Its been awhile

[shrs3]

Its been a while since i posted. Im not doing good at all. Im scared for myself. And have really been thinking about going to a paych hospital. Still havent left the house so this makes it about 3 weeks now. I left once to go to my psychiatrist office which was very hard to do. He put me on 10 mg of prozac and and 0.25mg of xanax. After taking Prozac for about 5 days i gad a terrible panic attack. I was ripping out my hair and throwing things thinking i was going to pass out. Then after that was over i was questioning whether it was the prozac so i called my doc and he said to take the xanax twice a day and see if tomorrow was bettet. That night i didnt sleep very good. The next night i had the most terrifying panic attack. I felt like this wourld wasnt real. Nothing is real and existing wasnt real. I threw things, ripped my hair out in a few different spots, yelled for my mom. I called my doctor and he said to stop taking the porzac and take the Xanax. The very next night (last night), i couldnt sleep. I fell asleep around 3;30 and again woke up at 5am with a terrible panic attack. This time i got it a little under control. But these last two days i cant stop thinking about existing and the world. I dont know what to do because these thoughts are absolutly terrifyjng and ive always had these but not to this degree. I think about it 24/7 and i cant turn it off. The xanax isnt really doing anything for me i think because its such a low dose. So im desperate and dont know how much longer i can hold on. Any tips please?

[Jeff1943]

Shrs3, you are not going to feel like this forever, you are going through a bad patch at the moment because your nervous system has become over sensitised and is playing all sorts of tricks. But the power of anxiety is limited, it cannot kill you or disable you or make you lose your mind. All the feelings you describe have been experienced by many others here and you can and will recover given time.

Work closely with your doctor to find an anti anxiety med that works for you remembering that they can take several weeks before you experience the benefit.

It's also helpful to accept the bad feelings for the moment so you can break the vicious circle of your bad feelings causing fear that causes more bad feelings causing more fear etc. Accept the bad feelings as calmly as you can and with the minimum of fear and if you can achieve that you give your sensitive nerves time to recover and be pacified and when that happens you are on the way to recovery through self help.

This is going to turn out alright for you, rest assured and the first step is to get your meds sorted out. I wish you well.

[shrs3 in reply to Jeff1943]

Thanks i know i keep telling myself this is only temporary. But its been like 3 weeks so its a little worrying to me now. But i have to stay positive and tell myself that i will get through this

[Justme28]

Shrs3, I am hoping by now that you are feeling a little better. I haven't been on the computer much so didn't see the email pertaining to your comment until just now. I have taken both Prozac and Xanax. As for the Xanax, you might feel that it is a small dosage but most doctors are very cautious about prescribing it. I have been on it for several years so I am aware of how it effects me and when is the best time for me to take it. Do you have a specific time that the doctor says to take it or just when you feel that you need it? Either way I would suggest that you find some place to sit/lay down and relax when you take it. It should help the medication be more effective and you will probably feel more of the effect too. Everyone reacts to medication differently so I can't tell you exactly how it will or should make you feel. If for any reason you do not like how it makes you feel then tell your doctor right away. As for the Prozac, I started at 10 mg then moved to 20 mg and then 40 mg. At the 40 mg dosage I had some side effects and so the doctor dropped it to 30 mg. We found that I could not go any higher then 30 mg, otherwise I had the same side effects. What I have found that works best for me, is to ask the doctor what are the major side effects I need to watch for. That way I am not reading the paperwork and working myself about every possible little thing. If I am changing from a different medication I always make sure to ask my doctor if I need to slowly quit the old and start the new or if I can just stop and start the new. Contacting your doctor when you feel that what you are going through is not right is the best thing that you can do. I hope that this might have helped you some. Please let me know how you are doing and if I can do anything else to help you.

[shrs3 in reply to Justme28]

Yea, my instructions are to take 2 a day of the xanax. Since the panic attacks arent as bad, I started to take 1 a day. But we will see I guess

[Justme28 in reply to shrs3]

How are you doing on the xanax? Are you still able to just take one? My doctor is trying to wean me off mine, so every 2 months she drops the amount a little more. I have learned how to ration myself but also make them last a month. When I pick up my prescription I seperate it into atleast 3 bottles. I keep one, my mom gets one and my son gets the other. So I have to go to one of them when I run out. Hope you are handling this time of year ok. Let me know how you are doing.

[TruthSi72]

Hi shrs3

How are you today?

I just read your post and found it interesting. I found you interesting.

I'm sorry that you have been experiencing these attacks. Don't worry, they won't and don't define you. You're going through a phase, we're always going through phases...we're only human.

How old are you if you don't mind me asking?

I used to experience nighttime panic attacks every night. Here is what I know.

I discovered that unless I am severely tired that I am quite a light sleeper, this means that when I dream and my heart is beating fast because of my dreaming that this sometimes wakes me up; it is at this point that I go into an immediate panic because I have convinced myself that this is wrong and that it must mean I am dying...of course, I wasn't.

I mean this would happen every night and it took me a while to realise that I couldn't be dying every night, so it must be something else. It was. It was my thinking. So, I new one thing...I wasn't going to die. Great. So, along with the other things I was doing, like breathing practices etc I had to rethink how I needed to react to these night time attacks...I decided that what I had to do was to take the piss out of myself.

So when this happened again I did this...upon waking and feeling my heart beating fast I would take a few deep breaths while saying to myself "not again, what a pain in the ass, you're ridiculous Simon you really are, now just calm down...slow...the heart....back...down...I began to realise that if I was dreaming and my heart was beating fast because of what I was dreaming, then I woke and became panicky then this was just adding to the adrenaline was coursing through my body and so, seeing as I wasn't in danger and there was nowhere to run that this was the cause of my panicking!

Now...I wake up still, almost every night, where I wake mid-dream and my heart is beating fast, because I'm a light sleeper...I take one breath, then another and my heart beat slows down...the downside of this is that I can be awake for awhile and have to read or something, but other times I go back to sleep quite easily...the simple answer is that I understand it's just a thing that happens and that there is no reason to panic.

It's really down to conditioning your thought process and thinking.

I also understand you're thinking about existence and this world.

When you experience the concept of this world not being real this is called dissociation and is another side effect of the anxiety. You're not mad.

I used to sit on the toilet, I would lock myself in when one of these thoughts would come into my head, and panic.

I would love to know what your thoughts are on this subject specifically.

Could you explain?

You will get through this.

Best

S

[shrs3 in reply to TruthSi72]

Im 22 years old! The panic attacks have been getting better, however , the dissociation is still lingering. I still get those exsistence thoughts, theyre slowly but surely becoming a little less frequent. I've been attempting to leave my house. I get thoughts like i feel like im in a dream and i need to be woken up by someone. Like the last 3 years of my life are a dream(which i when my anxiety started). I feel like everythings an illusion and recently i started to think about how scary it is to not exsist anymore. Sometimes i think im going to go crazy, like hear or see stuff(which I never had). Or something crazy is going to randomly happen.

[TruthSi72 in reply to shrs3]

Thanks for the reply. I'm glad to hear things are becoming a little more positive for you. Don't worry too much about your existential worries, we all have them at one point or another. People far wiser than you or I have tried to fathom it out since the beginning of time.

What we do know is that we are made of the same stuff as the stars and that one day, whenever it is that each of our time comes to an end we will go back to being part of them again...but until then we have been given this wonderful and lucky opportunity to enjoy this beautiful thing called life and we should do exactly that. And honestly...you're far too young to worry about dying...it won't be long before they figure out a pill to make you live an extra hundred years! What will we do with all that extra time?

S