Chicken or the egg?

[guitarpants]

When this all first started about two and a half months ago I started having panic attacks at night and symptoms of general anxiety for seemingly no reason at all. I didn't even know they were panic or anxiety at all, but thought a medical condition. The heart palpitations came a few days a later and left as fast as they came. I felt fine again at that point.

AND THEN one day in the afternoon I started having tightness/pressure/fullness in my head with dizziness/lightheadedness, loss of balance, weakness, ringing in ears which has not gone away in over two months now (for no apparent reason). And that caused my anxiety and fears to spiral out of control. I don't see any way I can recover anymore.

It seems the physical symptoms are the only thing I'm consciously aware of that are causing anxiety since I'm fearful they may be a medical problem.

So did my subconscious anxiety cause the physical symptoms or did the physical symptoms cause my anxiety? Or are they two separate occurrences? Or is this a feedback loop that cannot be escaped?

I feel this has been so prolonged now that there is no way I'm going to be able to return to normal.

[chickpea]

You sound like you are suffering from classic symptoms of anxiety...which in turn have made you frightened of the physical symptoms...which in turn makes you more anxious - and so on.

It's called the anxiety-fear-anxiety cycle, and in each phase of it, more adrenaline is released which makes you even more frightened etc.

Read Dr Claire Weekes' book, "self help for your nerves". It explains how simply anxiety and nervous breakdown starts, and gives a guide to recovery.
The main thing to do is break the cycle. When you feel the syptoms coming on, embrace them - fighting them will only increase adrenaline production and worsen the symptoms.
Realise that anxiety won't harm you, you wont die, it wont physically damage you in any way, even though it feels horrible.
Accept it and it will start to die down.

Try to practise deep breathing, from the diaphragm - in through the nose, out through the mouth.

Face.
Accept.
Float through the anxiety - don't fight it.

You WILL get better.:bighug1:

[guitarpants]

It's hard to not be fearful, y'know? I do realize the few days this month that I felt close to normal was when I stopped allowing myself to worry about it, and stopped researching and looking for answers and went outside and did some other things. Every so often it comes back pretty bad and it makes me scared again. Having no understanding from medical professionals makes it far worse.

Thank you though, a few people have suggested that book, I'll take a look. What I try to tell myself is that it's been over two months now. If it was serious I'd either be dead by now or have much more serious problems, I wouldn't be able to function at all. Tricking yourself is the hardest thing to do. I absolutely will not take antidepressants either. I am strongly against them, do not believe in them and feel they are overprescribed.

[Bill]

Ask yourself this....

What was happening in your life up to 2 and a half months ago? The answer to your symptoms more than likely lies in what was going on in your life up until that time. Was there anything around that time that was causing you worry, upset or too much stress?

As chickpea says, once the symptoms surfaced, you then started worrying about them causing you to feel even more stressed which then acts as fuel to keep the fires of anxiety burning.

Keep reminding yourself these symptoms are Normal and simply caused by adrenalin that is being produced by too much stress and worry. Also identify the actual causes and develop a plan to ease these underlying stresses that originally caused your symptoms to surface. Once you do that, you'll feel Much better!:winks:

[guitarpants]

Bill,

It's pretty easy to see how this was caused. I had a rough year and past few months in particular, lots of tough life changes, worries and stresses.

I guess what I don't really understand is this all started when things improved. Over the summer I took steps to address all those things, got it sorted out, then that's when the debilitating anxiety and physical stuff started, when things were better. I don't get it.

[Bill]

What often happens is that when we feel under extreme pressure, we don't have time to stop and "think" about how stressed we're feeling because our minds are too busy thinking about how to cope with everything.

However, because we're so stressed, my guess is that the stress is making the body create adrenalin as a natural reaction to help us cope with the pressure.

If the stress was being caused by the sight of a lion, we would be using the adrenalin to help us run or fight but in the modern day, when the adrenalin is being caused by too much stress in our daily issues, we have no opportunity to burn off the adrenalin.

Therefore, when the pressure is off, my guess is that the adrenalin is still there within us but now that we no longer have to think about coping with the issues causing the stress, we become aware of the effects the stress has caused- the effects of the adrenalin that has been produced that now has nowhere to go.

It takes a while for the levels to go back to normal but meanwhile the feelings the adrenalin causes makes us worry because it makes us think we're ill.

In a way, I guess you could compare it with suffering a panic. You go out one day feeling fine but without realising it you're under alot of pressure because you feel rushed to fit everything in that day. You go into a shop and suddenly feel panicky. This panicky feeling occurs because the stress we don't realise we're feeling produces adrenalin to prepare us to fight or run. However, when we're in a shop we feel we can't run anywhere so we feel trapped. When we then get home we feel exhausted and shaky but don't understand why when we felt fine when we first went out.

In your case and in the example of going to the shop, in both cases you feel fine but unaware of the stress you're feeling until after the pressure is off. In a way, a backlash or reaction to the stress we've been experiencing without realising it caused by perhaps adrenalin that our body has been producing to enable us to cope during the stressful period which we suddenly become aware of, i.e. palps, after the event because our minds then have too much time to "think" about how we're feeling rather than all the things we were trying to cope with. (Sorry, I'm overtired so I hope I've worded that ok!)

Hope that makes some sense.:shrug: