Do your anxiety symptoms last for days/weeks?

My anxiety started acting up about three weeks ago after I had a bad experience smoking pot , i was ok at first then a few days later i started to feel like I’m in a constant panic attack (like when i smoked) When I finally feel normal I think about it and go into another one and I am a huge over thinker so it’s like it never goes away . When I’m in one I my heart beats really fast my hands and feet get sweaty my mouth gets dry I get really dizzy and I sometimes feel like I’m living In a dream nothing seems real and when I finally pop back into reality and realize it is real it makes me panic again, life really sucks right now I just want to be back normal ... am I losing my mind? 

 Report this

❤ 0

 Reply

Hello i too have anxiety problem. It comes out of the blue. Ots been 2 years i n suffering from it. But from last two months i m getting attacks continuously for whole day. I m sick of it. Can u suggest any remedies apart from medicine. Bcz i dnt want to have medicine. Any motivational thing😔 thankyou 

This forum has made me feel so much better..... my anxiety gets triggered after a day or 2 of drinking; I drink to cope with anxiety-its such a vicious cycles.  Last night I was up all night with ruminating thoughts, tight chest, worrying I was having a heart attack, etc., I have felt like that before but i recently when off my anxiety meds a few months ago and forgot how bad the physical side of anxiety is... I want to feel like myself again.

I am going to try the magnesium.  Its a vitamin so it can't hurt? Reading everyones comments on here helps me realize i'm not alone-and this too shall pass.

I know exactly how you feel.When I have anxiety my symptoms last for along time.The main thing that bothers me is being afraid to stay by myself because I'm afraid of loosing my mind.Anxiety is a very scary thing.Mine will last for a month or two and then maybe not come back for 2 or 3 years.

I googled “Does anxiety come fr M the nervous system or the brain,” and this is what I clicked on first. I can NOT believe how many people have this. I’m not going to type out my whole story. Because of it, I started a Facebook group called Reality Bites. Bite Back. for anyone going through all this. (anyone can ask them join, but if it’s someone just there for kicks they won’t get in; come join!)

It’s been almost 20 years for me now. I’m on meds and it’s helped tons. I’m learning natural things on my own now and making herbal tinctures for different health issues. I wonder if there’s something somewhere that could cure this. I totally believe that the cure for absolutely everything is somewhere in nature, growing out of the earth and we’re supposed to figure it out. One of my friends cured his dogs cancer with weed oil. Pretty amazing. I tried smoking weed for anxiety, which was pretty dumb considering the reason I quit years n years ago was because it started making me anxious. lol 🙄

If you’re interested in anything herbal, I’m on Instagram, FB, Twitter & Tumblr under this_queen_of_swords. Maybe I’ll figure out how to cure it! lol Or maybe help it somehow at least. 

I’m wondering...the people here that have had it 24/7 for so long (was 3 months straight for me, my story is in the FB group)...are you on meds? I was 100% anti-meds til I was 70lbs in the hospital. It wasn’t easy, but it got better. It’s still not gone, but meds do help. I’d rather not be on them, but it is what it is. For now.

Important message to any of you fighting this mind controlled he//! I have been fighting this anxiety for a few years now, ill get spouts of no aanxiety to full blown attacks lasting weeks or even months...its very hard to adapt to, but first thing you need to do is go to the hospital and evaluate yourself, do blood tests and everything that's on your mind! This step will ease your mind so you know you are not dieing of cancer or a desiese...it helps a lot. This evil place you are placed sucks and feels like its not worth it....but it is and you have to fight it until lone of us figures out how to fully stop it! Quit caffeine slow down or give up alcohol and my best remidies to drink that helps sooth my mindis lavinder tea....make sure if you are drinkimg teas That they dont contain caffene...even caffene free teas have traces of caffeine so does chocolate and other items you would never expect. We all need to go though this and find things that help one another out so our kids do t have to do this alone like we feel we have!!!!!

I also know what you are feeling you have been going through anxiety and depression.i this situation you can Don’t let your anxiety take control of your life. If you feel overwhelmed, break up your day by taking a walk or doing something that will direct your mind away from your worries or fears.

