Anxiety high - need advice

[Andy1718]

Hi guys.
So I am on week 6 of cit (10mg for two weeks and 20mg for 4 weeks). No side effects at the moment apart from being tired and out of routine. Feeling fine in the day as exercising and keeping myself busy.
However, as many of you know I am off work with work related stress and anxiety - workload, fear of meetings, fear of failure and performance that has now seemed to have escalated to fear of actually going into work and teaching.
My anxiety is heightened by thinking about work! I cannot stop those thoughts, i cannot control the high anxiety, adrenaline the fear of returning or never going back. Its crippling me! I desperately want to get back to work and back into a routine like my old self but do not feel like my mind and body is ready. I see my GP tomorrow so will ask for advice. I feel guilty not being at work and have only 4 weeks before the summer break for me to try and get myself in there. I am worried that if I spend the whole summer having not returned before hand I will never return.
Will these thoughts, fears, physical anxiety ever go? I am a great teacher but feel like my career and life is slipping out of my hands. I am doing CBT but its just making me think even more!
I know people say "just feel the fear and do it anyway" - I seriously want to punch that person. I am intelligent and I know what you are saying but my anxiety is so ingrained that I cannot cope by even getting myself there!
I have propanolol to take away the physical aspects of the anxiety but not sure if i should just mask it?
Oh what to do?

[Debs21uk]

Hi Andy,

I can relate to this as I am off work with depression and anxiety due to stress at work. My stress is due to people and for over 4 years I've held a temporary job that I never know if I have a job after 2/3 months, there's a review of the business and it's a toxic environment. I'm shocked I didn't see this coming as I've had a really stressful start to the year. I saw occupational health who have recommended I go back to work in 4 weeks but that deadline alone terrifies me

You're citalopram may not have fully worked yet or you may need an increased dose. I usually am on 20mg but if I have a blip I usually have to up my dose. At the moment I have gradually increased to 40mg so I'm still waiting for the increase to kick in. I didn't feel any benefit until the 8 week mark but I still wasn't great so I had to slowly increase due to side effects.

I think you are doing the best thing with the cbt as it is the thoughts that keep our anxiety churning. I haven't started cbt yet as I am seeing a counsellor and feel it may be too much at the one time. I have a long history with anxiety and depression but it's only now I'm trying to address the issues underneath. I have the exact same thoughts about cbt making me think more and maybe having in my consciousness will be more disturbing.

I really hope it all starts coming together for you, but remember you're not alone x

[Mojo61]

Hi Andy. Sounds like you are starting to get there, but I still don't think you are ready to go back to work as just thinking about it sets your anxiety off again which isn't good.

Why don't you agree that you aren't going to set yourself any time limits to return to work, you will go back when you are recovered - whenever that may be? Perhaps by thinking to yourself that you just HAVE to be ready to go back in "X" amount of weeks you are just putting yourself under more stress, and in effect throwing gasoline on the fire of anxiety?

I was like you, but the situation was different. I had a holiday booked for May of this year and when I became unwell in November I thought I was bound to be better by May, after all it was 6 months away and I couldn't possibly be ill for that length of time...... Wrong!!! I knew I had to pay the balance 12 weeks before departure so when February came around and they wanted their money I was in such a dilemma: should I pay in the hope I would be recovered by then, but if I wasn't then I would lose all my money? Or should I cancel and give in the the irrational anxiety thoughts which told me no way would I be able to cope? Well I cancelled it in the end and I'm glad I did because when May finally arrived I was still bad and I definitely couldn't have gone away like that.

So we rebooked for October, I thought October is 8 months away, surely I will be better by then? Now we are coming up to July and I'm getting a bit stressed already because things aren't improving as much as I would like and now I'm thinking am I going to be better by October?!!!

Can you see what I mean? We set ourselves targets and then get stressed and anxious about meeting those targets. How can we hope to get better under those circumstances?

[pollynewsome]

I was off work last year for 8 weeks with anxiety. Was terrified at the thought of going back but like you desperately wanted to go back. I had associated my anxiety with work and was scared that going back would make it worse but actually getting back was the best thing I did. I did it gradually small steps but so glad I did because now I am back at work I don't have time to think of my anxiety and almost don't look forward to coming home unless I know I have something to occupy my mind with. I and almost 12 week on citolapram and only really now have more better days than bad days. I work in a school and the support is so wonderful. I went in 3 weeks before we broke up for summer at 2 hours a day increasing each week. Till eventually last week full hours. Then when we broke for summer I enjoyed knowing that I had faced my fear and I was ok. Hope you can decide what to do with help from doc. X