My first post regarding my anxiety.

[WhatisTruth]

Hi,

I'm new on this site and looking for some help to deal with anxiety.
I'm a 25 year old boy suffering from various psychological disorders like anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), agoraphobia and lot others.
I'm dealing with all these since last 5 years. But from since last one year, the condition has become much worse.
The frequency of anxiety/panic attacks has been increased a lot.
I'm constantly getting intrusive thoughts in my head which are causing anxiety. Sometimes, my head is flooded with so many anxious thoughts that I think I'm going to die.
These thoughts cause much severe headache which drives me crazy..
Anxiety also has affected my physical body - the left side of my body (both hand and leg) have become weaker that the right side.
Sometimes I think I'll have a heart attack or stroke because of anxiety.
Is there anyone having similar symptoms?

Thanks.

[viking111]

I guess OCD might be causing this. In fact, I sometimes experience similar things.
Thoughts come at me and make me really anxious. Some times before I even had panic attacks, but now I have learned not to panic so much.
You said you have had this last 5 years, maybe it is the OCD and that makes you anxious. You should stop performing compulsions at all. At first it might be hard, but believe me, at first it is easy. If you keep doing compulsions, you will go into a deeper state of anxiety and it will become gradually harder to get out.

[TomT]

Hello WhatisTruth, welcome to the forum.

Yes this are typical symptoms of a person dealing with lots of stress, headache, stiff neck, back pain, etc. Regarding feeling the left part weaker than the right part, that might be just your brain trying to find a symptom and somatize symptoms of things you find scary, like a heart attack.

Don't worry no one with anxiety has ever had a heart attack induced by anxiety or went insane.

Are you in therapy? CBT is a great way to deal to anxiety but other forms of therapy are also helpful. I recently made a post about an app for deep breathing and mediation techniques which have been really helpful for me and for some users.

Remember intrusive thoughts fade away when you get better at relaxing, find some outdoors activities, exercise is a good way to calm down. My main advice is you are not your thoughts or fears. Do not pay attention to them, do not engage them let them flow through you, engaging just validates the thought and fuels it. Every thought an anxious person had a normal person had it too, difference is we pay them attention and worry why we had them, instead of letting them go.

I will write down the quote that has helped me overcome most things related to anxiety:

"Let your thoughts come and go, but never server them tea"


Tom

[WhatisTruth]

Hello TomT,

Many thanks for your response. That was really helpful. :)
I just think that our brain just wants answers to its questions... nothing more than that.
We know these questions are for the benefit or survival of the individual and we've all inherited these brain properties as a part of evolution.

But the problem comes when these questions make absolutely no sense.
This happens when there is some "wiring" problem in the brain (such as in case of OCD).

The ironic thing is - although we know the source of these weird and undesirable thoughts, it is still very difficult to control them.

Now, my current problem is - since the left part of my body is getting weaker day by day, I really freak out imagining that some day, I will become a disabled person. It really creeps me out.
Now a days, I have anxiety all the time. While walking as well, I can feel the left part of m body weaker..