Hi everyone,

*this might be a long one but this is basically the journey that I’ve been on regarding this terrible affliction. I urge you to read tho and apologize in advanced for any grammatical errors**

It’s been a long time since I posted about my anxiety attack that seemed to have lasted for weeks without any hope in sight, I come back every once in awhile tho and read almost everyone’s posts. I feel compelled to say something about this now more than ever because WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER and just to give an update on how I’m doing.

Back when it first got really bad, maybe about a year ago now, I tried everything. I would drink chamomile tea every time I could which would only help so much but it didn’t elevate my anxiety for a short time. I also found some tea called “cup of calm” that did wonders!! These two things I strongly recommend because it really helped me. Still tho, I couldn’t go to work because of this, days started blending together and I became incredibly depressed. I contimplated suicide but not because I wanted to die, it was because I didn’t know how else to relieve my anxiety and felt that was the only way. I tried going to work within the time that I took off because I was worried I would lose my job so I thought “suck it up and get your s**t together, otherwise you will ruin everything you’ve worked towards career wise”. I soon found out that it wasn’t that simple. The anxiety was so bad still that I had to leave work immediately, heart racing, blurred vision, hands sweaty and when I got home, I saw my girlfriend when I opened the door and broke down crying...

I said enough was enough, I scheduled an appointment with a doctor (didn’t have a primary at the time) and they unfortunately couldn’t see me quick enough so i really had to play the waiting game for something that wasn’t waiting for me. Finally got to see him and I told him my symptoms. He prescribed me Xanax .25mg and that was about it... I had to do more and this is something that I can’t stress enough. I made an appointment with a psychologist because I really didn’t know what else to do. I absolutely do not regret that now. I need to mention, I didn’t take the Xanax because my adolescence growing up consisted of friends that would abuse Xanax so to me it had a bad stigma. Don’t get me wrong, i abused my fair share of drugs during that time, hydrocodone (liquid and pill form), soma, deloted. Pretty much any downer I could get my hands on when i was younger but I got passed that and didn’t want to do that anymore (one too many very bad experiences). 

When I spoke to my psychiatrist, I told him my symptoms, leaving out the thoughts of suicide to him and every doctor I came across because where I live, they send you to the psychiatric hospital to be watched so you don’t harm yourself. Seclusion was the last thing I needed... But anyways, I asked him what should I do and he said take the Xanax.. I immediately started balling my eyes out because I absolutely did not want to take it and I’ll never ever forget what he told me, he said, “listen man, your worried about taking Xanax” and I said “yea” and he tells me “so without any hesitation you used to get high on downers, something that didn’t help you because you didn’t need to take those. Now your hesitant on taking something that will help you, something that you need to take because of your symptoms, take the f*****g Xanax”. Tough love and it made total sense. So I took the Xanax reluctantly still and it’s did help tremendously. Xanax is a great drug because it works so damn fast but the down side to it is that it doesn’t last very long, maybe 2-3 hours, 4 if you’re lucky so you would need another! Funny thing is, your really only supposed to take 2 a day! THATS 5-6 MORE HOURS OF THE SAME GODDAM ANXIETY THAT I SO DESPERATELY NEED TO RELEAVE! It was very hard for me because of my past addictions but I didn’t want to abuse this drug like my friends had, the only thing I was focused on was getting better so I wasn’t going to do anything that would jeopardize that. It would be Xanax, that would wear off so I drank the “Cup of calm”, then that would wear off and then I would drink chamomile tea, that would wear off and I could finally take my 2nd Xanax of the day, but then of course that would wear off so then some sleepy time tea so I could try and get some sleep. It was rough to say the least.

I couldn’t take it anymore tho. The Xanax wasn’t really helping like I hoped it would and I was tired of tea. The primary care physician wouldn’t write me another script of Xanax when I was done with it because he “ethically can’t” so I did something else that I strongly urge someone in our position to do and that’s go see a psychiatrist. Psychologist cannot prescribe, they are only there to listen to you and guide you. Psychiatrist however, that’s where you go and where you, I and all of us should have or should go in the first place. Your primary care physician will only treat the symptoms, i.e. Xanax, but the psychiatrist is there to treat the long term! 

So here’s where it gets interesting... if it hasn’t already...

