what do you think triggered your anxiety or made it much worse?

[hoppipolla]

I ticked parents/upbringing and world is scarey.
My brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was about eight years old and he was always violent, aggressive and unpredictable. I guess being in a home where there is violence or an aggressive atmosphere everyday just wore me down bit by bit and when I was 15 I had my first panic attack and at 16 had a nervous breaddown. I never felt 'safe' in my own home as a child and teenager becasue my parents let my brother walk all over them, my siblings and myself.

Also my father is a very, very anxious person by nature and I could even sense as a young child how nervous he was and I therefore never trusted him to be able to protect me. He always said things about how 'hard' life is and how there is no happiness to be had in this world, so when you grow up with a parent like this it does make you see the world as a threatening and dangerous place.

aww you seem like a sweet person eibhlin, i'm sorry you've had such a hard time it sounds worse than mine in many ways. my mum is so tense and non-stop and stressed but yeah it doesn't sound as bad as your bro or dad. my dad is also very stressed out and struggling at work.

it's not a nice feeling when you can't feel safety or stability in your surroundings at home when you end up on edge all the time :(

thanks for being in the poll... it's interesting how it's shaping up. i predicted that most people would have triggers but for a fair few it seems to be just part of the way their mind works. and i'm not the only one when it started at uni ._.

take care everyone

[Keep going]

Always had anxiety, but within the space of 6 month i'd, moved house, had a car crash, got a new job, my granma died, put under extreme stress and bullied in my new job. When my car had been fixed, it blew-up on me! and to top it off financial pressure from having to get a new car.

So you could say that might have triggered it.

stu

[hoppipolla]

Always had anxiety, but within the space of 6 month i'd, moved house, had a car crash, got a new job, my granma died, put under extreme stress and bullied in my new job. When my car had been fixed, it blew-up on me! and to top it off financial pressure from having to get a new car.

So you could say that might have triggered it.

stu

woah man, yeah when too much is put on your plate at one time it can tip the balance and push you over the edge. it's really not very nice i know how it feels. you will feel better in time though

[Shadowwin]

My Mother was a nurse with no bed side or child manner for that matter.. who worked in the emergency room at a local hosptial and was a drama queen. She practiced attachment parenting before it was "the in thing" sleeping in the same bed as me till I was 10 and the same room until I was 14 on a cot.. I wasn't allowed to eat apples unless she cut them, popcorn until I was much older she actually sent a letter to SCHOOL saying I couldn't have popcorn.. talk about embarrasing eh? She always had a doom and gloom story to tell .. complete with why I should NOT eat certain things (Candy was popular all those razor blades and pin stories from the 80's) or her reason for the popcorn and apples was because I could choke.. I should becareful because things were posionous and if it fell on the ground I should never eat it it could make me sick!

My other contributing factor.. Death the mere thought of dying terrifies me has since my Grandfather died when I was younger. I had gone up to see him in the hospital after school and he was sitting up eating spaghetti laughing and joking around with me I was 13 at the time I left the room for 2 mins to go to the ladies room came back and he didn't answer me when I said I was back.. needless to say I learned far to young how one mintue someone could be there and then gone.. later in my 20's my grandmother also passed away with me in the room.. started making me feel like the family Banshee after a while.

But I think what tipped my scales was getting stuck in a Blizzard here in NY in downtown Buffalo by myself in a bad neighboorhood and having the car go into a ditch.. That's when my attacks got really bad.. and when I started being afraid of being alone, driving anywhere alone, spending anytime alone..

[Lynnann]

I ticked a few responses to this poll, I think in my case it is a combined thing of several traumatic events, some things happened in my early childhood then my mother was an alcoholic who commited suicide when I was 9 after that I had a very strict, difficult and emotionally detached upbringing by my grandmother. The story just gets worse culminating in the condition I am now in. The final straw was over 2yrs ago but I know alcohol makes the pain ease but my symptoms worse.

