How did your anxiety start?

WorryBunny,

I am 44, Started when I was stressing over my daughters Wedding, That weekend came, one daughter got Married the other engaged. I got a call from my son's friends Father with concern for my sons well being at 1 AM.  Woke up the next day with horrible stomach ache .. then panic attack while driving home from the Wedding on the highway. 

This is my 2nd bout with Anxiety but the worst. On Citalopram for about 5 plus weeks now.   I have GAD (General Anxiety disorder and a little OCD)  Also believe I am starting Perimenopause.  I am on my way to feeling better but still have the odd "glitch"  I do believe it will end and I will be me again. Just a matter of time.   Hope this helps with your healing.   XX 

I cannot say when my anxiety started as it has been with me all my life.It has lasted through years afrer my birth stomach operation, sexual abuse, hunger, moving to my Dad's at 12 and a completge change of life stype..finacial and otherwsie, throught several emotional abuse by my stepmother, through taking tranquilizers to get by as a teen before college, through, college years of trying go know myself and through emotional bagage, through finding that all women are not evil or contempuous. My auant may have made me have oral sex onj her at 9 but she was just one woman. For years a woman's sex was viewed as sorta plastic and not real and with no real emotion. Ironicly, now that I am over it all I know I know all to well.and maybe more  than most that a woman is more than a Vigina. I went through. being  thown away by two marriages because they did not want to "take care of me" Funny I thought I was doing ok considering eveything. Anxiety became like my only friende and any conflict bt this time of some kind appealed to me as it helped me filll my life.Though college years of being put of grade propbation at one school and thriough seeing the writting on the wall and reluctantly being transfered to another non-liberal Arts school where my grade excelled and I studied all the time.

It all seemed to jumped out at me when I was 25. At that time I was 3 years into married to my first wife. I needed her to be emotional to me but she was I think emotionally retarted, an opinion that was verifiued by her behavior with our 2 daughters years later.

Anyway, I had jist gotten off wor and I was lying down watching a football came on Jan.2,1975. I woke up beside myself litterlly. I felt like I had two brains and niether wanted to work with the other. What happen over the next 5 years was a double life that even now causes anxiety. I tried sooooo very hard. So hard to take the highroad and to get myself out out the darkness that constenly shaddered my life no matter what.

When I was 43, in 1992 I was DX as Bipolar 2. This DX was changed to dissociative amnesia and idenity disorder and finally.....perhapps because of perhaps coming out of the dark some, as Deep depression. Of couse, uncontrolled emotion have a way of physically causeng chronic and eventually all kinds of ailments in your body, This beside the lasting negative effectws of a brith sugery.  Below give you an idea of what I have been through physically..

Present; REFLUX/GERD WITH HIETIAL HERNIA NEAR DIAPHRAGM...motility test done. Diverticulitis. ADRENAL TUMORS.Stomach spasms A-Fib.Tightness in chest, and shallow breathing.

HISTORY

Polyneuropathy 2015. Operation for L5 Disc herniation/ compression and traversing right S1 nerve root and a Synovial lumbar Cyst was removed 2015. Occipital Perifiral Neropathy and nerve stimulator in neck 2012 (so no MRI). Neurogenic bladder 2010, had Bladder stimulator but taken out later. Diabetis 1997 Inflammation of disc degeneration DX in 1996 Fusions at C-5 and C-7 and shoulder surgeries in ' 93 and '01. Malrotated stomach surgery at birth (scare tissue removed in 2004).

Now I am happily married to my 3rd wife just when I thought I  would never understand love. I have to say that the one who initiall thaught me love was God. Here is what I mean. 

A piece a wrfote gives one of my final thoughts about happiness.

Happiness I found in the earlier days was but a stain upon my brow that I must make smile. I hear a sadness in someones voice and say they would be happy if only me. A wish unfulfilled.

Loneliness closes all around and a heavy mist disturbs my thoughts to make me happier; to no longer to bare innocent guilt and shame of a life that talks too loud to be quite.

