Is anxiety an illness???????

[alisons1043]

What are your thoughts??? Is anxiety an illness. My belief that I am ill -(suffering from an illness called anxiety)scares me and therefore keeps the anxiety there!!! Is it just a thought pattern that has become engrained and become my own way of life or is it actually a mental disorder??? Is my brain different to that of a person who suffers no anxiety or has it just been trained in a negative way????

[NoPoet]

Hi, yes, anxiety can be seen as an illness if it starts to dominate your life. It has been described as "an illness of the thoughts". Any physical symptoms of anxiety are just another manifestation of the condition.

Nobody knows exactly why some people are more prone to anxiety than others. We're all different, so some people get it bad, others don't, that's just the way it works.

Anxiety is a mental health issue if it takes over your life but it is not classed as a mental illness in the same way as psychosis, for example.

The best way to defeat anxiety is to accept it. If you are ill with it, just accept that's how things are at the moment. Fighting it or hiding from it will drag things out and you'll only feel exhausted.

The truth about anxiety is far less terrifying than you would expect: it's a defence mechanism that is being triggered when there is no immediate threat, because part of us believes there is a threat. Because our body is stuck in this defensive mode and we can't switch it off properly, we see everything as threatening or terrifying, and when no monsters materialise to eat us, we eventually start to believe that the problem is within us.

When you feel anxious your mind will look everywhere for threats. When it finds none, but it still feels anxious, it assumes that there is something wrong with your environment or with you yourself. This can be where generalised anxiety disorder starts up. Your body doesn't know exactly what it's afraid of so it becomes scared of everything.

The most important thing to remember is that anxiety is basically harmless. It makes you feel dreadful, but with time and support, you can start to adapt. Anxiety tells you all kinds of terrible things like you're seriously ill, you're losing your mind, you're going to die.

This is all a load of crap. Recovery comes as you gradually accept this.

[chili2424]

^^ thanks for the post

[Fonril]

Yes, it is an illness of sorts. If you haven't read Dr Claire Weekes then you should, she explains it so incredibly well. She says that the bewilderment of thinking "Why is this happening? Why hasn't it gone away?" is part of the cycle that keeps you from recovering. It's maybe easier said than done but if you try to look at it as "Ok, I'm feeling anxious but it won't kill me and it will pass" then you stop yourself from going into the cycle of what she calls "Fear-Adrenalin-Fear" i.e. you're afraid or anxious, then you release adrenalin, then you feel afraid of the very feelings you're having and you get afraid again.

Many of us are struggling with anxiety at the moment but we will get to feel better with time.

Take care,
Fonril.

[alisons1043]

Hi, Thanks for the advice, I have just bought the Dr Claire weekes book so will have a read. I just feel like im fighting a losing battle and I am not the person I used to be before all this started. I have good spells with all positive thoughts and ability to block and stop the panic but then other days it seems uncrontrollable!!! Its so confusing. I have been keeping a diary for the last couple of months and am almost 100% sure that my hormones are to blame for the bad days and doomy thoughts im getting, as they always seem to fall mid cycle and the week before/after a period. I mentioned this to the doctor and even took the diary with me. I was very upset by the reaction I got, that it is nothing to do with a hormonal imbalance, here have another prescription for prozac!!!! She didnt even ask to see the diary!!! The more I research this the more convinced I am Eastrogen dominance is the cause of the anxiety!!! That mixed with my overactive mind is a nightmare!!! Does anyone else have any experience of hormonal related anxiety and if so have you had any luck with getting doctors to believe it and possibly refer you on to somebody that can actually help??:weep:

[NoPoet]

Hi - you are not the person you were before, but don't be afraid. As time goes by we become more experienced and we start to see the world differently. It's just character growth. It's how we become better people. :)

[Louise2009]

Hiya,

I absolutely believe that PMT can make anxiety worse - there's been times when just before my period my anxiety seemed to go back to square one. I think your Doctor is wrong there. I think that if there is a slight unbalance there anyway and then add PMT onto it, it really makes it worse. My Doctor said the opposite to yours. He also suggested going on the mini-pill to take away pmt to see if that helps. (I've not tried that yet).

I also do think that anxiety is an illness. When I look back to lthis time last year when I first got ill, I realise now that I was sooooooo ill. I could not function normally atall. It was definately a chemical imbalance going wrong/too much adrenelin etc and it was definately as Claire Weekes says in her books about being oversensitised. I could not cope with any form of stress or responsibility.

I hope things go well for you!
Louise x

[hugs]

Just wanted to say that I'm exactly the same, I'm no longer fearing my original fears (brain tumours etc) but just fearing the anxiety itself and how it might be killing me in the long run and that it might stop me from being able to have any more children in the future.

I am not the same person I used to be 17 months ago, not at all. I look at pictures of myself before this all happened and although I have so much happiness in my life now (like my little boy) I feel so sad that I'm not that same person in the photo smiling and not caring, symptom free!!!!

xxx