Will it ever end

[lilchar2424]

Feeling like these symptoms are never going to end. I am a 23 year old healthy fit and active and i forever feeling like i have something wrong. It all started from when my grandad was fighting cancer and died last feb. I have been having a massive fear of dying. I keep feeling spaced out and get a weird tingerling sensation in my head and i feel like i cant breathe or i have a breathing condition. I also keep thinking there is something wrong with my heart i keep jerking in my sleep. I just feel so tired all the time and want to be back to my normal self has anyone got any advise to help me start to get back to normal? I feel like i cant talk to anyone. thanks

[Hidden]

Hi, have you been to see anyone about it yet? First step is maybe your GP just to check some vitals and then discuss options for you to consider? Sounds like anxiety to me, but I am no expert! My symptoms are similar but I manage to sleep well. Dizziness, visual speckles, tinnnitus, intermittent nausea, heart racing and general feeling of being anxious, I've been to see my GP and started therapy a few weeks ago. Hoping it starts to help!

[rpg1982]

Hey there, I'm sorry to hear about what you're going through. I know from personal experience it's no fun at all. In a few days it will be six years since my father passed away from pancreatic cancer, and my symptoms seem to have been kick started by his death as well. Immediately surrounding the time of his illness I didn't go through much in the way of anxiety, but that's probably because I was going to warehouse parties and doing lots of drugs at the time. I think I was unknowingly dumbing down my reaction. My anxiety actually arouse right around the first anniversary of his death a year later. The symptoms you describe sound similar to what I experienced at the time. That feeling of being unable to catch your breath can be really frightening, and often we over compensate and actually cause ourselves to hyperventilate. This can be responsible for the tingling or numb feeling you're experiencing. While there's a strong chance your symptoms are all related to your health anxiety, you should still probably go talk to your doctor about them and have them check you out to be sure.

Regardless of the issue, here's something for you to try when you're feeling this way. Sit or stand with your back straight, and breath in, letting your belly expand on inhale (not your chest). As your belly expands your diaphragm is allowed to drop down which lets your lower lungs expand more. When you feel like your belly can't expand anymore, start to expand your chest. At the end of your inhale hold the breath for a count of two or three. Then gently exhale; try to make the exhale be longer that your inhale. Slowly release the air. Generally it's good to do this in through the nose, out through the mouth, but I often just do in and out both through the nose. Do this type of breathing for a minute or two and hopefully you'll be a bit calmer. Once you're feeling less worked up, remove the second part of breathing into your chest; just inhale through your nose, expanding your stomach. When your stomach can't expand anymore, hold gently for a second or two then slowly exhale. Breathe like this for as long as you want or until you feel comfortable again. The lower lungs have a ton of blood vessels so expanding the diaphragm to inhale lets us actually use the oxygen much more effectively. When you get sort of breath and start to feel panicked the tendency is to breath deeply into the upper chest. When we're anxious our chest can feel very restricted so it's easy to start feeling more and more like we can't catch our breath because of this resistance.

This technique has been very helpful for me in a recent resurgence of my anxiety. I use it to help me fall back to sleep if I wake up in the middle of the night and have difficulty falling back to sleep, but it's very effective for any sort of panicked state. Hopefully this helps you in some way!

[Dizzykitty]

So sorry that you have those things. You're in good company. In my case a lot of those symptoms were actually caused by an adverse reaction to an antibiotic, (delayed reaction). I hope yours are not caused by that, but if they are it's important to make sure you never take that same class of drug again. So be sure to check if you happened to take an antibiotic in the last year--anxiety is something that is made much worse by some of them. Please check and if so, do not take them ever again, particularly if it is a fluoroquinolone antibiotic. There are lots of alternatives. If it is this, don't panic, your symptoms will eventually pass. Either way, it helps me with the muscle jerks, etc to take a magnesium supplement, and acupuncture has helped a lot with everything.