I see the psychiatrist, after a long time of waiting because they can’t see me right away of course... f*****g health care system. My psychiatrist, who is actually a nurse practitioner, is an amazing woman who saved my life. I told her what I was going thru and the interesting thing that she told me is “since your anxiety is all day, Xanax isn’t really going to help you, it’s a great drug because it works so quickly but your going to need like 6 a day to get the desired effect that you want, which is relief, but 6 a day is not realistic and not healthy”. This is how people become addicted and this is how people ruin their lives and for someone in outback position, that’s the last thing we need if we are going to keep fighting. So she prescribed be klonopin, something that is just like Xanax only it last longer throughout the day but the semi downside to it is that it takes a tad bit longer to kick in. I was scared out of my mind when she said that because I literally felt like I could crumble at any moment. It had been a month and a half leading up to this point that I’m talking about now and if I conveyed it properly enough, it’s been a rough f*****g road...

So this is where I’m at now everyone. I take .5mg of clonazipam twice a day, 150mg if Zoloft and 100mg of Wellbutrin XL in the morning and I gotta say, I feel a hell of a lot better and that’s putting it lightly. I see my psychiatrist every two weeks, 6 weeks now that it’s been a little over half a year of the daily routine and I see my psychologist on a regular basis to talk about s**t. The f****d up part of all this tho is that I’m not cured, there really is no such thing for what we have, it’s just maintaining and coping. But the routine I’m on now has given me a light at the end of this very very VERY dark tunnel. Something that I honestly thought would never happen. I had to up my dose to 150mg of Zoloft because I would still have bouts of depression. I still contemplated suicide but because I am self destructive by nature (I know that’s pretty vague but this is one thing I don’t care to share at this moment). Plainly out tho after they upped my dose I haven’t really felt like killing myself anymore. And again with the routine, my anxiety is very much manageable now. I sometimes go with 1 klonopin a day and the goal is to get that down to none. The Zoloft and Wellbutrin are for depression and anxiety so those help, just one in the morning and I should be good.

What I really want to say to everyone tho is to seek help, go to a psychiatrist and tell them what’s going on and they will help you. I’ve given in to the idea that I have a mental health condition that needs to be treated with medication, and while I have an addictive personality, I don’t want to abuse the klonopin or anything else because all I want to do is get better. I’ve stopped drinking alcohol, I don’t drink caffeine and I don’t smoke weed, which btw I forgot to mention that I was an avid pot smoker and looked for weed that helps with anxiety and let me tell you the brutal truth, it’s bulls**t, didn’t help one bit. Sure it helps cancer patients eat and helps other people with other things but with anxiety, I’m not convinced. We were given a s****y friend in our lives called anxiety and that friend unfortunately is never going to go away. Mine certainly hasn’t. But what we can do is seek help, get healthy, get clean, get sober and submit to the fact that we have a mental health condition that requires us to take medication. Just like a diabetic will need his or her insulin, we need ours as well. We can be functioning people who love like everyone else and are able to laugh like everyone else with the proper treatment and it is out there. All you have to do is reach out. I don’t know any of you but I feel a strong connection with every single person that happens to come to this thread because we are all in the same boat. I hope you are well and I hope you reach out. When you do, don’t abuse the drugs, that’s how you end up back to square one, where we hated being in the first place, and speak to a psychologist while you are taking the meds, we have a greater chance of beating this with medication and guidence linked together, it’s not one or the other. Take care and take your life back. 

Much love,

-Hope(lessness)

Hi,

During the working day or around other people where it is busy or enviroments where not comfortable my head pressure / brain fog / tension headache builds to a point where it is near unbearable - this makes completing a day at work like climbing a mountain.

At home or in my own enviroment have no such problems - wish I could control it

Hello there. I know it's old, but i'm so happy to have finally found people like me... and i want to share my own experience.

I'm from switzerland, english is not my native tongue so excuse by advance all gramatical errors or mistake. I wanna tell my story.

About 6 months ago, i experienced my first panic attack. Actually, it was not just a panic attack, it was THE panic attack. At first, i had NO IDEA what was happening to me. See, i'm an avid gamer and i spend most of my free time in front of my computer playing games. One day tho, i suddenly feel like my chest was... weird. It was like a painful sensation, but more dull.

