Hello! I have been suffering from general anxiety since I was a child. But when I was 12 it became worse. I started to have anxious obsessive thoughts which sometimes weren’t connected to reality.
For example, when I was 12 I came across the story about some woman who got pregnant from swimming pool. Even though I knew it wasn’t true and I was aware pretty well of where children come from and, of course, I was a virgin and didn’t even have my period yet, but after that I started to have obsessive thinking that I could get pregnant from the swimming pool. And it was a total nightmare because I was thinking about it all the time and checking up pregnancy symptoms. I asked my parents to get me to doctors and made up some reasons, but in fact I just wanted them to confirm that I wasn’t pregnant. I was taking pictures of my stomach every day and compare them, checking if it didn’t get bigger… And of course I was telling myself all the time that it was impossible me being pregnant, but it never helped, obsessive anxiety was just growing. In few month feeling like that, I really started having some physical symptoms of pregnancy and you can imagine how worried I felt about it. I was crying almost every day because I couldn’t get rid of those obsessive thoughts and I couldn’t tell anyone because I was sure everyone would start perceiving me as a lunatic. All that nonsense lasted about 6 months and then I just gradually stopped thinking of that.
But in some time I started to have new obsession: severe healthy anxiety. I was paying attention to every change in my body and I was horribly afraid of having cancer. Then I started being extremely worried about my relatives every time they weren’t watched by me. Every time my mom went out and didn’t pick up the phone I started crying and panicking and imagining her dead body somewhere far away. I tried to control every step of my family members and for some reason I was sure that if I would be next to them, nothing bad could happen, but when I didn’t watch them I was very anxious.
So it kept going like that, every period of time I had different “fixations” on something that I was very anxious about. And I could never control it. I visited plenty of therapists and they helped me, but only situationally. I felt like I was getting better during the therapy, but in some time it all was back. Of course I started to be depressed, because anxiety and depression are always close to each other.
About 6 month ago I started to have new obsession that really effects my physical and mental health in a very bad way. I started to have panic attacks every time I had insomnia because I was afraid of dying from lack of sleeping. And of course I have slept much worse since then. Because of extremely high night anxiety there were many days when I could sleep only for 1-2 hours and I felt very bad for the whole day after that. I still have this problem and every time I go to bed I start panicking and sometimes I can even have suffocation attacks.
I have always been socially insecure as well. It is always difficult for me to feel comfortable among people and I usually act unnaturally. I am very afraid that I could seem boring and stupid to people, though I can’t remember any cases when someone called me like that. I always “filter” every word I say in front of bad known people and feel and seem very closed, shy and quiet. I usually don’t start conversations and I simply don’t talk to people if they don’t talk to me first. This is why it is difficult for me to make real friends, to find people who I would feel comfortable with. I often feel like I’m worse than the rest of my peers and I just don’t deserve being among them, I don’t fit in any company and even when all the people feel comfortable, I don’t.
About a month ago I finally managed to find a good psychiatrist who diagnosed me with GAD (generalized anxiety disorder). I felt a huge relief after this because for my whole life my parents were trying to convince me that the only problem was my “problematic personality” and my anxiety was coming from laziness and that I just liked making a victim out of me. So I started taking antidepressants and in the beginning I felt much better and I even stopped feeling like a piece of garbage and having negative thoughts. But then I had to change my medicine because of side effects and my anxiety kinda got back and now I don’t really feel well again. I have to take a strong sedative pill every time I go to bed because otherwise I will have severe night panic.
Fighting with a mental disorder is a very complicated thing, but I hope to get validation of my feelings here and I would like someone to share their experience as well. Thanks a lot that you read it till the end ❤️
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the_r0ad-killer
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Just extrapolation. If I were a scientist I would study it. Your experiences seem to be exacerbated by a lack of critical thinking. It seems to be a topic that has disappeared from school. I live in the US so I could be speaking from my bubble. Please don’t take it the wrong way. I wouldn’t mention it except you are only 18. I wonder if you could alleviate some of your anxiety by researching it.