Yet, there remains a special song to sing into the void that would have alluded me but just enough to keep away the purple dark; a song written by God that lingers and is keeper of a love that grows to hide my discontent.

This song, a lonely hunter of contentment, swells in my heart with every missed beat. My song welcomes each breath I take in the mornings and on into the night. The melody it makes is a drum rolls heard only in my hearing but too quite to fully understand.

I had to overcome temptation. Not only in the religious sense but in the sense of not being a slave to my own thoughts. Here is what I mean.

SAVE ME???? from what?..a car wreck or a drowning,ha nice try!

We all face uncertain and confused temptations of life when they become millstones around our necks. Captive thoughts affect the decisions and choices we make. Consequences that live on long after an about-face. So, just what do we do and what do we think and feel? Where do we go to avert these unintended consequences that snare us into mind slavery? After all, we do want to do the right thing; figure it all out for ourselves.

*TEMPTATIONS*

Call to me softly from where you are

I am lost in the land of many rivers

Talk to me in your quiet voice

it leads me through this forbidden land

Speak to me from your heart. I need

each symbol and word to help me read

the map of my own damaged human heart

With each step, one at a time, in any direction

he land of many rivers calls to me unbidden

Parts of me stay behind as I start down the path

there to follow the well worn way that this

wicked land has made so easy for me

I listen intently for you to call me quietly from

the whispers that is hidden in the rustle of willows

and oak trees that are strewn along it's banks

Quick, show me the way back to you for the water

here is cold and deep and smiling at me!

This is in a nutshell my story. I just hope the forum monators thinks it is ok and do not jank it. They do that at times.

If you want to know the answer to resisting continued temptation;

Romans 7:14-20

We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And If I do what I do not want to do I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. Sin is anything God would not approve of according to the Bible.

Jesus said come to me; all that are heavy laden, and the I will give you rest. He said be not afraid; *********************I have overcome the world.

If you always live even in the shadow of God; you will never be in the dark.

 

Hi all!!!!My anxiety started bout 3 years....Went thru a nasty divorce and ex brainwashed my two boys and now they want nothing to do with me...Im 42 by the way...My boys were my world...I was a stay at home mom who volunteered at school and did the sports and scouts when they were younger...They are now 15 and 17...My ex never went to games or scouting events or anything with boys...All he cared about was goin out to eat with his mom instead...So me losing my boys was horrible and i went downhill fast...Meanwhile I was told that do to all the stress im also peri menopause for over a year so that doesnt help anxiety with hormones....Ive had panic attacks and first two i ended up in ER....But after drs doin test and saying heart is fine I learned to handle attacks better...been doin well but for past couple weeks have had chest pain and lightheaded...I dont think im anxious but know that with hormones its anxiety back with a vengeance....Tried meds but all gave me side affects so I just talk to myself and say It cant hurt me its anxiety...But at times its hard to keep believing that...I just hate the feeling that im goin to faint....Sorry for rambling but feels good to get it out....Thank you

Hello, I am 39 year old male. In good physical shape. In 2009 I was blasted with two major tramatic situations. My dad was caught cheating on my mother with an employee (we owned a family business ). Two weeks later I realized my wife of 15 years at the time was having an affair on me.

My first attack didn't hit until summer of 2010. I was in the barber shop. Until then I had remained married doing my best to retain my marriage and the well being of my children's lives. Little did I know the damage was more than my body could take. I fainted in the barber chair. I woke up in an ambulance with extremely low blood pressure.

3 days later I was cleared of any cardiovascular issues or stroke. I was diagnosed with PTSD. It had been a very rocky road for me every since. It's like a curse that won't leave.

Today, I have found a very good balance with exercise and medication. But my doctor tells me it will never leave. I'm so angry at times for this. But I can manage it, and I could have died that night when I found out all this information so I'm thankful.

The best advice I can give to anyone is hard stress relieving exercise and a good night's sleep. It WILL get better.

I am 19 years old, and for the past 5 and a half months my anxiety has been at it's worse. I have social anxiety, hypochondriasis, and panic attack disorder and depression.