First, i ruled it off as one of those weird phantom pain i sometimes feel. But... it lasted. The only relief i had was by sleeping, so each day i was actually eagerly awaiting the time to go to bed so i could just sleep and forget about pain... Until one night. One night, it was too much, i did sit up in my bed and called my mom (yes i still live with her). She got to me and we took my heart rate, it was through the roof. Irregular and we calculated something like 120 bpm... And i was at complete rest.

See, the thing for me is my father died from a heart attack. Not immediately. He actually got to the hospital and lasted for months there with serious brain damage, but ultimately he died... So in the end, his heart killed him... So of course, thought of having an heart attack myself rushed through my head. My mother (who actually know what is a panic attack since she had some in the past) didn't recognized it as one at all. Actually she was thinking the same as me : Heart attack.

The driving to the hospital was the most stressfull thing ever. I thought i was dying, and i told my mom i was dying too... I know, it was uncool for her but i was in complete stress there. But something strange happened when we arrived at the hospital in the emergency waiting room, all the symptoms ? They subsided. The pain was gone, the stress too. They did all the tests they could and everything got back absolutely fine. Blood test, heart test, lung x-ray and yada yada yada. So i got back home, completely reassured and nothing happened again for 4 months and a half.

One month and a half ago, my mom was actually diagnosed with a tumor in her back. And actually, said tumor is what they call calcifareous or something ? I used google translate for this word so i'm not sure. Fact is... It couldn't harm her, but i think it was a trigger. See, i'm 32 years old, i work... but my mom represent the world to me. I live with her because she can't live alone since my father died. She doesn't want to live alone, and i'm happy to stay in my childhood place. We respect each others privacy.

But i think i realized with that that my mom... can actually die. I know, it's stupid said like that, but i think i never actually thought about it before that. A bit later while in another check-up, doctors discovered that she had something called "emphysema". With the doctor totally failing to let her know it was actually PRETTY SMALL and on the verge of actually resorbing itself given enough time and if she would stop smoking (which she did later when we had another doc telling us that)

But, what happened is all of those bad news about her health actually triggered panic attacks with her, at night. Which resulted in her waking me up 2 nights in a row at like 2 in the morning while saying she was having an heart attack, and resulting with me sitting on her bed, holding her hand and letting her sleep this way while i was just... guarding her.

So here we go, i had 2 nights with a total lack of sleep, and it seemed to me the 3rd night was going better... except when i got woke up by my mom again at 6 in the morning with her telling me there was an ambulance coming for her because she couldn't breath and she felt her heart was failing. I was... one of the most stressfull thing i ever experienced in my life. I called a friend so he could drive me to the hospital, we waited 3 hours in a waiting room without ANYBODY telling us anything, and when we finally got back to see her, panic attack was diagnosed because of her emphysema condition, and through other tests, they told her was the other doctors failed to do : That it was actually pretty begning, so she was reassured but she decided to take an appointement with a psychiatrist (that she still see) to sort out all of this.

She was reassured, but i wasn't. The three days of not sleeping + the stress actually hit the panic switch back. Few days later, the weird chest pain came back, the same i had 6 months ago... And even though it was the same, i don't know why but i thought of heart attack once again, no freaking idea why ! I saw a cardiologist that confirmed that there was nothing wrong with my heart at all, but i was so stupidly sure.

I did go see a psychiatrist that prescribed antidepressants, but it actually made things worst. Just talking to her was making me feel better, and it's where i made the mistake : I stopped seeing her.

See... in my head it was pretty simple : No pain anymore, no need to see the psychiatrist anymore but... oh god what a mistake. At first, it was fine and dandy, i was back to my old life. Then one day, it came back seemingly out of nowhere while i was mowing our lawn. Like... of all the things seriously !

So i got back at it. Emergency room telling me i got nothing, emergency room again with another doctor telling me it could be muscular and prescribing me painkillers that i had to take for a week... And my brain telling me the whole time it was something really serious since, if it was only a panic attack, the pain should subside as soon as i get checked by doctors like the first time. Actually today was the last day i had to take them and... guess what ? The constant chest pain is still there. You can't fight with painkiller what is created by your brain.

