky that I don't want to speak to anyone but then other times I just want someone to keep talking to me to take my mind off it but at the moment I am feeling really depressed and feel like I just want to shut myself away in my bedroom and not talk to my family as i don't know what to say to them and feel they don't understand how I feel.

Sorry to go on, i am sure you have enough of your own problems.

Take care
Love Lisaxx

[sal]

Hi Sickofit

I am sure your husband will understand if you explain you dont feel up to talking when you are anxious. I go like that i just want to sit quietly and get myself back on the track again.

I think part of the recovery from anxiety is going to have blips along the way, it isnt just going to go away overnight. I also think these blips are friendly reminders when we maybe have taken on a bit too much at that present time.



Lots of Love Sal xxxxx

[mico]

Hi SickOfIt

It's an interesting question, and one that has often confused me too (and continues to do so).

Here's one way of looking at it.

I'm a firm believer in relaxation. But if you look into the intricacies of this, and research it thouroughly, you may well just come across a little negative feedback regarding relaxation or meditation.

This isn't something I often talk about for fear of putting fear of relaxation into peoples minds. As I say, I don't believe it's something to fear, and can be extremely beneficial. But there is a phenomenon (if you want to call it that) where relaxation, or more to the point, the over-use of it, can lead to panic and anxiety.

You can read Buddhist literature, and you may well come across talk of 'demons' (or something similar) on your path. Many Buddhists experience this at some point (although it's usually only one-offs) where they will have a period of panic induced by meditation (not necesarilly when in a trance).

I read a book about CSM (Clinically Standardised Meditation), written by the founder, Patricia Carrington, and she talks about this a lot within her book. One of the reasons she developed this form of meditation was to aid people with relaxation in their day to day lives, but to also do so safely. She explained this negative 'phenomenon' as being created by too great a release of tension.

So, if too much tension can create anxiety, and releasing too much tension can create anxiety, we have two polar opposites, both creating anxiety! In which case, it would be sensible to assume that we have to find the correct balance within our lives, and throughout the recovery process.

I have experienced this myself, and know just how frustrating it is. But I have also experienced it through over-indulgence in relaxation. Not to a great degree, but sometimes I get carried away, and once you become truly relaxed, you just want to remain there all day. Then I wake up in the morning, only to feel worse than what I did the day before.

Now I could go into this a little further (just trying to build up a big picture here, so you can ponder over it and make your own mind up). After this relaxation, you have a much more relaxed sleep, and by the time you wake up in the morning, you still feel relaxed. Yet you can still feel anxious! That sounds very bizzare, doesn't it? There's one big difference though. When you wake up after the relaxation, your thoughts are gone. Well, not completely gone, but you feel different. Not quite so excited (maybe hyperactive would be a better way of putting it, or restless), you haven't got thoughts racing around, but there are still thoughts there. But the thoughts that are there, you may well not have noticed before, because they are the thoughts that sit underneath all this hyperactivity. May still be anxious thoughts, but it's surprising just how many layers of thoughts you have. And I have realised, that in a rather strange way, the original top layer of anxious (hyper, excited) thoughts often shield me from my anxiety. I have often heard Meg speaking on here about how anxiety is closely related to excitement, and if you can turn that anxiety into excitement then it can be a big help. It just depends on how you view your fears. For one person, skydiving may be the most terrifying thought you could come up with, but for another, it is the most exhilirating.

Experiencing these restless and excited thoughts, then going into hours of relaxation only to rid myself of all (well, most) of them all in one go, I have realised is too much. I have completely missed out the balance and have gone from one extreme to another, and it doesn't benefit me. This is what made me realise the importance of having some form of balance.

This is just one way of looking at it though.

I think your sponge example holds ground too. Which incidentally can again relate back to relaxation. There is a lot of debate as to what causes this 'phenomenom' (I wish I had a better word than that!) within relaxation and meditation. To many buddhists, t

[linjane]

Hi sickofit

I have suffered panic attacks for about five years and probably more than that, but didn't know what they were then. I am also seeing a counsellor now and what he wants to do is basically go over all of my life experiences to help with my anxiety at the present time. I am 38 now but have had quite a lot of stressful (if that is not too milder a word for them) things happen. Briefly, at 10 my dad and mom split up (due to and affair on my dads part)and I didn't see him again until I was 20 by which time he had throat cancer and died just after my 21st birthday, at 27 (while 6mths pregnant with my first child) my mom died, subsequently after that I lost my grandad three years later and my nan four months after my grandad and then had another baby, then I became pregnant again with my third child who died inside me when I was five months and I had to give birth to my little boy not to be able to ever take him home and then finally six months later my husband had an affair! According to my counsellor I have just 'got on' with everyday life and never dealt with any of my losses (he likened my husbands affair to what happened with my parents over 20 years ago, something I had never put together) and as you mentioned before, about a sponge eventually all of my emotions have to come out and mine mainly show themselves - apparently - with ectopic/missed heartbeats which are now and have been for the last three years since I lost my baby, my main sympton of anxiety.

I am having trouble understanding how my counsellor will ever help just by talking things over, and at the moment my greatest wish is I could stop worrying about everything and get on with my life and enjoy what I have got. My children are gorgeous and mean everything to me, but sometimes the anxiety makes you so irritable and you don't want to speak to anyone, but that means I am wasting precious years with my children whilst they are still young.

I hope I have made some sense and not gone on too much and I hope that by talking through our problems with counsellors etc.. we will eventually be able to change our thoughts and not be plagued by constant bad thoughts forever.

LISA How are you, sorry to hear you are feeling down still. Please feel free to e-mail me if you need to talk. How are your shingles are they getting better? Hope things at home have improved. Take care.

Linda.xx