Gareth
20-05-05, 10:05
Hi,
I've only just found this site and it seems a really great resource - I've been reading through the posts and a lot of the problems sound familiar, but what is amazing is the infinite variety of this whole anxiety thing. It gets us in lots of different ways doesn't it! I feel for you all and welcome the fact that I certainly am not alone!
Well my story is that I'm a 30-year old guy living in South London, working in IT as IT Support / web designer. I started suffering extreme anxiety about 10 weeks ago - it just arrived one morning out of the blue. It manifests itself as just a general feeling of anxiety/nervousness/fear/dread/unrest/unease - kind of like an obsessive thought in my head all the time. It rises and falls in intensity throughout the day but is always there. I have had some depression but really that only comes when I get so sick of the anxiety that I get to feeling down.
My physical symptoms are all based in my head - my brain gets numb and kind of "buzzes", I have a band of pressure around my head, and sometimes (at the worst times) feel like something is pushing hard down onto a specific point of my brain. I of course have interpreted all this as some kind of horrible brain disease or something! I am usually able to get a grip on thoughts like that but they do come and get me pretty scared. I have been very concerned about what I have done myself to bring this on, but try not to think about the causes too much but try to think of the present and the future as much as possible.
As far as "causes" go, I have put it down to a combination of nature and nurture. Both my parents have suffered from mile anxiety and depression. They were divorced when I was 13 and I went through a bad time living with my Mum while she had nervous breakdowns. I have always been a "worrier" with negative self-talk and a tendency to catastrophise situations and think the worst. I have had a few panic attacks in the past but all very very manageable. Nothing like what has happened to me recently. I have had two very stressful years recently, with a very stressful house move (we had to leave our flat because of noisy neighbours on all sides), and also the organisation of a very stressful wedding (where both my and my wife's estranged parents were together in the same room again for the first time in 15 years!) It was an emotional time and I think brought back a lot of bad memories for me. I will be working through this in psychotherapy.
The worst part of the anxiety symptoms is that they have not left me even for a second since it started, and also that it affects my sleep quite badly. I usually wake up a few times in the night, and have not slept beyond 5am since it started. The worst time is in the morning, when I wake up two hours before I need to get up and I am exhausted and the anxiety runs riot at this time. But it is always there, like a filter through which I see the world - it is constantly the first thought in my head, and that is the worst part.
I am lucky in one respect, in that it has not affected me in terms of the things that I do. I am not afraid of going out, or of doing anything, and I have managed to keep working (am lucky that I have quite a secure job in which I don't have to work very hard). I don't enjoy my work though and this is a problem as I get down about coming into work and mornings are the worst time - I sometimes think if I did enjoy my work I would feel much much better. But as I said, I'm not worked that hard, so work itself is easy to cope with.
It has put a restriction on my social life, as this was pretty much based around alcohol for the past 13 years or so! But I find boozing makes me feel worse in the morning (although it does provide some relief when I drink it, it's not really worth what it does the next day...) So I am finding new ways to socialise and spend my leisure time.
I am also very lucky that I have a loving and understanding wife, who has also been through some mental health problems herself. But she is finding it hard herself as our lives have changed qu
I've only just found this site and it seems a really great resource - I've been reading through the posts and a lot of the problems sound familiar, but what is amazing is the infinite variety of this whole anxiety thing. It gets us in lots of different ways doesn't it! I feel for you all and welcome the fact that I certainly am not alone!
Well my story is that I'm a 30-year old guy living in South London, working in IT as IT Support / web designer. I started suffering extreme anxiety about 10 weeks ago - it just arrived one morning out of the blue. It manifests itself as just a general feeling of anxiety/nervousness/fear/dread/unrest/unease - kind of like an obsessive thought in my head all the time. It rises and falls in intensity throughout the day but is always there. I have had some depression but really that only comes when I get so sick of the anxiety that I get to feeling down.
My physical symptoms are all based in my head - my brain gets numb and kind of "buzzes", I have a band of pressure around my head, and sometimes (at the worst times) feel like something is pushing hard down onto a specific point of my brain. I of course have interpreted all this as some kind of horrible brain disease or something! I am usually able to get a grip on thoughts like that but they do come and get me pretty scared. I have been very concerned about what I have done myself to bring this on, but try not to think about the causes too much but try to think of the present and the future as much as possible.
As far as "causes" go, I have put it down to a combination of nature and nurture. Both my parents have suffered from mile anxiety and depression. They were divorced when I was 13 and I went through a bad time living with my Mum while she had nervous breakdowns. I have always been a "worrier" with negative self-talk and a tendency to catastrophise situations and think the worst. I have had a few panic attacks in the past but all very very manageable. Nothing like what has happened to me recently. I have had two very stressful years recently, with a very stressful house move (we had to leave our flat because of noisy neighbours on all sides), and also the organisation of a very stressful wedding (where both my and my wife's estranged parents were together in the same room again for the first time in 15 years!) It was an emotional time and I think brought back a lot of bad memories for me. I will be working through this in psychotherapy.
The worst part of the anxiety symptoms is that they have not left me even for a second since it started, and also that it affects my sleep quite badly. I usually wake up a few times in the night, and have not slept beyond 5am since it started. The worst time is in the morning, when I wake up two hours before I need to get up and I am exhausted and the anxiety runs riot at this time. But it is always there, like a filter through which I see the world - it is constantly the first thought in my head, and that is the worst part.
I am lucky in one respect, in that it has not affected me in terms of the things that I do. I am not afraid of going out, or of doing anything, and I have managed to keep working (am lucky that I have quite a secure job in which I don't have to work very hard). I don't enjoy my work though and this is a problem as I get down about coming into work and mornings are the worst time - I sometimes think if I did enjoy my work I would feel much much better. But as I said, I'm not worked that hard, so work itself is easy to cope with.
It has put a restriction on my social life, as this was pretty much based around alcohol for the past 13 years or so! But I find boozing makes me feel worse in the morning (although it does provide some relief when I drink it, it's not really worth what it does the next day...) So I am finding new ways to socialise and spend my leisure time.
I am also very lucky that I have a loving and understanding wife, who has also been through some mental health problems herself. But she is finding it hard herself as our lives have changed qu