Exhausted 😞

[Ckd123]

I have woken up every morning since I began suffering with anxiety three years ago thinking I am dying. It is absolutely exhausting thinking you are dying every single day. I am so tired of this and the longer it goes on the more of a toll it takes on my health. I can’t enjoy life at all, I’m just miserable and stay at home in bed most of the day. I used to love life. After suffering for three years I don’t think I’ll ever be better.

[Traz60]

My heart goes out to you, it truly does! I too, have suffered with anxiety and severe panic attacks for most of my adult life. Of course, everyone is different, so I can only tell you what finally worked for me years ago. First, let me give you bit of background about myself. I'm a 57 y.o. female. I have only 1 child and that child is now 34 y.o., but when he was only 2, I had a nervous breakdown and spent 3 months in a psych ward at a local hospital. I had developed horrible postpartum depression that never got resolved. Therefore, fit 2 years the depression just got worse. Back then (and even now to a point) treating depression and anxiety is a really just guessing game. They toy around with different meds until they hopefully find one that works for you. Of course, back then, they were so much more clueless than they are now. They've come up with meds that are all so much better than years ago, but it's still a guessing game as to which med would work best for you.

If you're staying in bed most of the time, it sounds a lot more like depression symptoms instead of anxiety. However, I'll take your word and address your anxiety first. As I said, anxiety for me always resulted in severe panic attacks. For the general anxiety they prescribed 10mg. of Valium/ 2x per day. When I suffered a full blown panic attack, I was told to take 4 10mg. tabs all at once. It took time to finally kick in, but it helped. Especially to keep me from having to call for an ambulance ride to the ER, which terribly expensive. Mind you, each panic attack was like having a horrible seizure. I truly thought I was dying. Now onto the depression part (which you didn't speak of.) If you're staying in bed all day, then it really sounds like you need to be treated for that as well. The last med I was on for years, was Lexapro. It did seem to work for me. Though I finally weaned off of them entirely several years ago. However, I do still occasionally take my Valium when I'm having a bad day dealing with anxiety. In ending this very long reply, I can honestly tell you that a cl ok de friend of mine (a neighbor) was probably the biggest help of all when I was clinging to my bed. She would come over every morning after getting the kids off to school, and force me to get involved in whatever activity she could possibly dream up. She would make me get ready to go out in public a do things, regardless of my objections. We would do lots of gardening projects or she would just take me to her house for morning coffee etc... I really owe her a debt of gratitude! Honestly, I don't think I would've made it without her constant devotion to pushing me to help myself climb out of my self absorbed situation.

One more thing before I go. Please do not waste these days of your life. You never know when something else can come along and truly destroy your ability to funcuion abd lead a full productive life. That's what's happening to me right now. I'm in such pain it makes living life mostly impossible. Now I only wish I hadn't allowed all those years to pass me by and rob me of the joy when my body was healthy. I wish you the very best in your endeavor to get well and lead a more calm, meaningful life. Never give up! I'm not so sure if I've helped, but thought I'd give it a try. My prayers are with you! You can and will beat this! Please just push yourself, first to see a Dr., and then to never resign yourself to the urge to allow this horrible existence to take over.

Good luck!

Tras60

[Jeff1943]

Ckd123, I can explain why you have this feeling that you're going to die when you wake up each morning. But first: you are most certainly not about to die and many people have posted on this forum with the same feeling so you are not alone, you are one if many.

Everybody has a built in concern not to die early, but when your nervous system is over sensitised by high anxiety all our fears are exaggerated ten times.

So every morning you wake up with this irrational fear and the fear hormone this releases keeps your nervous system over sensitised and stops it from returning to normal.

Something must have happened in your life a while back to cause your nerves to become sensitised: maybe some trauma or worry or stress or overwork or being overwhelmed with problems to solve.

Once sensitised our nerves play tricks on us and in your case this means that the normal reaction not to die early has become magnified into an obsession that death is imminent.

No wonder you wake up exhausted, who wouldn't with the stress of worrying about dying every morning.

Do you want to reclaim your life back, Ckd123? Do you want to free yourself of this obsession and start enjoying your life once more?

Then you must do something to help that happen - because if you can desensitise your nervous system and return it to normal your exaggerated feeling of dying will cease.

You need to stop flooding your jangled nerves with fresh fear hormone every morning. If you can do that your nerves will gradually recover.

So instead of reacting to your thoughts if death with fear you should try accepting the strange thoughts for the time being. Because if you accept the thought of dying calmly and fearlessly (knowing full well it's only a thought and is not going to happen) then you will give your tattered nerves a chance to recover.

Not today, not tomorrow and not next week but before too long. After all, you spent months and possibly years getting yourself into this state so you must expect to spend a few weeks or even months getting out of it.

That is what your recovery depends on: accepting the bad feeling for the moment and getting on with your life. Because you can't fear dying and accept the bad feeling at the same time. The more you accept the feeling the less you fear it - and that gives time for your nerves to lose their sensitivity.

[DeeM3]

Think about it...you said it yourself....3 yrs. You are still here.

[Anxious2befree]

Hi have you tried mindfulness? Here is a link. Lay down and get comfortable and really listen to it and focus on the whole thing. youtu.be/1vx8iUvfyCY(Not working as expected?)

[Ckd123]

Thank you all for taking the time to reply to me. Everything you all have said makes sense to me, I just need to work harder at convincing myself this is just anxiety. I have been on medication (Prozac) for the past 6 weeks and haven’t noticed a great improvement, I’m dreading them not working and having to start all over again with new meds. I practice mindfulness and I do enjoy it, it relaxes me and puts me to sleep but once I wake from that sleep the anxious thoughts and feelings are back. I’m just so tired of fighting my horrid thoughts all the time. When I first got anxiety, 3 years ago, I had just turned 32?years old. My mum died from cancer when she was 32 leaving 4 young children. I have 4 young children now and my greatest fear is for them to lose me as kids and go through what my brothers and I went through losing our mother so young. It still effects us all in different ways to this day, I don’t think we’ll ever properly get over it. Thankfully we had a wonderful father who is still with us today.