Just a rant to be honest. It's so annoying, so frustrating. I can barely sleep, I forget to eat, my body hurts all over from the all-day tension, I feel faint and sick (and have fainted/vomited in the past) from exhaustion, I'm a bright woman and when the anxiety is under control I'm successful, but I can't think straight.
I have GAD but not the 'worrying' type. Rather than ruminative worry, my mind is constantly active with what I would describe as 'compulsive' daydreams. By that I mean I live in a fantasy world (a happy one) for the vast majority of the day. I slip into it automatically and don't notice I'm in a vivid fantasy land until hours after it started, when I find myself pacing up and down my flat acting out whatever is in my head. Why this stresses me out so much, I don't know. If anything, the daydreams make me smile. They are happy dreams. I'm guessing that I daydream to avoid whatever is stressing me out. But apparently I'm also avoiding awareness of what is stressing me out. I know it's up to me and I'm continuing to do what I can to make it manageable, but frankly just needed to let off steam.
I would just like a day when my muscles doesn't hurt, and when I don't feel like I'm fighting the urgent need for sleep. I'm so incredibly exhausted. I'm just complaining, to be honest. I know I just need to get back on track. It's not always this bad.
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anxiousrecoverer
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11 Replies
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Hello
We all have times when everything seems so overpowering and venting it all can really help and I hope by doing so it has given you some relief
Have you had any help with all this , I would ask for some even if I had been helped before as sometimes it can all creep up on us again and we just need a little bit of understanding to put it all back in perspective
I think it is true that slipping into a fantasy world is your way of escaping but you do that to protect yourself which in some ways is not a bad thing but with the right Counselling maybe they could help you to stop escaping and face the fear head on so you no longer have to run away
Having said that I envy you slightly that you have this ability especially as it makes you smile wish I could escape now & again to
My reply may not have helped but after I could see the frustration you were feeling in your post I wanted to let you know someone had read it
Yes, it felt better to blow off some steam! I did genuinely feel a little less overwhelmed after just writing this down! Still haven't got much work done today but at least I've made it through and I'll be able to go home soon.
I've had tons of help over the last 16 years. I did since it got bad over the last month go to all the services I could find but they basically told me I already know everything they can teach me, which is what I thought they might say, as I'm fortunate to know a lot of different techniques now. I just thought it worth asking in case there was anything I had missed.
I don't feel I've really done enough mindfulness, and also if I could just get my sleep pattern straight I could help myself out of here. I drink coffee during the day, which I keep telling myself not to, but if I'm falling asleep at my desk in the morning I want something to help me concentrate. Vicious cycle. That's one thing I can knock on the head, anyway.
I think if I could work out what exactly I was stressed about it would help....but then maybe it wouldn't. I'm not sure GAD is even being stressed about anything in particular, it's just free-floating stress. So perhaps me trying to work out where it's coming from is unproductive and I should just focus on managing the symptoms. I've no idea. Sometimes the more therapy you have the more complex it seems to get. I wish I could go back to ignorance sometimes!
I think even if you know all the techniques it is one thing knowing them but still support and someone to listen to you can help you to keep them in practice which could benefit so many as I can be very similar , it is like talking the talk but then walking the walk and sometimes you need someone to hold your hand now and again if you know what I mean
Maybe set yourself some little goals , one less coffee a day maybe till you are drinking less and so on
Have a good rant on here as well when it gets to much that can be enough to spur you on especially when you know someone is listening x
I'm pleased you have come on here to vent it's a lot better then storing it all on your head!
Your right I think the day dreaming is because you want to escape reality but it's good that you know your day dreaming, you know it's not real (even though you want it to be) and there fore your not in denial and when people know they have a problem or know they need to stop an unhealthy meganism it's a very good thing because it's mean they are ready for help .
With day dreaming I think when you come back into reality i can only guess it's quite depressing.?
Admitting and realising this is a good thing because some people can't or they are too scared to confess because they are scared they might be deemed as crazy. It's not it's just a escape coping meganism weather it's healthy or not I don't know. It's nice to day dream.
I would try and get some counselling. Anxiety is very controlling and your right it is a vicious circle one that is very hard to get out of! And it can if you let it take over every bit of your life social and work. But counselling can help you break that cycle. Often things come from childhood or up bringing, some sort of horrible experience etc and it can take years to get over or can pop up at any moment in your life. But I think keeping positive will help a lot. Lily xx
Thanks both. I do actually have a counsellor I see every week but I can't tell if it helps at all. I was thinking about quitting in January to save money, because I've been there for over a year and I'm not sure there's been a measurable difference. Maybe I'm not talking about the right things, who knows?
