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Posts created by Kathryn

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 9

Withdrawal Symptoms

Hello, ive been taking medications (antidepressants/tranquilisers) for 3 years now. Ive been on my current medication Mirtazipine 30 mg for about 8 months and ive started reducing it because i started having severe panic attacks again. I also reduced my Valium to nothing over about 3 months (July-September) because i started having panic attacks whilst using them. Its been my decision to try and tackle this PD without meds, and i would like to know if anyone on here is trying it aswell. My thinking is that if i can reduce my anxiety whilst off this medication it will be gone forever, because in the past my exposure work was tainted by the fact that i was still taking medications. So far, i thought the Valium would be the worst, but it turns out the Mirtazipine is giving me the most horrific withdrawal symptoms. Does anyone know if the panic attacks die down after a few weeks when reducing SSRIs? Or am i making a huge mistake? Im currently keeping the panic at bay by taking propranolol tablets (im on 4 a day when my max is 6). If anyone has some words of encouragement or has had a similar experience with medications to myself it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 9

Going it alone- drug free, anyone else attempting this?

Hello, ive been diagnosed with GAD, it was PD previously but now i think its progressed. Ive had so many panic attacks that now they seem to have turned into an ongoing background noise which gets louder when i mess with medications or have major life changes. Im currently coming off Mirtazipine and i came off Diazepam over 3 months this last summer, which i thought was bad but it turn out the Mirtazipine is much much worse. I now cant go on packed trains/buses, in the backs of cars, eat in restaurants, work for more than a week. My confidence is at an all-time low. Ive decided to come off all my medications because i was having panic attacks regardless of what pills i popped. I had CBT during exams, it got me through them but now my anxiety seems to have come back with a vengeance. I had psychotherapy for a long time and it didnt help and neither did general counselling/holistic therapies. Ive done everything: SSRIs, benzos, psychotherapy, emotional freedom technique but for some odd reason none of that worked. Therefore i have decided to go it alone, come off all medications, stop seeing therapists who didnt know how to help me and try and do some exposure therapy without meds because it was obvious to me that doing exposure therapy on medication wouldnt work for me, because i just realised i wouldnt have been able to do it without the meds. So far, the withdrawal off the mirtazipine is awful, i havent really left the house for 3/4 weeks, and had to quit some work experience i had going for me. I dont think the cbt i had earlier this year was administered properly since she didnt structure any exposure therapy with me, she just outlined the CBT principles and then left me to it, thank god i found this site because she didnt even give me any panic attack/anxious thought sheets or ANYTHING to carry on with. This is very very shoddy work if you ask me.

Anyway.........now you know all about me and if i do end up curing myself i will tell everyone i can how i did it. I would like to hear from anyone who has decided to do exposure work meds free. If im making an awful mistake please tell me! I dont want to set myself up for a fall. Also, if youve had adverse effects on medications i would also like to hear your experiences since i do sometimes think im the only person (as well as professionals) who believes i can make myself better without drugging myself up for the rest of my life.

Thanks for reading,

Scarlett.

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 9

Going it alone- drug free, anyone else attempting this?

Thanks for replying, the thing is im reducing the Mirtazipine just as a psychiatrist told me but even slower because its too quick what she suggested. Im just seeing if i can ride out the withdrawal. It is my experience that a doctor/psychiatrist/pharmacist knows little about how each individual will respond to lowering doses, therefore i choose to do it myself. I lost confidence in professionals a long time ago!

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 9

beta-blockers?

I have found that Propranolol is the best medication for panic disorder by far. Propranolol is nothing to be feared because all it does is literally block adrenaline from being released in bucket loads into your body. It is the high level of adrenaline being released into your body that causes a panic attack. I found a useful experiment to show this at -

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1667698/

(if that doesnt work just search "propranolol drop adrenaline levels" or something in google)

Also, dont worry about overdosing, you would have to take 46 of the 10 mg tablets to cause heart failure. These pills cut right to the chase if you dont think you can handle the panic attacks symptoms at any particular moment. Without the awful side effects and withdrawal symptoms of SSRIs i wish i had just stuck with these little pills in the beginning! Being someone who has tried virtually every anti-anxiety/antidepressant going this is the safest and most efficient drug available from your GP.

Hope that helps someone out there.

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 9

Why panic happens.

Hi!

I really know what you mean about being on the "wrong road" and that distraction works. I found that while meditating through focusing on my breath would make me start to panic because the thing that happens to me when i am panicky is that i start to focus on my breath and the feeling of suffocation escalates, so i changed this to focusing on the pressure between my two fingers, kind of like some of the buddhas you see who are touching their thumb and middle finger together. Within 5 minutes my breathing had calmed down when i checked it.

