What does Your Anxiety feel like?

Hi Joanna, my anxiety feels like palpitations, pains in the left side of my chest and shoetness of breath nearly constantly. I wish there was a cure too because it affects us being ourselves and enjoying life.

You can learn to calm yourself down. It will be after the adrenaline rush is released but you need to understand that part is a dysfuncriin how you react to it can be managed. Mindfullness breathing techniques can slow your breathing and stop hyperventilating which would diminish many symptoms. Never feed into the anxiety it makes it worse and last a lot longer, it can recycle itself. You cant give it attention, not saying ignore it be ause that can  feel impossible, but accept it. Accept it as is and breathe slowly, using yiur belly with no thinking abiut anything. It will calm down. After you have calmed you might feel a bit shaken if it took a while but that will wear off. The fear and the feeling to run is instinct of danger, its built into humans so sometimes you can wait it out if you feel the strong  enough and really understand whats hapoening on a rationale level (cbt can teach you) but other times i dont know it gets overwhelming and if in a store you end up leaving foe probably more social issues then anything else. And the stimulus of the store and activity can make it harder to focus and calm yourself. I would say dont accept this as okay but constantly test it. Go to the store early in the morning or later in the evening. Less stimulus around you and when thats mastered you can then oursue the busier tines of day. Never give in and make anxiety rules to avoid places, its not rationale at all and will create a new comolex cindition of agoraphobiaa which can be treated but creates more layers to peel away. To some extent it just kind of happens anyay but you need to conciously stay on too of that. Learn mindfullness, learn cbt and mediatiins. These are your personal tools to calm yourself down, not a pre requisite, anxiety can just fire off but in time you will hopefully retrain your brain. This can squash it to the 5-10 minutes the cycle would run itself out naturally.p and withiut the fear being fed into it. So you would just experience a adrenaline tush with a bunch of symptoms, with no fear towards it it just runs its bodily course and stops. It takes discipline, belief and training yourself. Let go of the control and accept it, do not fear it.

Hi Joanna, yes it is a dibilitating disorder and effects every area of your life. I would just love to be able to do normal things again. Like go to the store without fear of an attack, the fear of course exacerbates the likelihood of having one. I've had these since childhood, but recently after a stressful period they've become worse. A continuous feeling of anxiety/dread and more frequent panic attacks. I too am at the pint of not wanting to leave the house, trapped by my own fear. I so wish there was a cure. I hope you overcome this and feel better.

Brian

hey joanna

I've been suffering from anxiety and depression since i was 15-16 years old.

I know how you feel especially that bit you wrote about the tumour.  My anxiety got so bad it go the point where I thought I was going absolutely nuts and yeah I thought there must be a tumour or something making me feel this way because everything feels completely unreal.  Especially when dealing with other people, at times I’ve also thought that maybe I’m schizophrenic.  I’ve lain in my room sometimes dreading the next day because I know I’ve got to go through it all again.  And the biggest problem is no one understands.  Not my co-workers, not my friends, not even my family.  I’ve been told either I’m crazy or that I need to just get on with things, to deal with it.  I’m 35 now and still have problems.  but there is a cure I firmly believe there is a cure and I’m at a point in my life now where I’m starting to take back control of my life.  I just wish I knew years ago what I know now.  It’s just that back when I was younger and first started having these problems there was no real therapies offered to me.  I was just put on anti-depressants and left to it.  Anti-depressants help.  They alleviate the symptoms of anxiety so you can get on with your life but they are not the cure. For the past 5 years I’ve been trying to deal with anxiety without anti-depressants.  And at times ive made progress but unfortunately my anxiety got to an unmanageable level.  I got to a point where I thought I was going mad and I almost decided to end my life, mainly because I didn’t think anything was going to help not even anti-depressants.   But I ended up trying them again.  This time I’ve been put on sertraline.  Its amazing how much difference these lmake.  I’m definitely a whole lot better.  But I know this is not the cure.  All the anti-depressants have done is given me control over my life so I can make some major changes.  And for a lot of people that’s what needs to be done, your whole life style needs to change.  Finding the right kind of Therapy is definitely a good start.  And one thing that has helped me over the years and which has probably kept me alive has been meditation.  Find a mindfulness group near where you live.  Look up meditation online, on youtube.  There is a ton of evidence out there now which shows that mindfulness makes positive physiological changes on the brain.   Learn how your brain works and how to make changes for the better.  Hope this helps and good luck.  Sometimes it takes time finding the right therapist too.

I HAVE THE SAME THING!! GET YOUR THYROID CHECKED OUT ASAP!! I was going through this for years. I told my doctor my heart feels like it randomly gets scared.. I can feel it beating. I had to go through soo so much to finally figure it out. My doctor ended up saying I had HYPERactive thyroid (unsure of the exact term) .. you probably are nervous alot and are not over weight. A doctor that was literally 90 years old told me to stick my hands out in front of me and put a piece of paper on top of my hands and watched it.. he noticed it was shaking a little and almost instantly said "you definitely have a hyper thyroid condition" and sure enough the old man was right a year later. Check it out!