Why now? Why do I all of a sudden feel this way?

[mjl90]

It came from seemingly nowhere and I can't figure it out, I have had bad anxiety now for three weeks, I have been to the doctors and given propranolol which on the whole works, but there are times when even my anxiety can beat the pills, I hate this feeling, its exhausting, if I cant understand how it started how do I know it will go away?

[hvr1]

Hey, sorry to see you're going through a bad time. My anxiety started back in November but I'm the same as you, I have no idea where it came from or why it started happening and it sounds like you're a bit like me, in that it makes you feel so much more anxious and low because of this. I don't know how we know it will go away, I guess we just have to believe and hope for it (when we can) or otherwise we'd never beat it and constantly fall apart. I'm glad your meds are working out so far, this site is really good too and has helped me a lot. People are really supportive and don't mind if you just rant away at how bad you feel, they only care. I hope you can also find solace here too, we're all here to fight this horrible feeling and I'm here if you ever want to talk : ] Have you had anxiety before? x

[mjl90 in reply to hvr1]

I have never had anxiety before, I have felt low before, we all have, but I knew when this started that it wasn't normal and it scared me to death and I tried to cover it up, which didn't work and my mum made me go to the doctors. It just came from nowhere and people ask "has something caused this" or "what were you doing when you started feeling anxious" and the more people ask the more I bottle up, I try to explain that I do not know. I feel they think that I am lying or being dramatic. Thank you for explaining that you are the same as most people seem to have a reason for anxiety. I am positive about this site as I feel talking with people who understand will really help me.

[Cookster99 in reply to mjl90]

Hiya and welcome,

Count me in the havent got a diddlies club, Mine started in January. I used to be so outgoing, confident and hated being indoors. Now i hate leaving my house, talking to people, being around people including family at times and i dont know what triggered it. Being strong for too long i think lol

I do believe that i will get better,i have to believe it or id end up crazier than i am already.

Try not to dwell on it too much, come on here and have a chat instead of worrying on your own.

Love Cookie xxx

[mjl90 in reply to Cookster99]

I can understand that completely, I have felt like curling up in bed and not leaving this house, but just now I am forcing myself out, to do things and keep going. I was like you, I used to be very strong and nothing greatly bother me, now the least little thing can reduce me to a sobbing wreck. I have found the short time on this site has lifted me today, reading other peoples posts has been very helpful.

[Cookster99 in reply to mjl90]

This site and the people on it, have helped me so much. I hope we can do the same for you. You can talk about anything you like which is good as some days i dont want to talk about my illness, i just want to chat and have a laugh.

I look forward to getting to know you xxx

[mjl90 in reply to Cookster99]

I look forward to it too, yeah some days you are just so desperate for something else to occupy your mind than think about anxiety or have feelings of anxiety. I totally get that

[Cervenmarvin in reply to Cookster99]

Sounds exactly like me. Do you still have your anxiety

[mjl90 in reply to Cervenmarvin]

I do still have anxiety. I think Im in it for the long run. I wasted way too much time thinking it was curable. Eventually I realised I had to make some sort of peace with it. It helps. But it still dosent go away. For a whole year I took 3- 40mg propranolol a day. Then I realised I didnt feel any better and I stopped taking pills. The thing is I have more good days than bad days. Anxiety makes you obsessed with the bad days which can drag you down. Its very hard to see positives. But they are there. Exercise as much as possible. Learning to spot anxious feeling can help. But if im totally honest, anxiety bursts out at any moment and makes you feel horrid and insecure. I just keep telling myself that it will pass. When the anxiety returns, I tell myself its because I have a disorder and it will pass. The trick is to keep telling yourself it until you start to believe it.

These are just my opinions and some things I try to do. Speaking to others will help. Everyone has different ways to cope. And thats all any sufferer can, find a way to cope.

[Andben in reply to mjl90]

Thanks for coming back and responding, it helps others more than you know.

I was randomly hit with anxiety end of November 2016 and it's been full steam ahead for the anxiety ever since.

Now it's June and I wonder how i will ever live with this if it won't go away. That's my greatest fear and boy does it drive the anxiety to another level. I feel so helpless to treat it because it's a mental thing not a physical thing like a broke arm where you KNOW you will get better.

Reading your post has given me some hope and reaffirmed what I thought was true. Just have to make peace with it. Stop fighting it and breathe.

Eventually I'll learn to be at peace with it and hopefully stop creating new anxious thoughts every day.

[mjl90 in reply to Andben]

It's a hard thing to do. It's hard to let it go. For me I remember being normal. How could I let that go? It's so hard to keep telling yourself it's all in your head. It does make your anxiety worse.