In response to how you understand panic I've always found it useful to think of the mind and body as seperate entities that react to eachother. You have a slight increase in adrenaline through your body- the amygdala (the part which controls your emotional response to stimuli)- in your brain interprets this as a panic attack (whereas it could be just excitement or stimulation)- you think "I'm panicking"- so your body releases more adrenaline because the brain in the form of anxious thoughts is telling the body that it is in danger and so on. What has happened in people with anxiety disorder or panic disorder is the amygdala is interpretting an increase in stimulation as a threat when there is no threat. Therefore your body responds by pumping your body full of adrenaline to fight/flee from the threat. This can even be your heart beating faster when youre walking so you think you're having a panic attack (sadly this actually happened to me!)

I have GAD and because there is such a continual feeling of being under threat im tired because adrenaline makes the body speed up - Its like a short distance sprinter trying to run a marathon! So you train the brain to question if the stimulation is in fact fear- i think this is where CBT works its wonders. Relaxation techniques give your body a bit of a break from running the marathon. Meditation is basically a regimented form of practicing distraction from the thoughts (anxious or not) that are constantly whizzing round your brain so you can be more objective towards thoughts and eventually control them.

These are my observations that i have gathered through my journey so far. I hope this helps someone understand their own anxiety.

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 9

We are not sick

I find that this website has really helped reinforce the idea that anxious people are not "mentally ill." Part of having an anxiety disorder is that you think you are going crazy and will die of the suffering it causes and realising that this is not true is the first step i think to getting better. Since anxiety disorder is a behavioural pattern you learn to be anxious, and therefore you can learn not to be anxious. I think the "disorder" part of it gives you some reassurance at first because you want recognition of your suffering but then the disorder part is connected with being insane, crazy, a psycho, mentally ill etc. mostly because some professional forgot to tell you that you can be cured. Its the helplessness that leads to labelling yourself mentally ill. Its a bad place to be for sure, and the incompetance of professionals to truly educate people on the reality of their diagnosis is where the blame is due for this popular misconception.

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 9

Meds or no meds? Cure or no cure?

In response to your question i have to say i dont know if GAD is curable yet because i have it and im still recovering. Being prone to anxiety is like being diabetic- you have to change your lifestyle and your attitude in accordance with it. If youre cured or not just depends on taking the necessary precautions. Its like do you stop drinking because you get a hangover, most people prefer the effect of the alcohol so they drink even though they get hungover. Some people who hate the hangover stop drinking. So changing your lifestyle and looking after yourself in all ways is preventative of the anxiety. All people get ill at one point or other, thinking of the positives of GAD- in response to a diagnosis you look after yourself through nutrition/excercise better and this can reduce your chances of cancer or other incredibly painful diseases later in life.

On the subject of meds- i have tried everything LITERALLY, antidepressants (about 5 different ones) anti-anxieties (buspirone, diazepam) mostly because i was not ready in my head to tackle the causes of my anxiety. I believe it takes time for you to get to know your body and mind and find the best methods of coping. Taking drugs didnt make me less anxious in the long term, only the short term which is obviously a NO CURE answer. I regard myself as lucky because i started having anxiety in response to the medication and i decided enough was enough. Psychotherapy didnt help me, it just made me more anxious.

Everyone is different, my cure is not your cure but if you keep searching you can find what works for you. Popping a pill may be fine for some people but it just seemed like a socially acceptable drug addiction to me. I had a CBT therapist who had suffered really badly with anxiety but she cured herself through meditation and CBT and general looking after herself which gave me hope to cure myself. I believe no therapist can do this for you, they can only give you the tools and the rest is up to your own determination to cure yourself.

There is no cure for anxiety because it is not a disease. Everyone feels anxiety its just that people with anxiety disorders feel too much. So therefore you learn to reduce your anxiety to a normal level and BANG! there you are, youre cured. Its hard to believe when youre new to anxiety but after a while you start to think "im fed up with this, im sick of popping pills, im sick of talking to people who dont understand what im going through, im going to cure myself"

And here i shall finish the rant!

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 9

anger during anxiety

Yes i do. I suppose anxiety and anger are pretty similar, as they both consist of you being fired up with adrenaline. I think i must use it as a way to blow off steam to get angry and have an arguement. Im trying to go in the gym and excercise when im angry though so i dont upset people as much. have you find anything that works to calm yourself down?

14 years ago 0 +0 / -0 9

What does Depersonalization Feel Like

This is my experience of it- i cant feel the pressure of the air around me and my body and mind go numb, and have no emotions at all not for myself or other people. Everything feels incredibly unreal and i normally start panicking, its like being trapped in a nightmare but you know its not real. I only experience this is a very powerful panic attack. I suppose its when youve got so much adrenaline going round you you have an out-of-body experience. Its pretty cool looking back on it, its terrifying when it happens.

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