AstralBeing
17-09-15, 22:23
(sorry for the length, did not set out to write this much :ohmy: )
Hi folks,
I have lurked these forums for some days now, reading the stories and experiences of everyone has been of great help in calming down during the serie of bad anxiety attacks I've been having lately.
Bit about myself, I'm originally from France though I have moved to the UK 4 years ago and had lived in Canada for 5 years before that. I'm 29 years old guy and work in IT. I suffer from chronic depression and anxiety (sadly one kinda goes with the other), I was in pretty poor health as a kid, had multiple mastoidectomy (they cut the ear so that they can "open" it to access to behind the eardrum) to remove parts of my internal left ear and replace my eardrum between the age of 7 and 14, I was heavily medicated (cortisone in pills and injections, I hated it, and various others I don't recall). Adults watched me constantly reminding me to be careful, to cover my ears, worrying when I had a flu, when I'd go in the water, making me stop sailing for fear of potential damage to my ear... (I'll be clear that I do not blame my family for behaving that way, they were genuinely worried about my health) I could probably write a novel about it, but I'll avoid boring you guys/gals from day 1 :p
On the more "positive" side for 3 years now I have been fighting to take charge of my life so I can enjoy it rather than being miserable on most days.
As with most things it has been a roller coaster ride, I started with CBT and Zoloft during the course of 2012, it had some impact but the side effects made my anxiety a lot worse for a while with some very severe attacks, including one at work where a colleague found me in the stairs in the middle of a full meltdown, though she was really helpful. I continued taking the meds for a year along with weekly sessions and felt the improvement, I started a mindfulness course as well which provided some relief and a different perspective that was welcome.
By mid 2014 I felt pretty good and decided to move forward and start a company with a friend. 6 months in and the realisation that we were failing started to overwhelm me very heavily as this was what I always wanted, starting my own company. In May this year we called it and stopped operations, I felt worthless, a fraud, constantly beating myself up for not being where I should be, or at least where I thought I should be.
Since then I've taken a full time job, it's fine, but the feeling of failure and being completely lost have been growing fast, I want to crawl somewhere to never come out.
My mood and anxiety took a turn for the worse in July, it might sound silly, I'm a massive F1 fan and have been watching it since I was 10 years old, fellow Frenchman and F1 driver Jules Bianchi passed away at the age of 27 then after a brutal accident sent him in a coma 9 months earlier. It affected me very deeply as I had been following his career since he was a teenager and supported him strongly. The day I learned the news is probably one of the worse of the recent years, did not eat, was in constant sweat, panicking, totally disconnected from reality for most of it. I stayed foggy and very distant for a good month after that, littered with attacks...
Since then it's been an endless pit of anxiety, worrying about every little thing, constantly feeling like it's all about to end abruptly (as it did for Jules :( ), driving me into long episodes of shaking, roller coaster heartbeat (today I went from 85 to 125 back down to 75 in the space of 5min...), sweats, tingling, numbness, depersonalisation, and lasting very long most of the time, if not building up slowly throughout the day at work only to explode as soon as I step in my flat...
That brings us to today where it happened again, felt it boiling toward the end of the day at the office, only to be sent in panic in the tube as the tingling in my hand was getting too intense and I broke into a sweat... I made it back home, only to step out almost immediately as staying still inside made me feel insane. I walked around the block for a good 2h, with some scary moments where I felt lost and just wanted to lay on the sidewalk and cry.
Almost 4h after it kicked off now, I still feel "off" but better, I guess writing this helped distracting me enough to calm down...
So that was my introduction. That was a lot more than I intended and I apologise for that.
Thanks for taking the time to read :)
Hi folks,
I have lurked these forums for some days now, reading the stories and experiences of everyone has been of great help in calming down during the serie of bad anxiety attacks I've been having lately.
Bit about myself, I'm originally from France though I have moved to the UK 4 years ago and had lived in Canada for 5 years before that. I'm 29 years old guy and work in IT. I suffer from chronic depression and anxiety (sadly one kinda goes with the other), I was in pretty poor health as a kid, had multiple mastoidectomy (they cut the ear so that they can "open" it to access to behind the eardrum) to remove parts of my internal left ear and replace my eardrum between the age of 7 and 14, I was heavily medicated (cortisone in pills and injections, I hated it, and various others I don't recall). Adults watched me constantly reminding me to be careful, to cover my ears, worrying when I had a flu, when I'd go in the water, making me stop sailing for fear of potential damage to my ear... (I'll be clear that I do not blame my family for behaving that way, they were genuinely worried about my health) I could probably write a novel about it, but I'll avoid boring you guys/gals from day 1 :p
On the more "positive" side for 3 years now I have been fighting to take charge of my life so I can enjoy it rather than being miserable on most days.
As with most things it has been a roller coaster ride, I started with CBT and Zoloft during the course of 2012, it had some impact but the side effects made my anxiety a lot worse for a while with some very severe attacks, including one at work where a colleague found me in the stairs in the middle of a full meltdown, though she was really helpful. I continued taking the meds for a year along with weekly sessions and felt the improvement, I started a mindfulness course as well which provided some relief and a different perspective that was welcome.
By mid 2014 I felt pretty good and decided to move forward and start a company with a friend. 6 months in and the realisation that we were failing started to overwhelm me very heavily as this was what I always wanted, starting my own company. In May this year we called it and stopped operations, I felt worthless, a fraud, constantly beating myself up for not being where I should be, or at least where I thought I should be.
Since then I've taken a full time job, it's fine, but the feeling of failure and being completely lost have been growing fast, I want to crawl somewhere to never come out.
My mood and anxiety took a turn for the worse in July, it might sound silly, I'm a massive F1 fan and have been watching it since I was 10 years old, fellow Frenchman and F1 driver Jules Bianchi passed away at the age of 27 then after a brutal accident sent him in a coma 9 months earlier. It affected me very deeply as I had been following his career since he was a teenager and supported him strongly. The day I learned the news is probably one of the worse of the recent years, did not eat, was in constant sweat, panicking, totally disconnected from reality for most of it. I stayed foggy and very distant for a good month after that, littered with attacks...
Since then it's been an endless pit of anxiety, worrying about every little thing, constantly feeling like it's all about to end abruptly (as it did for Jules :( ), driving me into long episodes of shaking, roller coaster heartbeat (today I went from 85 to 125 back down to 75 in the space of 5min...), sweats, tingling, numbness, depersonalisation, and lasting very long most of the time, if not building up slowly throughout the day at work only to explode as soon as I step in my flat...
That brings us to today where it happened again, felt it boiling toward the end of the day at the office, only to be sent in panic in the tube as the tingling in my hand was getting too intense and I broke into a sweat... I made it back home, only to step out almost immediately as staying still inside made me feel insane. I walked around the block for a good 2h, with some scary moments where I felt lost and just wanted to lay on the sidewalk and cry.
Almost 4h after it kicked off now, I still feel "off" but better, I guess writing this helped distracting me enough to calm down...
So that was my introduction. That was a lot more than I intended and I apologise for that.
Thanks for taking the time to read :)