Bottom line, i called back my psychiatrist and asked for another appointment. Didn't have it yet, it's for the 2nd of july and i'm very impatient to see her again. I have a tranquillizer that is called "Temesta" that help when i really feel like the panic is going up.

The pain is always there, but not always at the same intensity. Sometimes it's something i barely notice, and other times it will make me unable to focus on anything else, thinking i will probably die soon. I always think i have an heart related problems, and when i try to reassure myself by saying i got no less than 3 doctors examine me in that field, i then think it's probably my lung, or something in my blood... and my brain. Anything to explain the weird pain that never goes away.

So yeah, protip for you people : If you have (like me) a pain in the chest that last for more than a month (like in my case), it is NOT a heart attack... Or you have the longest heart attack in the world. If you press on your chest and can produce pain this way, it's still not a heart attack. If your pain actually subside for a while when you do exercise (like walking or swimming), it's still not a heart attack.

My point is, at the end of of this very long post (which i apologize for) : If you're unsure about your pain, go see a cardiologist, a doctor... Run all the tests you can to put your mind a little more at peace. If everything goes back to "clear", don't think it will make the pain disapear instantly. Your brain, if it's like mine, will constantly try to disprove everything the doctors will tell you, telling you it's probably something they didn't see.

If you KNOW that you have nothing physical, for the love of whatever you believe in, do NOT search your symptoms on google because you will only HELP your brain create more symptoms with what you've read.

A simple example for me is that, at first, i had only chest pain... Then i've read somewhere that heart attack are often accompanied by tingling or numbness in the left arm... and since then, i often have tingling and numbness in my left arm. Why my brain can NOT reproduce tho, is the fact that if i did have a real heart attack, i would have trouble moving said arm... which is not the case.

I constantly check my pulse, which is a REALLY s****y habit of mine because as soon as i get over 90 bpm, i panic and think that my health is at risk, which only contribute to make my heart rate to higher five minutes later when i check it again.

Bottom line : Do not listen to your brain when it's telling you to not believe the doctors and that you have something very dangerous they didn't diagnosed. If they made all the test you can think off and everything got back clear, it's unlikely (especially in this day and age) that they missed a problem you could have (especially if it's related to your heart or lung). I know it's hard to not listen to your own thoughts, but trust me... You don't want to listen to them.

So yeah, it's been a month i have chest tightness and pain, but i finally understood it's me that can't get out of this anxiety spiral i put myself into. I really hope my psychiatrist will help me again get out of it, because i just want my life back. I feel like i can't do anything anymore without fearing for my life, and it's tiring. And again for me, the only moment of relief is when i go to bed because i can just... fall unconscious for a few hours and not think about the pain and discomfort.

If that can help anybody passing through there, i discovered swimming and walking actually help a lot relieving the pain, or making it completely disapear even if it's never for long. If you do decide to exercise, trust me, your mind will make your pain even more pronounced to dissuade you to do it but just push through ! Go swim, walk, do some push-up... It's good for your health anyway, and if you work like me, it'll make the pain disapear even if it's only for a brief moment. On the plus side, it's also natural.

Well that's all, can't wait for the 2nd of july now. Thank you for reading me.

There could be another reason for these symptoms so you could get them checked out for peace of mind. For anxiety symptoms lasting days I have personally experienced it. There is a vicious cycle of getting a symptom when you're anxious, then you notice it and start to worry about it. This goes on and on until it only feels like it gets worse and you don't take your mind off of it. Try understanding the symptoms wont hurt you, I thought for months I was going to have a heart attack, turns out my heart is actually really healthy. I became so adjusted to checking my heart beat I could hear and feel it at all times, which I thought was palpitations but it was actually just because I was paying attention to it all the time. This is just one example though, what symptoms are you experiencing?

hello yesterday i got my first anxiety panick attack when to the Er cause felt very fast heart beat and chest pain they took urine blood test everything normal also a heart test everything normal also xrays and everything normal the doctor came to the conclusion it was anxiety today i still feel fast heartbeat but its all in my mind cause yesterday the doctor would ask me are you feeling fast beating and said yes and the monitor showed regular heart rate sorry new to this hope someone can give me advice or i can help someone thanks