trooper
08-08-10, 14:35
This is a bit of a confession of a anxious hermit. I just joined but I have been reading the threads for a few weeks, so I thought it was time to introduce myself and explain my current situation. I'll try to read through some of yours and add my thoughts.
BACKGROUND
I am in my early 30’s and have experienced anxiety in varying levels of medium to severe since my early childhood really, but particularly bad since I was in my mid to late teens.
I have taken medication a few times before but have ultimately not got on with that. I have tried counseling, reading self help books, studying depression/anxiety, NLP, hypnosis, and seeing a psychologist. None really had any impact and I still came back to the same point.
My anxiety levels have always been at a level that doctors consider severe, although I have had them for so long I have learnt to just tolerate them. Its always impacted in my ability to form relationships properly, although I have had friends and girlfriends, there has always been turmoil and disagreements with some people. Which obviously fuels the whole situation in somewhat of a negative feedback loop.
My social circles and even work circles have always involved quite a lot of drinking, for someone with anxiety its very easy to slip into using drink as a way to try and put out the raging fires that social situations can create, which is ultimately not very healthy. Not just physically and emotionally but again, drinking would often bring out hostility in my character which also created more negativity and reasons to feel down.
CURRET SITUATION
I have been seeing a psychotherapist now for a year, I can’t explain the methodology of psychotherapy, its slow and long term, but it has shifted an awful lot .
I have had these conditions since I was a teenager, it does cause a lot of sadness, a sense of loss of all the things that I have missed out on having a normal life over the young years of my life, in fact all the key stages. Teenage years, 20’s and now 30’s have all been marred with a sense of impending doom or deep sadness. And rightly you need to come to terms with that loss and grieve for it.
I have always had it in my mind there is a way to heal myself without drugs, but I guess one of the things which has become clear is that it is very hard to deal with a stressful job, every day life, intense therapy and intense anxiety so I have taken the advice of my therapist and started taking SSRI’s again in the form of Citalopram.
I got my own place to live because I really needed the space and privacy to deal with therapy, it brings up a lot of emotions often times without any real explanation and its important to let theose emotions have their place and that was something I wanted to deal with alone.
HERMITING
After 7 months of living alone, I am increasingly spending time on my own and not evening leaving the house at the weekend. I live in a capital city surrounded by millions of people yet I don’t really leave my house.
When you stop going out and keep saying no to people, soon enough people stop asking and I am starting to feel quite isolated.
I am only on week three of Citalopram so to a certain degree it’s a good thing, I don’t want to put myself under any pressure to be social when I don’t want to be.
One of the reasons is that as I mentioned nearly everyone I know it seems, wants to go and drink or worse, clubbing etc and I really can’t do that any more. It doesn’t agree with me physically and it really makes me depressed. And I find it difficult to fit in with those people and not drink, dealing with social pressure and having to explain why all the time.
In addition I find socializing quite stressful, I have a generalized sense of fear and pending rejection, which in the past I have blocked out by drinking. I normally find myself feeling very awkward and then nearly always tried before the evening is even got started and wanting to go home.
It’s a tough city to meet new people and particularly if you’re not feeling massively confident and in all the 15 years I have lived here, I have never really met people that don’t have a ‘party’ life style.
Has anyone else found themselves in this position?
How do you form a social life that is supporting and alcohol free? :)
BACKGROUND
I am in my early 30’s and have experienced anxiety in varying levels of medium to severe since my early childhood really, but particularly bad since I was in my mid to late teens.
I have taken medication a few times before but have ultimately not got on with that. I have tried counseling, reading self help books, studying depression/anxiety, NLP, hypnosis, and seeing a psychologist. None really had any impact and I still came back to the same point.
My anxiety levels have always been at a level that doctors consider severe, although I have had them for so long I have learnt to just tolerate them. Its always impacted in my ability to form relationships properly, although I have had friends and girlfriends, there has always been turmoil and disagreements with some people. Which obviously fuels the whole situation in somewhat of a negative feedback loop.
My social circles and even work circles have always involved quite a lot of drinking, for someone with anxiety its very easy to slip into using drink as a way to try and put out the raging fires that social situations can create, which is ultimately not very healthy. Not just physically and emotionally but again, drinking would often bring out hostility in my character which also created more negativity and reasons to feel down.
CURRET SITUATION
I have been seeing a psychotherapist now for a year, I can’t explain the methodology of psychotherapy, its slow and long term, but it has shifted an awful lot .
I have had these conditions since I was a teenager, it does cause a lot of sadness, a sense of loss of all the things that I have missed out on having a normal life over the young years of my life, in fact all the key stages. Teenage years, 20’s and now 30’s have all been marred with a sense of impending doom or deep sadness. And rightly you need to come to terms with that loss and grieve for it.
I have always had it in my mind there is a way to heal myself without drugs, but I guess one of the things which has become clear is that it is very hard to deal with a stressful job, every day life, intense therapy and intense anxiety so I have taken the advice of my therapist and started taking SSRI’s again in the form of Citalopram.
I got my own place to live because I really needed the space and privacy to deal with therapy, it brings up a lot of emotions often times without any real explanation and its important to let theose emotions have their place and that was something I wanted to deal with alone.
HERMITING
After 7 months of living alone, I am increasingly spending time on my own and not evening leaving the house at the weekend. I live in a capital city surrounded by millions of people yet I don’t really leave my house.
When you stop going out and keep saying no to people, soon enough people stop asking and I am starting to feel quite isolated.
I am only on week three of Citalopram so to a certain degree it’s a good thing, I don’t want to put myself under any pressure to be social when I don’t want to be.
One of the reasons is that as I mentioned nearly everyone I know it seems, wants to go and drink or worse, clubbing etc and I really can’t do that any more. It doesn’t agree with me physically and it really makes me depressed. And I find it difficult to fit in with those people and not drink, dealing with social pressure and having to explain why all the time.
In addition I find socializing quite stressful, I have a generalized sense of fear and pending rejection, which in the past I have blocked out by drinking. I normally find myself feeling very awkward and then nearly always tried before the evening is even got started and wanting to go home.
It’s a tough city to meet new people and particularly if you’re not feeling massively confident and in all the 15 years I have lived here, I have never really met people that don’t have a ‘party’ life style.
Has anyone else found themselves in this position?
How do you form a social life that is supporting and alcohol free? :)