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11 years and counting

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2024-10-31 6:49 AM

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Feels like hell week all over!!

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Roller Coaster Withdrawal

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Smile....and don't shoot the messenger

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Anxious first thing in the morning


9 years ago 0 6252 logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo 0
On another site I was on I posted a lot of information on how the mind works, explaining why it does the things it does. First off anxiety and panic are normal if there is a reason for them. A lot of it is subconscious and protects you. All of it is dictated by memory. The trigger does nothing but trigger memory. The mind works on appropriate. If memory says panic five minutes after waking is appropriate it will. If it says do it all morning it will. You have to give it an option and a reason not to find panic appropriate. 

This is where it gets complicated because thinking positive is not enough. When and how you think positive are important. Positive does not work if you have a negative thought riding on it. It takes little to change a positive to a negative. You can think positive all day and go to bed negative and you will wake negative. So timing is more important than how often. Your mind has a lot of negative survival skills, the key is to not use them for anything else.

Davit
9 years ago 0 1 logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo 0
Thank you for sharing the information about the morning anxiety. I am going to try that technique. I had my first panic attack three years ago after I moved far from home and took my first real job. I was living alone at the time and the fear began with loneliness and worries about my safety being alone. I had my first panic attack at work. My job is stressful and can be emotionally draining (I work with children who have disabilities).  After 9 months on Paxil I felt 100% better and slowly weaned myself off. That was in July 2014. I now live with my fiance and will be getting married in September. Once again I will be moving even further from family and friends very soon. My panic attacks started again in April. I tried Lexapro which made me worse. I am now on a low dose of Zoloft which makes me feel drowsy and just yucky but has improved the frequency/severity of the panic attacks some. Anyway, I wake up every morning around 5:30/6:00AM with anxiety! Horrible anxiety that slowly builds and builds until around mid day when I have a break down or panic attack. Today I had to leave work early because I knew what was going to happen. I understand the frustration of just wanting to be yourself again. I often find myself crying for that very reason. My fiance will say things like "why are you crying? There is no reason to cry." He doesnt understand the feeling that you are a stranger to your own body. The loss of control over your fears and emotions. I wouldnt wish this hell on my worst enemy. Finding this site has given me hope. The more I learn, the more logic I have to fight back against the thoughts of negativity. My biggest intrusive thought is that I have something wrong with my heart. When my anxiety is very bad I check my pulse to see if I'm going to have a panic attack... or if I am being honest, I check it to make sure I'm not having a heart attack. So I'm trying to fight the crazy with more crazy which doesnt work. I've been focusing a lot on breaking the cycle/habit of checking my pulse this week.
9 years ago 0 6252 logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo 0
This is a grounding technique. I call it stacks and is based on the fact most people can only hold six thoughts in their head before they have to lose one. That also is a big reason for anxiety. Groups of random thought but not large enough groups to make sense since other groups are interfering cutting them short and having them not make sense.

It works like this. You think of something like a horse and visualize all the kinds of horses you know. Painted horses, rocking horses, pictures of horses. When you can see this clear you add something different, say boats or flowers and try to keep as many of the horse as you can while you add on the boats. Keep adding things that are clear and make sense till the anxiety is gone. This is feedback that stimulates Seratonin to do it's job. The very thing you are increasing your SSRI to do. Not a substitute for the SSRI but a helper. 

Short half life Benzo's have always been a common mistake because of the fear of addiction but because of the ups and downs they are more prone to abuse. I was addicted to Ativan for years before I switched to Valium so I could get off it.

Anxiety in the morning happens because you have switched to conscious thought from unconscious. Night is when your Hippocampus sorts and moves important thoughts from short term memory to long term. This sorting is also the reason for Eureka moments in the middle of the night. And also why some of them are not in the morning. If this sorting is badly interrupted you might not be able to remember something from the day before. Alcohol is a depressant because it causes seratonin to block information. It allows a person to sleep till it wears off but leaves a person looking for something that is missing. Street drugs do the same but with Dopamine instead of Seratonin. Morphine does the same which is why there is withdrawal from it.

It does take time to get better (called recovery) but it does happen.

Stacks works when other grounding techniques don't because it leaves no room for negative since a person can not hold that much neutral thought and the negatives at the same time. Since the neutrals in groups (horse) are related, the negative gets dropped. This is considered appropriate by the mind to do. Stacks doesn't leave room for doubt of a positive thought because there isn't one. They are all neutral thoughts (unless you are scared of horses or boats, pretty hard to be scared of flowers)

As for physical symptoms. They come from the pituitary glands direction and it comes from direction from the hypothalamus which comes from Hippocampus, the last two being where memory is stored. Accepting the symptoms as just facts of life for the time being will reduce these memory spots from stimulating the symptoms over time. They are only there because memory says they are supposed to be. It is wrong but it can only work on what it thinks is appropriate.

Davit
9 years ago 0 3 logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo logo 0
So since my anxiety and panic came back rearing it's ugly head about a month ago, I have been waking up and panicking pretty much withing the first 5-10 mins of getting up.  The negative thoughts whirl around my head, and even though I challenge them, use possitive affirmations, state the facts, such as "I am going to be all right," "there is nothing physically wrong with me," "Heavenly Father is here with me and will give me strength"; I just keep falling back into the negative thoughts

I think the worst thing for me is the physical symptoms of anxiety and panic, the physical feelings challenge everything I know to be true. I've gone through check ups, ER visits and all of my physical symptoms are anxiety...I've been told over and over again.  

I know it is going to take time to heal.  My psychiatrist has changed my medications, upped my dose of celexa, and changed me to a longer acting benzo to help me relax.  I know these changes take time.  My therapy is slow going, and I sometimes lose patience because I just want to be myself again.

I am looking for any suggestions at this point to make starting my day a little easier, and maybe be able to better function.  

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