Critical thinking empowers you to come to your own conclusions based on observation and evidence without being reliant on others opinions. You question the silly. You know getting pregnant from a pool is ridiculous. You know the facts. You think critically but maybe lack confidence that you know better than that silly woman who was much older. The lesson is not all adults are smart. At such a young age I can tell you are smart.
Part of puberty is trying to fit in while trying to be independent. It is very confusing. Everyone goes through it. So does knowing this help clarify why you might feel insecure? Just as some adults are stupid, not all will like you. Perfectly fine as in your heart you know better. Part of becoming an adult is accepting that.
Your parents didn’t do you any favors. The most brilliant minds have “problematic personalities“ and not accepted by a lot of people yet they carry on, even embrace it. They have critical thinking skills. Look at Elon musk. He may have helped saved humanity by pushing the electric vehicle when the status quo and powerful establishment was against him. He is a total jerk! I don’t think you are a total jerk. You need to question your parents logic and flip your thinking. (I’ll add that there is a double standard we need to flip as well. That’s just a challenge. )
I think you could get past this with some training. CBT and DBT teach it though they don’t name it.
Apologies for the long winded reply. I wish I had known this!
Hi the_r0ad_killer,
Your post really spoke to me, so I wrote this for you. My message may or may not apply to you, but that's okay, because it's for your own personal discernment.
I've never been confident enough to start a conversation with someone new, or even confident enough to say "hello". Always trying to mask my words for fear of being seen as a weirdo, or a loser, or whatever other hateful word that could come to your mind. I'd even heavily doubt my relationships with my actual friends. Thinking that they only pity me, or that they never even liked me in the first place; always validating my self-impaired suffering by distancing myself from them. All of this culminating with me ending up with no one, proving my own point in a very twisted way.
The point in my story is, our fears can affect our reality pretty heavily.
For example, your fear of getting pregnant by being in a pool: By letting that fear control you, your fear became your reality. You believed so heavily in that fear, that you even started to physically manifest the symptoms of pregnancy. When you stopped thinking about your fear, those symptoms gradually disappeared because they stopped being your reality. You can see from my story, that because I'm so afraid of being alone, my loneliness became my reality.
Of course, the opposite can be true if you let it. The paths are varied, but self-forgiveness and self-acceptance are the key.
Thank you for reading until the end, it's becoming long so I can continue if asked
Hi again, thank you for your response. People don’t usually take me up on the offer to continue… So thanks, really.
I’m a little unsatisfied with what I’ve written down below, it was originally a lot more elaborate. Either way, I ask that you use your own judgement to my words, and to never take anything that doesn't resonate with you as absolute fact.
The pathway to self-acceptance is silence. When you can feel the negativity start to boil within you, find a good place to rest, and try to passively silence your mind. Do not try to force the negative emotions out of you, all that does is agitate them. Try focusing on something, anything; your lungs breathing, your heart beating, your fan running, anything. When you notice a negative thought cross your mind, just ignore it.
When you feel that your mind is pure of thought, try and gently imagine something nice that happened to you recently. It doesn’t have to be anything important; maybe the weather was nice yesterday, maybe someone smiled at you, and so on. Focus on the small joys you felt from these little things, focus on how good they felt. When you come out of your rest, hold those thoughts in your mind as gently as you can.
Recognize now, in this state, that this happiness is your reality. When you feel a passing negative thought, recognize that this negativity does NOT represent your reality.
With practice, this sort of mentality gradually becomes easier to maintain. You’ll be able to close your eyes, breath in the positivity, exhale the negativity, and go on about your day in a much happier state of mind. But you must be steadfast! There may be people that will bring you down, but the scariest person that could ever challenge you, is YOU. If you can recognize that you’re being to bullied by yourself, don’t lie down and take it, fight back with your love! You can’t fight fire with fire.
This is getting long again... So if you'd like me to go further, feel free to ask.
I should make a real post about this last one, but, I’m giving it to you anyway. Again, use your own discretion as to whether this resonates with you or not.
I want you to take a second and visualize our brain as one big yin-yang symbol (I'm sure you're familiar with it).
