Hello... sorry, long post with rambling psychological theories from someone who knows nothing about psychology. Partly me needing to vent, partly just curiosity as to whether anyone has similar experiencs of HA worsening when they start thinking about the future.
I'm reaching my wits end here. I've had a terrible few days. This past week I've done several things. I've decided that I want to stay in education after I finish my Bsc. I want to do an Msc and then a Phd. I've began looking at postgraduate courses and considered leaving the country. I've had two of the worst panic attacks of my entire life. I've had an average of two attacks per day over the last week. I have never had so many in such a short space of time. Then I've considered packing it all in, admitting defeat and going home. I'm just calming down after the first panic attack of today, I've resigned myself to the fact that there will probably be another one later. I'm worrying about my heart. It's there in my mind from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed. I'm constantly aware of it and what it's doing. I'm constantly feeling my pulse. I'm constantly in tears. I'm practically waiting to keel over. I'm so sure it's going to happen.
Here come the hairbrained pyschological theories: I think my HA has gotton worse over the past week or so because I've been planning my future. It's scary but it's exciting and I want it so much. I'm terrified that I'm planning a future I won't get to live. And I've noticed things similar to this before. When I was waiting for A level results I was so certain I had cancer. My theory at the time was that because I was worried about the exam results, my mind had subconsciously decided to give me something else to think about, a worry that wasn't real, to take my mind off the very real worry of failing the exams. That comforted me to some extent because I thought it would all go away after the results. Wrong. I spent the weeks before I left for university convinced I was dying. Scared that after all that hard work, I'd never get to live the thing that I'd worked so hard for.
HA has been there, constantly, since then, and it's never been fun but it's been manageable. Now it's destroying my life. I feel as though my anxiety has got so much worse because I'm planning a future that I'm afraid isn't going to work out the way I want it to (does anything?). But unless I can get the anxiety back down to a manageable level there won't be any postgraduate education because there won't be any graduating, because much more of this and I'm done with the whole thing. Somehow it seems like a part of me is trying to sabotage everything I've worked for and I don't know why. But then I've always been self destructive. I've always been my own worst enemy.
I'm afraid even of going to the doctors again and asking for help because I worry that somehow prospective future employers will get hold of my medical records and will think I won't be able to take the stress of the kind of job I want. I'm going to have to though. Feels like I'm hitting rock bottom. I can't get rid of the anxiety and it's making me so unhappy. I don't usually cry, ever, but over the past week it's been hard to stop. I cried after phoning my mum and telling her I won't be coming home again until christmas, because I'm scared I might not live that long. I cried looking for research placements for next summer because I'm scared I might not live that long. I cried planning a weekend away with some friends in November because I'm scared I'll die before then.
I'm wondering if anybody else has had any experiences where planning or even thinking about the future causes their anxiety to worsen because it makes them think about possibly not still being here by then.
Or maybe I'm just seriously overanalysing again.
If anyone actually got all the way through that, thank you, sorry.
Needed to vent.
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