I think ever since I was a child I've had anxiety. I would be afraid to talk and meet new people, and I preferred staying at home than going outside to mingle with the world. Up to today I am still that way; now my mom and other family members force me to go out so I can become more lively. Anyways I remember how I use to have panic attacks at night when I was a child and I honestly don't know where it came from or how it started. I would always think about dying and would be afraid to go to sleep, I would think about if my parents died, and this was at 6-7 years old. I shared a room with my sister so I kept my "episodes" to myself. We moved from my childhood home and into honestly the middle of nowhere at age 8. Around age 13-14 I started having panic attacks again and they would always be at night. Then I started to worry about me having a heart attack, AT AGE 14! I find that crazy. Whenever I would have these episodes I would sleep in my parents room.

March of last year my dad had an intracranial hemorrhage. Because of this I've become more of a hypochondriac. Someone has to be with his 24/7 because he is disabled, so he obviously needs to be taken care of. My anxiety got really bad April of this year because I started having panic attacks. I didn't have insurance until July of this year so when I was having panic attacks I didn't and couldn't visit the doctor. So I had to just deal with them, and I was having them so frequently that everyday I thought I was gonna drop dead. Recently I haven't been having panic attacks as frequently, about 2 nights ago I had one and the one before that was in early July. The fact that I had to take care of my dad scared me even more because I thought "God if I die, what will happen to him? Who will take care of him? What about mom? I don't want her to deal with this responsibility on her own." Because of my what if thinking, I dug myself into a digger hole or panic/anxiety. I worry so much about his care because I feel as though no one can take care of him as good as I do and I don't ever want anything lacking in his care, because he did take good care of me, my sis and my mom before. This is why I worry about becoming sick, I'll or whatever and turned into one of the biggest hypochondriac. This is also why I go to Dr. Google and look up my symptoms because I believe that if I can find my illness then I could get it under control and avoid death or disability. Its a weird way of thinking but its how I've been.

These are all the symptoms I've experienced and some have been by themselves and others have been accompanied by others: headaches, palpitations, sweating, fast heart rate, hyperventilating, chest pain, choking feeling, tingling, electrical zaps throughout the body, neck pain, weakness, dizziness, loss of appetite, nausea, back pain, hip pain, tooth ache, constant digestive problems and probably more I can't remember.

Because of these symptoms I've experienced fear in many illness and conditions: MS, heart attack, stroke, lupus, DVT, brain aneurysm, spinal/nerve injuries, pancreatitis, breast cancer, brain cancer, meningitis, PE, arteriosclerosis, kinking of the arteries, artery dissection, lung collapse, wisdom tooth infections etc.

In the past 5 months I've diagnosed myself with ALL of these at one point. Currently I'm worried about an aneurysm because I believe my dad had an aneurysm (which resulted in the intracranial bleeding which is what the doctors are calling a stroke).

My depression and social anxiety started maybe started when we moved. I had went to an all white school when we first moved we lived in a quiet neighborhood in a great school district but the people were quite racist in that neighborhood. I went to school and made like 4 close friends, but the other kids just didn't want to talk to me and a couple of them bullied me, I cried a few times. When I went to middle school we had moved into a more urban, diverse area and schools were not so bad. I had to make new friends again and I ended up having 3 close girlfriends. I was always the odd one out because I was fat and they were all skinny. My weight has always been a big issue. When I got into high school, one of the popular guys called me a fat bitch because he thought I tripped him when I really was just walking with no bad intentions. A lot of people were around and they started to laugh at me and I could hear them whispering bad things. I didn't go out anywhere during these years; my mom, my sister, and dad would always insist of me going at least grocery shopping with them and I always told them no. I sat at home in the dark with the tv on. My depression has gotten bad because of my dad's stroke, and because I deferred college for a year (I am still deferring it); I had always been a straight A student so not being able to go to college is taking a toll on me.