I did a lot of psychotherapy actually Lils, through the NHS, and that has definitely put me in a much better position than I was a few years ago. Things are a lot easier to deal with then than now, partly because the 'rules' I was playing by in my own head - and which just seemed natural and true - were diminishing my confidence, and now I look at it another way I am more aware of my rights and so on, so it definitely influences the way I live my life for the better. I'm a lot more assertive, for instance, and if family members or friends start to treat me disrespectfully I just walk away rather than exonerating them (I used to think that if they 'acted out' towards me it meant they were vulnerable, so it was easy to forgive them everything. I don't think it ever occurred to me that their behaviour actually affected me. Maybe partly because it's kinda embarrassing for me to see myself as 'weak' enough to be affected by someone else). So learning stuff like that has given me permission to walk away far more and not feel quite so sorry for the other person. I have also started to walk away if someone behaves in a potentially hurtful way, even if I am not upset. I've realised that I'm a little less sensitive to things, or I don't feel as much, or something like that I'm not sure. And because I don't feel upset I let people continue to be unpleasant towards me, so now I just focus on their behaviour and if it doesn't meet the same standards of behaviour that I follow then I choose to walk away out of principle.
Anyway, yes, it's helped a lot, although I must say there were no big events in my life that made me this way.
The daydreaming is about stuff that I CAN do, by the way, and in many ways it is adaptive in that it's largely achievable stuff and it drives me towards my (career) goals. Some of it is more fanciful but obviously I know that's just a bit of fun. I guess yeah it's pretty depressing when I focus on reality and remember none of it is true (yet). I do make steps towards it all the time but I guess I'm a bit impatient. I'm trying to train myself to focus on the process rather than outcome so I can enjoy the journey to my dreams rather than focusing just on goals, but I've always been a massive fantasist and I guess just imagining that I win that Oscar (haha...) or more realistically that something I'm writing turns out well, is a lot quicker than sitting down and doing it! So I do find that I unproductively enjoy the reward before I've really earned it quite a bit!
Just an update on this. I managed to focus on my work and off my daydreams for long enough today to actually experience the way I felt and realised what I'm feeling is anger, not anxiety. Which kinda makes more sense because I understand exactly why I'm angry, but I've got nothing to be anxious/worried about and wasn't worrying.
I guess the physical symptoms of anger are the same as for anxiety - the muscle pain, tension, high heart beat etc., so I got them confused. My muscles still kill and I'm still not sleeping, and I still feel like shit, but I guess it's all a bit easier to manage somehow now I can tell myself: "Ah, yeah, that's because I'm angry".
Just in case others find themselves in a similar position where they're like "why have I got all these anxiety symptoms? I'm not worried!" Maybe you're angry.
Ugh I know what your going through, these last few days I've had heart palpitations seems like all day 😞 Pretty scary but I know it's anxiety even though I have nothing to be anxious about, that's what I don't understand why do I have all these symptoms? If I'm not anxious or depressed! This is so fusterating 😪 I cried for about 30 minutes this morning wishing that my life would be back to normal.
Not sure if you saw my comment just above yours but have you considered whether or not you are angry? I had all the physical symptoms of anxiety/stress but I wasn't worried and just today I realised I was angry (I'm not that good at picking up on my own emotions haha!) And that anger makes your body do the same tension thing as anxiety does so you might confuse them. x
Wow, I know exactly what you mean about the fantasy land! I've never heard anyone describe it so perfectly before. When it happens to me, I usually get pretty freaked out. And the MUSCLE ACHES. ugh I swear that's one of the worst parts of anxiety. On my worst days I feel like I have some sort of terminal illness it hurts so bad. It makes it hard to do anything. You're definitely not alone. It sounds like you have a lot of derealisation. Are you taking any medications?
No I do not take medications as for me they make me much worse. I'm a bit dissociated in general (actually, my psychiatrist's report said specifically that the problem was dissociation); and medications tend to make me more dissociated and emotionally blunt. I don't suffer from intense emotionality with my anxiety - rather the opposite - and the medications make that trait worse, which in turn tends to make my problems worse. I am coming round to seeing that for me I need to more - not less - emotional so medications are not a good thing for me.
Another general update: I saw my counsellor and decided that I hadn't really been using his services that well anyway because I don't talk about my emotions (yeah, I know, duh!) That's partly because I'm not that consciously aware of them, and partly because I don't discuss my emotions with other people.
I decided that if I want to feel better I had better start being less stubborn about that, so this time I launched right in to tell him I had been feeling angry. It was EXTREMELY uncomfortable for me to do so and I only managed that line of discussion for a few minutes before I changed the topic to something else, but he said I was "courageous" for having done it, so proud for me etc.
I talked a bit about how life wasn't what I wanted career wise but eventually admitted I was doing everything I could on that level and that my career (what I usually talk about) might not be the real problem. So I talked a bit about my social relationships instead. Another part of my fantasies include being close to an imaginary person (never someone real or that I know IRL). But in real life when opportunities for any kind of emotional closeness occur for e.g. with friends, I feel so uncomfortable with it that I tend to shut the other person down (if they are emoting) or I just avoid showing emotion in front of other people (like in the therapy session) and that this avoidance of connection is probably why I feel bad; so over a year after I started with this therapist I have finally spoken about something meaningful. Well done me; expensive avoidance. I have no idea what to do about any of it, I'm a bit of a loner and don't really want to change that right now, but it does feel a bit better to have at least attempted to talk about it.
Don't know if that helps anyone else in a similar position.
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Is it just me???
Just a bit of a rant.....