But there is a positive and you can put things in place to make things easier. It's never going to be easy but it's worth fighting because it does get better.

Just remember no matter how much you work at it there are times and periods where it will flare up again and can be bad. That really knocks you. But you can come back from it.

Don't be too hard on yourself and talk about it as much as you possibly can.

[ffsman in reply to mjl90]

Hey man, whats up... Still got anxiety even though this was posted like 4 years ago?

Yeah, i'm the same way. i was fine, it came out of nowhere.. its been 6 fucking years for me!

Last week i had the most important interview of my life, and know what? i fucked it. i couldnt speak right, couldnt breath right, swallow right, i was shaking. palms were sweaty and arms were heavy.

I'm on propranolol too, 40 mg.

i thought by now it would go away but i guess not...

I also take propranolol because i get mad heart palpitations.

i've been pretty much an alcoholic for the past 4 years because of this too.

I'm at the end of the line with it and dont know what to do. i tried being healthy and whatever but nothing helps.

Needless to say i didnt get the job, even though i could do it with my eyes shut.. something needs to be done to help people like us!

You know someone said to me "hah what, you have anxiety? at your age?" i'm 25 years old. yes im ashamed but its not like its something i can control!

I dunno where i'm going with this, i'm going to go drink some more wine.

dont let yourself become like me

[buckingfrilliant in reply to ffsman]

I’ve had anxiety for three years. It turns out it was my multivitamin of all things that was causing it. Copper and selenium overdose was messing with my neurotransmitters. I feel so stupid. I’m much better now. I don’t know if this will help anyone but I just thought I’d relay my experience incase it does.

[J-Boy209 in reply to mjl90]

Mine came in September of 2017, I was 39 & went to the ER because I ate too much & felt really really bloated & was constipated. They should've just gave me Miralax, which works wonders. But instead they went straight to a shot that made me poop everything out. The next day I woke up feeling sick with my mind racing & I couldn't focus on anything.

I lost my appetite & my chest started physically hurting with anxiety. I suffered for a few weeks while I recovered from not going poop over that time. Which freaked me out. My doctor gave me Ativan, one a day for a week & then when I started pooping again, I was fine for 1½ years. See, I'm in a wheelchair with a lower right leg amputation & so I'm also on chronic pain medication.

So my doctor was hesitant to give me any Ativan in the first place. Then this year right after the Superbowl, I started feeling sick with all kinds of symptoms. It took them a month & half to realize I had gallstones with an inflamed gallbladder. Which I had taken out on March 27th. Four days after surgery I felt so much better, my hunger had come back & the anxiety was almost completely gone.

But then because of the opioid crisis, Kaiser Permanente in Northern California decided to crack down on chronic pain patients. Even those of us who truly suffer from chronic pain & don't ever abuse our medications. Never one early refill request in over a decade of taking the same pain meds & they now wanted to taper me off.

Regardless if I still had horrible phantom limb pains, amongst other pain like my femur bone & back. I even lowered my dosage by 50% in the last year to ease my doctor's concerns. Because of my doctor getting pressured by the Kaiser higher-ups all the time. So for two weeks after my surgery I'm feeling great, I got my happiness back & can finally actually focus on TV shows & movies.

But on April 15th I get a message from my doctor saying he & the new chronic pain doctor he had me see. Have decided to taper me off. I did nothing to deserve this kind of harsh treatment & instantly my mind started worrying & I fell back into anxiety. Three weeks later I started getting better again, although my leg kept hurting more & more.

So I started seeing a different chronic pain doctor because I felt the first one & my primary care doctor set me up. Honestly, I saw it coming, but didn't really trip because my doctor told me last year while lowering my pain meds for the second time. That he was not going to take me off of them & that I probably would have to take them for the rest of my life.

But I guess he was just saying whatever to get me to agree to lower my dosage once again. So I've been tapering off for a little under a month & a half & like I said I started feeling better anxiety wise for about a week & a half. Then my second chronic pain doctor prescribed me Lyrica & I took it slow for a week then increased it for two days & boom.

The anxiety hit me like a ton of bricks. This coincided with my mother leaving on vacation to Las Vegas & then Los Angeles for a total of 9 days. I'm disabled in a wheelchair, so I depend on my mother a lot. And in a weakened Lyrica state, my mind must have perceived it as a fear or danger to me, even though it never had in the past. (Just speculation)

But now I'm dealing with it again, along with poor chronic pain management to boot. Also, I've been having chest pain as well which makes it hard to breathe at times. Rheumatologist thinks it could be Costochondritis, which it could. But that should go away on its own after a few weeks or so. But mine have been here all this year & even to a lesser painful extent the year previous.

