oh my GAD...

[grace.M]

well i really hoped i wouldn't be this bad again, i just had another teary episode this evening.. getting upset about my anxiety and how its affecting my life at the moment.. it washes over me and i feel like i can't shift it... I got really anxious this evening so i tried to sleep it off like i often do because i just don't know what else to do... it does make me quite tired anyway, i woke up feeling numb and just feeling like i couldn't do anything and as i was starting into space my eyesight went really weird ( i know it would anyway) and i panicked again..it seems I'm incapable of a full blown panic attack, at worst lately I've had a few days of just constant anxiety but it dosent build up to a panic attack like it used to... now i just end up getting very teary and the anxiety dosen't go down very much

i know i mainly got upset because all over christmas i was on a horrible low. and i got really scared id end up back like i was... my anxiety has been affecting my uni too and I've been missing a lot, i have a presentation tomorrow that i really don't want to go to and i feel like its my fault because I've been putting off doing the work. i really think even though I've been like this i still don't want to admit to my uni I've been suffering like this.. i just wish i could go ahead and get my work done as easily as i did in the first year.. funnily enough then i was only having a lot of panic attacks in the evening and no anxiety in the day.. i suppose it just built up, at this point I'm just not sure what to do :(

[NoPoet]

On a slightly unrelated note, this thread wins "Best Thread Title 2013".

It seems to me like there are a couple of different things going off.

First you've got a sense of helplessness, which is why you want to stay in bed - you feel like you "don't know what to do" and "can't do anything". While this is the anxiety talking, and it's only natural to want to curl up and hide when you sense that you're under threat, these thoughts are coming from a series of unhelpful and distressing beliefs you have about yourself. You believe that you can't cope and that your efforts are always futile. Basically, you believe that you are powerless, or helpless, in the face of fate or your illness.

You can learn to change your beliefs once you know what they are. It's strange and alien to change your innermost thoughts and it can cause you to feel even more unreal, but this is only because you're seeing yourself with new eyes. You need to empower yourself by thinking about yourself in a positive, strong light: "I CAN do this. This is MY task. I am strong. I have taken ownership. I've been through this a million times before so I known I CAN succeed - I do it every day."

Secondly, you seem to react with fear to the physical sensations of anxiety. Physical symptoms persist in the background, so when you start relaxing and feeling better, you might notice your stomach quietly churning or you might feel de-realised, which reminds you that you're ill.

Maybe your reaction to the physical symptoms reflects a sense of health anxiety: "I can feel it so it must be real, it's real so it must be serious, it's serious so it's going to get me". So this reflects a seperate set of negative beliefs which are being activated and re-activated each time you have a blip.

Think of your brain as a pinball machine. Every time you have a negative thought, your negative belief systems light up and go wild. Your brain is designed to work like this to keep you alive. In your case, it's working when it doesn't need to, so all it's doing is activating a series of negative beliefs that affect your thoughts and therefore your behaviour. Your worrying causes you to keep on endlessly worrying. It's a constant loop which I used to call the Cycle of Worry.

[grace.M]

thank you very much for your reply :) and its helped a lot, I've been in a state of it getting worse with a few good days for a while and the 'helplessness' has really been there.. again thank you for your reassurance I'm trying to give myself a pep talk to get myself at least trying to think of a few positives..... my despair has probably come from a few people telling me its a problem now, my doctor recently told me its GAD and said 'you are the perfect candidate for CBT if ever there was one' but i haven't been able to get hold of the hospital to arrange it :/ its been a combination of health anxiety and a few childhood issues repeating into more recent times....

if you don't mind me asking, do you suffer with anxiety a lot? and do you have any top tips? on an unrelated note i really like how you decried the pinball machine, it really makes a lot of sense.. and its a nicer way of thinking about worry :) x