Now I think that I wish I hadn't been such a dump growing up. I feel lot of regret now. I wish I had taken care of my body and worked out. I wish I had went out when my family wanted me too. I wish I spent more time with them. I wish I got my dad to take care of his body so he wouldnt have to go through such an ordeal now. I wish I had nicer to other people and made friends. I regret a lot of things and I blame myself for a lot of things for a person my age. I think if I had actually not been such a crude to my sister then she wouldn't be making bad choices now and ignoring me now.

Another reason why I have bad anxiety is because I fear death. I don't wanna leave this great family that I have. I am forever grateful for them being in my life. And I don't want them to leave me. I can't understand death and that's why I fear it. If I knew the outcome of my life I wouldn't be so fearful. If I knew that I will have a next life with all these amazing people then I wouldn't mind dying. And if I knew that my dad and mom wouldn't suffer then I wouldn't mind death. But I fear it and because I almost lost my dad I fear it even more.

The only way I can cope with these feelings and thoughts is deep breathing, writing in my journal and honestly hoping nothing bad happens. I don't know if this will go away but pray that by this time next year I won't have to go through this.

Can you say more about when the panic started? You were 6/7 years old, sharing a room with sister. What was mom and dad doing then? Was dad working? Did you have friends? I can't put together why a child of that age would start worrying about dying. Something must have happened that put that into you. It didn't come from nowhere. So what was going on at the time? How was school? Was you mom or dad a worrier, what were they dealing with at the time? Were you poor, were you a family that often got sick? Did mom or dad talk about thier worries  lot - it sounds like you might have unknowingly been taking on other's problems?

My reply ... feedback appreciated....

My name is John and for the last couple of decades, I've struggled with intermittent thoughts of suicide...which over the last 10 months or so, have become much more constant. My suicidal thoughts center on something horrible I did 30 yrs ago, and which I haven't been able to clear my conscience of.

I'm 55 yrs old, have an engineering degree and an MBA, and what many people would consider a decent career. But I've felt very broken for the last 30 yrs. I'm not sure whether unloading here will help me somehow, but hoping....so thanks for reading....and I'm sorry if it's a bit on the long side .... I just need to put this out there ...ya know? I'm so alone.

When I was 22 yo and finishing my engineering degree, I met a woman who was 27 and fell hard "in love" with her. We lived 5 hrs drive apart from each other..her in Michigan USA and me in Ontario Canada. We took turns visiting each other; which we did approx every 3 weeks (on weekends).

After 2.5 yrs of this and for my 25th birthday, she threw me a surprise party and invited my friends and co-workers. Also at this time, I had begun thinking I needed to decide whether to marry her, or whether to break off and go separate ways...I wasn't really sure about my feelings. Well during the party, there was a point where something about her behavior triggered the voice in my head to say, "I need to break up with her". And a week later by phone and sensing my mood, she broke up with me...and I didn't fight her. 

Over the next 6 weeks, I felt sad and missed her. But I also felt relieved and thought it was somehow for the best. But unexpectedly, she then called me and asked whether I was ever going to call her back....and instead of being honest and saying "not sure but I don't think so", I said "yes". And this was the beginning of 30 + yrs of self-created, emotional pain. Because with her 30th birthday being just a couple of months out, I felt compelled to buy her a diamond and propose ... not because I wanted to spend my life with her, but because I wanted to reciprocate for the big effort she made for my 25th b'day.......I began playing a head-game with myself thinking that maybe once I gave her the ring, I'd feel good about it.....and that if I didn't, we could break off, and it would look like I tried (inside of me, I knew the truth...but was somehow too afraid to express it). I should add that there was a lot of tension between my parents and I because she wasn't a Polish girl (both my parents came from Poland and that was a BIG deal to my mother) ....well, 4 months later when the day arrived, I cancelled on the morning of. And instead of leaving it that way, we got married 2 months later....with me trying to hide my inner turmoil.