The worst is having a hard time breathing, it makes me panic. When the right side of my chest hurts, it feels like my heart is being squeezed. I'm so damn tired of the daily struggle & just hope it goes away for another year & a half or longer like it did the first time. I rue the day I went into that ER. I should've just forced myself to throw up like a normal person. It ruined my life even further.

I hate the way anxiety feels, I have no reason to feel afraid or worry. At least before I didn't. I was always a happy-go-lucky kind of guy who never worried about anything & then all of the sudden, one shot changes my life for the worse. If anybody has any insight into when my ordeal might be over, please let me know? Thanks for listening & goodbye. PS, sorry for the long reply/rant.

[hvr1]

Oh gosh you do sound so similar. I still sometimes get it into my head that people think I'm lying but please try to let go of that because it will only make you feel worse. If people think you're lying then they are seriously not worth spending any time with. I (and everyone on here) completely understand that this is such a hard thing to live with and just feels so nasty. I wish I could, and still try to put my finger on what was going on and why it started but like you say, it's impossible and I end up getting so upset.

I think there are a lot of people like us who don't know where it all stems from though, so don't feel alone. It's very frightening. Don't let anyone (especially yourself!) make you feel that you're being over dramatic or lying. I think it's really hard for people to understand if they've never been through it themselves, and perhaps a lot of people won't - a lot of my closest friends who I thought would be great just don't know how to handle it, but it's not their fault really. Just remember it's the people who understand and just simply accept that you don't know why it is, but it's hellish, upsetting and oh so real to you, so are there for you.

The site really does help, sometimes when I'm so anxious I can't even put words down so I just read people's posts and comments and that can even help. Hope you start to feel a bit better as the day goes on x

[mjl90 in reply to hvr1]

What your saying really does resonate, this is all fairly new to me but I can see that I am too hard on myself, I expect myself to get better right away, I expect to jus stop all the horrible thoughts and feelings, I am definitely having to work on realising that I will be ok and that I am not at fault.

[hvr1 in reply to mjl90]

You'll get there! Be kind to yourself and realise what you're going through is huge and really difficult. You're definitely not at fault and you will be ok, I believe we all will one day! But I still despair that there's nothing that can just stop it and make it go away too x

[Hidden]

Hi , just wanted to say Welcome , you are not on your own any more & hope you feel you can talk on here , it really helps & like Cookie says at times you might even find yourself laughing

Keep talking it does help

Love

whywhy

xxx

[hannah_smith]

Hi mjl90, sorry to hear that you are suddenly just experience anxiety. It can be very scary and daunting. Please bear in mind you are not alone!

I have had anxiety and panic attacks for a number of years and everytime i get an attack or feel my anxiety coming on, it feels like the first time everytime. It doesnt get any easier.

Do talk about your anxiety and do not be ashamed or scared to express how you feel. so many people struggle for years and never talk about it and it just makes it worse and creates other problems.

The fact you are already talking about your anxiety and wanting to do something about it is refreshing! that takes real strength, whether you believe it or not. ;-)))))

I havent been on her for months and i have missed this forum. coming back has made me realise how friendly it is! Thanks everyone!xxxx

I just wanted to let you know of a website i am using for my anxiety - it may help you. w w w. a n x i e t y r e b a l a n c e . c o . u k

Take care and stay strong!

xxxx

[kris_help]

Hi To All, I can relate and I am getting better now. my anxiety starting in my late teens. I dont know what triggered it off. i just remember one day waking up feeling like i had been run over. Night after night i kept feeling like this. After waking up feeling terrible each day, it started to move into my daily routine. i started to feel tired, paranoid and just very uneasy like everyone and everything was against me.

After a few months of losing sleep my day to day job suffered as i couldnt concentrate and then anxiety started to really kick in. when i was with customers my whole body would start to shake. my mouth / lips wouldnt stop from shaking. i could feel my whole body start to burn up. It was terrible and i couldnt control it. My heart rate wiould also increase to the point i could hear it pounding in my head. i was so scared i didnt know what was happening.

I got so paranoid people could see me turning into a wreck that i just stopped putting myself in situations where i had to speak. after months of turning into someone I wasnt i decided i had to leave work. it was making me worse and I just couldnt handle it anymore.

i was living at home at the time and my dad knew something was wrong and said he would help me until my head was clear. he had no idea how bad i was.

After months of not being able to sleep, not communicating with people, my dad said i couldnt carry on like this and that i needed help. I saw my doctor and this is when my doctor said i was probably suffering with depression and anxiety due to stress in my life.

I must be honest, pills / medication do not excite me. my mum took many anti depressants and they made her worse and i wasnt in a rush to start taking them.