Lynnann

[hoppipolla]

My Mother was a nurse with no bed side or child manner for that matter.. who worked in the emergency room at a local hosptial and was a drama queen. She practiced attachment parenting before it was "the in thing" sleeping in the same bed as me till I was 10 and the same room until I was 14 on a cot.. I wasn't allowed to eat apples unless she cut them, popcorn until I was much older she actually sent a letter to SCHOOL saying I couldn't have popcorn.. talk about embarrasing eh? She always had a doom and gloom story to tell .. complete with why I should NOT eat certain things (Candy was popular all those razor blades and pin stories from the 80's) or her reason for the popcorn and apples was because I could choke.. I should becareful because things were posionous and if it fell on the ground I should never eat it it could make me sick!

My other contributing factor.. Death the mere thought of dying terrifies me has since my Grandfather died when I was younger. I had gone up to see him in the hospital after school and he was sitting up eating spaghetti laughing and joking around with me I was 13 at the time I left the room for 2 mins to go to the ladies room came back and he didn't answer me when I said I was back.. needless to say I learned far to young how one mintue someone could be there and then gone.. later in my 20's my grandmother also passed away with me in the room.. started making me feel like the family Banshee after a while.

But I think what tipped my scales was getting stuck in a Blizzard here in NY in downtown Buffalo by myself in a bad neighboorhood and having the car go into a ditch.. That's when my attacks got really bad.. and when I started being afraid of being alone, driving anywhere alone, spending anytime alone..

woah you have had a TOUGH time! i'm so sorry to hear about all of that :(

same for you lynnann, i'm sorry it's been difficult ._.

it's like that line in Scrubs where Elliott says all this stuff that has happened in her life and it's like crazy and she's had this disturbing upbringing and Carla goes something like "it's amazing you're as normal as you are!" lol

upbringing makes a big difference though... i hope things get better for both of you! hang in there

[honeybee3939]

Hi

I ticked a "traumatic Event".

12 Years ago i was held at knife point by a armed robber, which brought on Agorophobia the feeling of been trapped and not in control.

Love

Andrea
xxxx

[Freaky Chick]

Well I'm a mixture of a lot of things.

First my friend got sick with a psychiatric disorder and tried killing herself several times, and my other friend got a boyfriend and i became like a hotel, just cleaning up after her, never seeing her etc. I turned 30, which didn't help, cos i'd planned to have lots of things achieved by then that were no-where in sight.

So i got a new job, to be closer to my friend to help her out, and to get some friends closer to where i lived. As i was working in central London over 11/2 hrs from home, doing shift work, so never any time really to make new friends. And my new jopb turned out to have a bullying and change resistent culture - and i was on almost permanent nights and weekends - all the shifts no-one else wanted to do. The last straw was when a senior was asked to teach me how to do a bit of her job as a training exercise - and she was so resistent she wouldn't help. And when i'd spent 30 hours on the task, she would change it to her own advantage and make me out to be to blame for the rest of the rubbish in it. No matter how i tried to get info out of her, she didn't help. And i basically got sick sorry and fed up of it - blew a gasket and got sick from there on in.

Now i'm agoraphobic and anxious. I can't even get to the town where i worked without panicking - let alone the building.

But i'm getting there i guess - slower than i would like - but getting htere - maybe i should join british rail!

Freaky chick

[bearcrazy]

Mine started when I got married and found real happiness. have always worried about losingit!!!!! Recurred when I had kids, when other significant events happened, now its constant!

[igrek]

Mine seemed to start after several bad experiences with drugs. I had only had half a tab off Ecstasy once, before trying a really strong one, in combination with some alcohol and a LOT of pot. I spent about 4 hours thinking my heart was going to explode, and that my brain was expanding and that it would be crushed against my skull. After that, I had some minor clouding of thought, then I began getting daily headaches. Everything else started after that, from heart palpitations to really bad left side neck pain, localized headaches, worries that my mind's voice had been lessened, worrying that I get music stuck in my head too easily, as well as thinking that I have an aneurysm in a particular spot since it's been the spot of most of my daily headaches...stupid decision.