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Thread: Anxiety years after traumatic experience?

  1. #1

    Anxiety years after traumatic experience?

    I've had these problems with anxiety now for years. It saddens me to even say but I think it started after trying a drug once. Before that I never had anything even close to it, never felt anxiety other than what you would perhaps feel before a test in school, or last day of vacation etc.


    I was pretty late with starting to drink alcohol. I never had any interest in any drugs if they happened to show up at a party etc.
    But then one time after a few beers, seven years ago, all my friends were going to do some "magic mushrooms". I don't know what flew into me, but at that day I fell for the peer pressure both because of the alcohol I had drunk, but also because I just didn't see them as illegal drugs. I just knew they were picked close by and had been dried for a long time, other than that I had no knowledge about the drug itself. I thought I might feel a little more tipsy if I ate them or something, really I had no clue.


    I drank some of the tee and ate some of them, without knowing what I got myself into. I remember my vision changed, it felt enhanced, my hearing felt enhanced too and I was starting already there to feel afraid.
    What had I gotten myself into? As it progressed I remember loosing sense of time, it started to feel like a bad nightmare sort of that would literally never end. In hindsight I think that since this was my first experience with really strong anxiety and even panic which I assume aslo included personalisation/derealisation for hours I just felt like I had gone insane. At one point I was sure I was dead. I couldn't comprehend the the amount of panic and anxiety that just seemed to increase by the second, I remember it as if every time I thought it couldn’t increase more the panic got even worse.


    After googling my anxiety I think I might have experienced some short term memory loss etc, because I suspect I was stuck in thought loops. Which apparently can be common.


    I should say that I think I had a year or two after this where I wasn't that bothered by it, I felt normal. But then after about two years for some reason I started getting more anxious, especially at night. I think it was right after moving out from my parents to my own place. I din't really like being alone either.
    And that have been a part of my life ever since, in the beginning I had these nights where I couldn't sleep. I would wake up with a jerk every time I was close to falling asleep, my hands and feet would feel cold and I was shaking. The uneasy scary feeling in my whole body probably reminded me about that time with the drug, and I began googling symptoms for anxiety. It progressed to all sort of things, I'd lie in my bed shaking reading about potentially being schizophrenic or if I had gone crazy. The way I felt made me think that it was a possibility.


    This continued for years on and off, sometimes I had bad sleepless nights and other times I had weeks of not feeling anxious at all and felt back to normal. But all in all during all anxious times I've probably spent hundreds of hours googling for answers or symptoms. Like I'm going to find the perfect answer to my problems and feel good and back to normal just like that.




    It wasn't until last year when I experienced panic attacks again. It's happened a few times since then.
    I remember one year ago when I was in bed one night and couldn't sleep, I was feeling particularly anxious and just couldn't help but to reach for my phone and do some searching. I was reading about something drug or anxiety related, it's like I'm looking for people describing things I'm feeling and making sure I'm not alone and that it's normal. Or making sure what I'm feeling is just anxiety and not "real" paranoid thoughts.


    Then suddenly I could feel how my hands started to feel colder but at the same time sweaty, my feet went even colder. My heart started beating insanely fast from one second to the other. My hands no longer felt real, I felt like the room around me had the wrong scale to it, I was too small. It got worse by the second and I felt like my whole life had lead to this moment, this was it. The last moments of my life, everything felt unreal, I felt like I was going to faint and had this tunnel vision. I thought that maybe this is where I'll die and somehow teleport back and realise that I've been in a nightmare ever since I tested those mushrooms?


    I felt like I had to fight it and get away, but at the same time my body didn't feel like mine. This was early in the morning and I ran around confused but had at last gotten dressed and was going to run out to my car and just drive away from it. Which seemed like a reasonable thing to do. But I stopped myself as I had gotten a bit calmer.


    Since then I had a few more panic attacks but not really at the same strength.
    The anxiety for me are all these "what if thoughts", like what if I'm actually crazy? What if I think I'm living my life right now, when in fact I'm just hallucinating it and still stuck in that nightmare.
    I think that the trauma of that night might have caused some form of ptsd or similar. I think I relate feelings of anxiety and panic so much to it that when I did get a panic attack years later it reminded me so much of that scary night that it feels like I'm going back to it.


    I noticed with the panic attacks that when I began feeling unreal it felt so similar to the scary drug experience that it’s familiar or like deja vu, and that makes me think the stuff that I do about being teleported back to the traumatic moment. And it feels real during the attack.
    I'm not really fearing another attack now that I've had them, It's more just fearing my own thoughts when I can't sleep late at night. sometimes it turns into almost being afraid of going to bed at night.



    When I’m feeling good later these thoughts obviously feel stupid and strange, but when the anxiety comes on, especially late at night, it can make it feel like these scary thoughts could potentially be real.
    Hence why I just need to do a bit more googling… Then go to work after 3 hours of sleep, and have another bad day, with even more anxiety at night.

    Sorry for the long post, I hope somebody got through it. I'm just looking for some advice on stopping anxiety and if these attacks that I had are just normal panic attacks. Thank you.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Nov 2021
    Posts
    60

    Re: Anxiety years after traumatic experience?

    This is a good detailed report of your feelings. I'll start by saying what you describe sound very much like anxiety and panic disorder. When my anxiety gets really high I feel like I'm in third person mode, like I'm looking through a window, almost like I'm in a dream. This is called derealization/depersonalisation, there is a forum here on that. It also sounds like you're having existential thoughts too, which I have had many times. Here is a brief snippet of both.

    Existential Thoughts
    https://www.healthline.com/health/existential-dread

    Derealization
    https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/...ation-overview

    I can already see an issue with your sleep. You're feeling anxious and you're Googling which is feeding the anxiety. I'd speak to your doctor and tell him what you said here, he'll be able to provide support and even some antidepressants, they can help with reducing the anxiety. My doc also gave me Propranolol which helps massively when panic comes on and stops the shaking and fast heart etc.

    I'd also strongly recommend trying a new bed time routine, take a hot bath/shower before bed, draw, read, do some colouring (adult colouring books) and try to meditate, I'd recommend the app called Headspace or Calm, it will help to shift your focus.

    P.s. A person that is detached from reality, some that is truly "mad" doesn't think they are having problems. You acknowledge you have an issue 👍

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