My dad was losing patients with me and told me i had to do something other than just mope around the house.

I couldnt find anything to help me and to be honest couldnt be bothered to try and search for something that i thought didnt exist. My dad was constantly on my case, all the time, which made me feel even worse!! but give him his due, my dad also found information about anxiety rebalance with carl sheppard. I have also started coaching for my anxiety. i am very impressed and would recomend people look into it. good luck.

[andym1973]

Same sort of thing happened to me today, was just setting up a new television and came all over weird, i thought it might be the tv but i have moved away from that now and still being getting these sort of panic attacks, a little short of breathe and light headed and confused, never had anything like this before, not sure if it is anxiety or something else.

[443322 in reply to andym1973]

wow sounds just like me. any resolution since?

[Calico1]

I know this is an old thread, but did you take Cipro or Levaquin leading up to your anxiety onset? This class of antibiotic can cause chronic, severe psychiatric events, and doctors often fail to make the connection (although the label clearly lists these effects). This may not help you, but I thought I'd throw it out there. Cipro introduced me to anxiety almost a year ago.

[Mrworrymaster]

My anxiety kicked up about a year ago. I've always been a bit high strung, so I think I just finally snapped. There were some really bad times, really depressing times, and really desperate times. My anxiety morphed into health anxiety, because I needed a way to focus my anxiety. So I honed in on diseases. This lasted months, and it still lingers now-but nothing near what it was.

I only started to feel better when I focused on myself. Why was I upset, is my life how I want it to be, am I truly happy, am I running from something. In the end, after months of work, I found answers to all of those.

That didn't stop, or ease, my anxiety though. But that's because I spend roughly 8 months on highly anxious overdrive and I sent my body into a tizzy. Anxiety drives all kinds of chemicals through your body. You do it long enough and you form a "free floating anxiety" which is truly an anxiety that has no cause. Your body is just overloaded with noxious chemicals which should be reserved for life or death scenarios.

I found reprieve when I fully accepted my anxiety. I stopped fighting it, I stopped researching it, I stopped letting it scare me, and I stopped trying to figure it out. I just let it be. That's how you get the chemical reactions to stop, and you start to deplete the reserves that have built up and are wrecking everything.

And trust me, those chemicals do damage. At one point my arms were on fire all day long and I was extremely weak and would shake.

Give it time, and focus on mindfullness techniques. Give your mind a rest, and let your body catch up. Eat right, get plenty of sleep, exercise, and work on you.

[Wb88]

Sorry your having to deal with this. I have never experienced anything like anxiety before 4 months ago it started. I haven't gotten diagnosed with it, but I'm for sure its anxiety. It doesn't happen all the time or every day but when it does I get hot feeling, my head will hurt so bad I can feel my heartbeating really hard and I'll have awful strange uncomfortable thoughts and feelings.. Just out of nowhere... Its happened twice with me just lying in bed. I have had a lot of stress in my life lately so maybe that's why... I get so scared that loseing my mind when this happens and think maybe I need to put myself in a place but I read all of these stories and makes me feel somewhat better. I'm not going crazy I am the most caring person you could meet. I just don't understand where all this came from and why it's occurring now, same as you!

[Jakestein]

Hi all! So I just recently became anxiety ridden out of nowhere like most of you here. My heart is always racing and has been like this for a month or so. No matter how relaxed I am, there is always that underlying anxious feeling like something is wrong. I've never been one to worry or feel stressed out about anything. So my question is how do you get use to something like this? Or better yet, can you get use to it?

[Traceyjanelloyd]

I was suffering anxiety symptoms really bad last year about August, felt like I could calm down and I couldn't sleep proper, never had it bad before just normal anxiety.

This year January my brain crashed because of it I had ticks, brain zaps, fainting and there's a whole lot more I was suffering from I just could calm down, then I got tinnitus through it all.

Please get some help it's bad I was to late he can spiral out of control really quickly!

Go to CBT, have a massage, acupuncture, go on a holiday, make sure other people or work isn't causing you anxiety, if so walk away it's not good for you!

Last and least I don't no if it was the culprit for me but I found out I have low vitamin D levels and they were really low and i don't no how long they have been that way, I went to doc complaining of fully body aches, vitamin D also caused depression and loads of other stuff, get it checked if your feeling wrong!

[Traceyjanelloyd]

Oh and if you feeling anxious and can't seem to come down don't exercise that's were i went wrong and anxiety turned into fight or flight mode i tried to hit anxiety head on like you read andit had opposite affect, when I did CBT I was getting told things I could do to improve my anxiety and I argued with what they was saying But there information and mine together was helpful, buy some bubbles and blow them, will calm you down and you don't have to concentrate on breathing it will be natural