Anxiety relating to depression

[Anxiously_Mikey]

For 3 weeks, I have been dealing with anxiety (which I usually experience mostly as chest tightness and floods of negative thoughts). During the few occasional moments where these symptoms subside a bit, the depressive feelings creep in hard. As I have been working hard to do what I need to do to live with this anxiety (any hopefully overcome).. will the depression subside as well? Or is that perhaps a separate issue?

Also.. I read that it helps to write things down. I have been writing a LOT.. many, many pages. I guess it helps me feel slightly better. But EVERYTHING I write is simply specifics about what I am feeling horrible about. Is this the right course of action?

[Agora1]

Hi Anxiously_Mikey, There is a thin line between anxiety and depression. I think writing down all the negatives is making you depressed. If you are going to write down anything, write down all the positive things in your life and move forward from there.

[Anxiously_Mikey in reply to Agora1]

I agree, they might be making me depressed. But, a lot of repressed memories are rising to the surface, and perhaps I am 'addressing' them (which I think I am supposed to be doing?) by writing them down.. not sure..

[Agora1 in reply to Anxiously_Mikey]

Mikey, unless you are going to share the list with a therapist, you might not be getting anywhere by just writing them down. I feel a professional needs to help your dissect these repressed memories that are finally rising to the surface. Without some help, I'm afraid you will become overwhelmed and just go round and round not knowing how to address them. That's just my thought.

[Devin76oh]

Depression and anxiety go hand in hand unfortunately.

The thing about these two is that we tend to think of the worst when we should think about the best. I call them positive what ifs versus negatives. We tend to look at the negative outcome of everything which then gets us anxious and ultimately depressed. Really, life is great and we need to focus on that and see why life is great. Regardless of how we physically feel, we need to know that we have great things happening in our lives. Even the smallest thing can be a huge plus.

For me, I thank God for everything that has happened to me even with this anxiety that I am living with now.

God has blessed you with MANY things, family, friends, a job, a gf/bf, husband/wife, kids etc. We need to make sure we see that and focus on that.

Im a Christian and one thing I have worked on is praying on things when they go right versus when things are going not so great.

Keep on going and it will get better day by day. Patience, trust, and faith are incredible.

[Andrea1915]

I have the depression thing right now from having severe anxiety for many weeks straight I think the depression comes because our bodies get burnt out with all the adrenaline and cortisol hormones that release when we are anxious and having constant anxious thoughts are brains do not know what is real and what is not so when we have anxious thoughts the mind perceives this as something is wrong and the fight or flight response is activated in our system only it stay activated for a long time if the anxiety doesn't go away but once you get that relief of symptoms and your mind isn't going a hundred miles an hour with negative thoughts then we feel the depression this has been my experience with many of my episodes. I think writing down what you are feeling and thinking is good whether it's good or bad because the reason that's a good mind excersise to do is because you can look back on it and see things in perspective once the anxiety has died down and you see all the things you were telling yourself and how none of that came true or happened then you can say wow I was really going through it in my head at this time or day and I think it helps people realize the irrationality of some of the things we think over and over again.