Good morning all, I have been having a very bad time with my anxiety/panic ...I’m sorry for the length of this post I’m also not sure if it is supposed to be here or the panic attacks section?
My husband and I have recently moved house, and I could feel the anxiety building up again prior to the move. We have moved back to just outside my hometown after a decade away, to be closer to my family. I thought I would be happier once we had moved, but my anxiety has really hit me like a ton of bricks.
I first came to this forum many years ago, under a previous screen name, when I had started having totally out of the blue panic/anxiety attacks when I was driving. This is something that went away completely for a long time, but sadly seems to have started up again recently. The strange thing is it only happens on rural roads.. I am generally fine in busy areas. (it is because the original panic attack happened on a quiet road so I think I’ve obviously associated that link somewhere in my head!). my husband and I lived in a city for a long time however the recent house move has seen us move out to the countryside. When we lived in the built-up area, until the week before last, if I ever tried to drive out of the city I did feel a bit jittery but I was able to sort of forget those issues because I didn’t NEED to drive on country roads. (Okay - I was avoiding addressing the problem lol). but I stumbled along for years doing alright or so I though. I mean, when I say "alright" ... I am clearly deluding myself there because there was a lot I did avoid doing. Say I wanted to take the dog for a walk in a country park, absolutely no chance whatsoever because of the road that I needed to go on to get there. So I told myself that I would just take into the city parks out of convenience. yes, in hindsight it actually has affected my life more than I realised.
This current period of acute anxiety which I cannot seem to get out of, started towards the end of September when we travelled down here for our house move. I was a passenger in the car and was a total mess feeling extremely panicky on the motorway,. which was very scary. That was the 22nd of September and basically since then I have been in a very bad way mentally, very on edge and anxious the whole time. It has taken the shine off what should be an exciting period in our lives of buying a brand-new house which we absolutely love but I feel because of my current anxiety I cannot fully embrace everything.
We stayed at my parents for the night so we were in the area for the completion of our house purchase the following day.
When we got the phone call from solicitors to say that everything was done, we had it over here several miles out of town to our new house to collect the keys and that is when I realised the extent of my problems… I panicked as soon as we left town and hit the country roads. it was a very depressing feeling because I realised that I actually have just avoided addressing this problem all these years, and it is very much still present.
You may wonder why on earth we have purchased a house in the countryside if I have this issue, well at the point when we first started the process to move house which was back in March, I really genuinely did not think my driving issues were still present. at least not to this extent. I also feel that I cannot keep letting my anxiety dictate what I do anymore, we have moved here for a better quality of life than we had when we were living in a city suburb... I desperately want to be able to embrace all that life has to offer living here, and know that I’m finally able to do things with my family easily rather than it being a military operation to organise like it was all the years when I lived miles away. but now I’m scared I’m going to be stuck! my husband does not drive, so it is just me. However even if he did drive, I don’t want him ferrying me around, I want to address this problem and sort it. I need to be able to because living out here means that I have to drive to do pretty much anything.
Things have been so bad, my IBS has also been terrible for a couple of weeks now.
I had a phone call appointment yesterday with my new GP, the surgery seems to be really lovely.
She has given me a prescription for Propanolol, and Sertraline. I have also self referred to the local IAPT service, I have an initial phone call assessment appointment with them next week.
I cannot deny I am more than a little bit worried about the side-effects of the medication. I'm getting myself worked up about driving into the village to collect them from the dispensary! Which I feel is silly because it’s only about a mile and a half up the road.
It is crazy to think that if we had made a different choice of where to buy a house, and bought somewhere actually IN my hometown where my family are, I would not have this problem. I'd be happy driving around, doing all the things that I have wanted to do for so many years. But we could not have afforded to buy a house in that town and I would still have the problem, I would just be burying it and not dealing with it. So I suppose living in this rural area is finally making me address it.
I am hopeful that the IAPT referral... which I think it’s for CBT.. will help me.
Anyway I just want to say thank you to anybody who has read until the end, I’m not sure what I was hoping to achieve by posting this. I am going to go and collect my medication from the village
today and then I’m going to come back here and report when I have done it.
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