2 days later, I developed a tension-type head ache that has been with me ever since ... 30 yrs now...and I mean 24/7 without the slightest break whatsoever. Clearly it had to do with a combination of the anxiety and guilt I created by my "lie" ... and though we divorced 22 yrs ago, I still have this tension headache (It's been diagnosed as New Daily Persistent Headache, or NDPH -- for which there is no known treatment). It's interfered with my ability to think clearly (at work especially) and the shame of my actions has caused me to become more of a distant person than I feel is my true nature ... for the last 30 yrs. I've had numerous major depressive episodes. I've felt broken and unloveable since the day I got married...a fraud). I have 2 terrific adult children ...a 28 yo son who I'm on good terms with and a 26 yo daughter who hasn't spoken to me in 13 yrs.

For the last year and after a job loss and the loss of a strong, loving relationship (she dumped me), I've struggled more than ever with insomnia, depression and just feeling broken to the core .... with all roads leading to suicide....because I'm really struggling with new job I started in January (am currently on 3rd wk of mental health disability), and can't find joy or enthusiasm or interest in anything. My tank is empty.  I often feel there is no option but to end my miserable existence.....this tension headache and my guilt over how I went into marriage (neither of which has ever faded), is no way to live....it's a constant, nagging, awful emotional pain .... I have no friends, and can't allow myself to have fun, or fully be in the moment. I feel awful about myself all the time

Feel like I'm just waiting for the money to run out (soon)..... like my destiny was set 30 yrs ago and is coming very soon. I've cut myself off from joy and love in this life and can't find redemption....I'm just a bummer and a drag on everyone anymore.

If you're still here, thanks for listening. I wish you much love and . 

I'm 13 years old and my anxiety started last year around September 29th. It started when I had ate an actual almond for a moment I some thoughts that had started to occur when I ate it, "Oh no what if I'm allergic?" Or "Have I ate one before?" Slowly my mind told me to search for the symptoms of anaphylaxis which I had no idea that could happen before then so I started to painc and at that time we were in the car by a rest stop because we were traveling I had a sensation of my throat getting tighter and I felt as if I couldn't breathe so I told my mom and she told me "Are you itchy? Is your mouth swelling? Can you still breathe?" I answered yes to all of those questions, but just in case she gave me some benadryl which put me to sleep. And no I am not allergic to almonds I have ate them in different forms such as crunched and in powdered form yet I still won't eat one until I get an allergy test. I've had it then it soon disappears when I focus on a disease it appears but after a 2 weeks it goes away so it's an on/off thing. I don't take medication because I have a fear that once I'm on it I won't come off, plus my mother doesn't want me taking that stuff anyway. At the moment we don't get pysical exams until next month so right now I am not sure. What I do is distract myself with things or I go in a room with my sister just in case something happens. The symptoms come when I think about a certain disease for example if I was anxious about a brain tumor, I would have headaches and dizziness also nausea. If I thought I had heart problems I would have a fast heart rate or I would be out of breath. For a disease like diabetes, my feet would tingle and...that's it but this one is bothering me right now I have lost weight because I don't have a appetite I am restricting myself from food and I don't drink water like I used too..so I am tryibg to lure myself out of this mind process. Yes I do, my sister has had the same thing happen to her before because of an experience, she choked on a chicken bone and started to fear of not breathing when she ate, but soonee or later she slowly slipped out of it and once in a while it comes to her mind but she blocks it out so yes I do think Ill mature and focus on the logical valuation of things I will also try to stay away from Dr.google ruining peoples life...The type of anxiety I have is health anxiety...all the diseases I'm afraid of have happened so my family members. My brother has diabetes type 1 but is doing incredibly well! My grandpa has type 2, My sister suffered from heart problems as a child they told my mom she wasn't going to live past three, she took her off the medication and now is the age 17! My mom has had an allergic reaction to pineapples but it was only her tounge swelling no itchyness. So all my fears come from my family line..I suppose because I'm younger it affects me more...I don't eat much now when I feel like eating my body says eww! When my body tells me to eat I have too! Or I fear that my body is going to start eating its self...So for now I am getting better I will start eating more because my brother has comforted me and the thing is that whenever I think about symptoms it happens so I must be positive!