Looking for advice and wisdom

[Clynn34]

Hey yall, this my first post ever since joining. I don't post much at all about my personal struggles but I am believing that I will have to more than I want to. I feel I've reached a place in my life spiritually to put my energy to be an advocate for mental illness so I'm looking for insight and support which is greatly appreciated.

I am 38yrs old, African American women and a mother. I have struggled with severe anxiety and panic disorder with physical symptoms for over 10yrs now and have realized blantly that this has hindered me severely in my everyday life.

I use to be able to load up on work and push through cause I felt as long as I have a job and income I wouldn't have to accept that my disorder wins. Now this year seems like the worst for me physically. I been divorced for 4 yrs now with long distance coparenting across states that I never could imagine doing; that's heartbreaking within itself. The impact from the pandemic another blow and now job wise I work partime and just can't seem to gather the momentum mentally or physically to do more than that. I have a therapist and take buspirone and hydroxyzine but it only helps about 60% of the time. I've been on 3 other meds before that and nothing seems to help. I get offered to try a stimulant but so scared of that because I feel side effects in a major way and already have an increase in headaches, dizziness, lightheadedness and moments of nausea. Not sure what new crap this is but depression is on the rise as well. I am keeping my faith up and praying this will turn around. I even am getting testing done to see if it's MS because my symptoms now seem similar to it or I may be just paranoid but I'm ruling things out.

I don't really have support outside therapy or have friends. My family doesn't understand what I go through so not much to lean on there. Just taking a leap of faith on gaining some positive support. I don't want to have to stop working or explain why I can't or seem lazy or complantive. Anyone in a similar place or once was? What helped?

Thank yall😊

[samack]

Hi Clynn. First of all welcome! Your situation is very typical of what most of us go through. You show strength in your ability to persevere. Since Covid, we've all taken another hit. Your physical symptoms sound like side effects. Your meds sound atypical for treatment. You might want a second opinion by another dr. We all talk about how hard it is for other people to understand our situation. Support can be hard to find. Right now, I depend on this site for support, at least until things improve. Thank goodness you've got your spirituality to assist in your healing. We've got your back.

[Clynn34 in reply to samack]

Thank you for your response it's much appreciated.

[Peptink]

Hi Clynn. While I don’t have answers for you, I just wanted to tell you that I’m thinking about you and hope that better days are coming. Friends are hard to come by, aren’t they? Here, we can all support and help each other with words of encouragement.