We have the left and right halves of our brain; the logical left half balances out the creative right half, and if one didn't exist without the other, we would not exist.
We have the atoms that connect our brains together; the protons balance out the corresponding electrons, and if one didn't exist without the other, the universe as we know it would not exist.
Now most importantly, take this one step further and think about the duality of our emotions:
Where you find sadness, you will always find the corresponding happiness to balance your sadness. Where you find shyness, you will always find the corresponding liveliness to balance your shyness. Where you find fear, you will always find the corresponding bravery to balance your fear. If the duality between these emotions were gone, then we would not exist.
The point I'm trying to make is, the yin-yang is not supposed to represent duality, it represents unity. We are all inseparable from this unity, it is all around us; because if it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be here writing this!
Now apply this unity back to yourself.
The real process of self-acceptance is not to accept that you are flawed, but to recognize that you are complete. You already contain an infinite amount of potential within your mind, and it's all just waiting to be used in whatever way you want.
You are here to play, to experience, to learn, and to achieve everything that you desire. When we accept the "seriousness" of our lives, then that seriousness becomes our desire; it becomes our reality. But when we accept the corresponding joy of our lives, then that too becomes our desire; it becomes our reality.
Thank you for listening if you made it this far, I pray for your darker days to fly away.
Well, it has been said, by those who have replied, that the—in my own words—the mind is where the matter lies. I fully agree. I believe there has been confluence, a series of events that agree and reinforce the story of the pool pregnancy. And, this is (in my humble opinion) because you have not applied your WILL power which stems from the mind. There are a lot of children who experience this thing but quickly outgrow it because of the positive words they hear and experience.
This is why cancer thought, the death of loved ones, and such like keep replaying. I would suggest you apply the Blueruth suggestion of critical thinking seriously. Also, find time to reinforce positive thoughts, for the moment avoid watching/listening/being around negative, sad, things or happenings. Find time to sit quietly after reading or watching positive facts materials and videos, to meditate daily. This will compel the mind to believe and accept reality and discard illogical conclusions. We at times have to COERCE the mind to focus on positive thoughts, it is often in the habit of wondering sometimes😃. And, this is where affirmations can do their magic.
Please be reminded that this is not peculiar to you. The majority if not all humans have sometimes experienced it to varying degrees in their life. It explains that some children are scared of the dark, of certain SAFE objects, don't want to leave mummy's side, despise some foods in early childhood, some colors, and so on.
It is a general problem common to humanity but it is expected that we overcome them as we matured.
Mind you, you are not out of time😊. And, as per the finding of acceptance or a safe circle, we cannot all be accepted by all humans and we must respect their decisions. We do not have control over people's acts or reactions save ours. Our response would be a calm repose in the security of our human dignity which can never be lessened by the repulsive or loving acts of others.
Catch some fun as you venture into this new phase of maturity in your life😊
I am sorry that you have been dealing with this GAD. One thing that I have learned about medicine is that ever4y medicine has some kind of side effect. What you have to consider is the side effect something that you can live with or is it some is the side effect worse than what you are taking the medicine for? IE: A medicine that I was on one time; the side effect was forgetfulness. It was so bad that I could not remember the process of how to add and subtract. I had to take my husband or daughter to the store to help me buy groceries... I went back to the doctor and had him take me off that medicine right away! Another medicine that I have been on, the side effect was tiredness. I figure that I can deal with tiredness. I can take a nap in the afternoon or if I need to keep going all day, I can get a cup of tea and a snack and take a 15 minute break here or there. That medicine helps my health problem a lot more that the side effect hurting it.
Another thing that I do is pray. I ask the LORD to help by giving me peace in the midst of the storm. To give give me direction and guidance, and wisdom of how to calmly overcome the situation. God bless you!
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i would like you to continue 
Feeling Tired/Lost~ Anxiety, dissociation, depression
I feel like I am the only person with SEVERE panic attacks
Tired of feeling the way i do :/
I feel am a burden and tired 
Why am I like this!!!
