Anxiety dictating my day..

LegacyUser

hello all. I dont know where to begin with this but here goes... this morning i was supposed to be flying out with a couple of friends to visit another friend over in U.K. for the past year or so i have suffered from bouts of anxiety,minor panic attacks and have generally felt a bit down. luckily i have a family i can talk to and parents who understand and have helped me greatly! i have managed to get on with college and day to day routines but yesterday it suddenly came back and i turned emotional, panicky and extremely anxious.
regretably i canceled on my friends and as a result my other mate didnt travel - neither will talk to me which has made me feel even more guilty. last year i sought help with my feelings and it helped alot but lately im worried and scared ill go back to the way i was before - last night was similar to how i felt a year ago.
Today i feel a different person to last week, im letting things bother me and its dictating my actions and my day. i really dont know what to do.

Famous45

Been on the same boat and thankfully on the road to recovery.

Similar to yourself I went ages waking up in shock, not being able to sleep till it got bright out, unable to travel in a car any longer, anything you could imagine.

Rescue remedy helps, I was at a stage when I probably used a spray bottle a week of it, now probably one night a week I'd use it. I'm sure you already know about rescue remedy. It is a breathe of fresh air though.

I always thought about giving people advice on this as when I asked for advice on it, some things helped but I think you got to overcome it yourself. I got it into my head that there is a program built into your brain that realises you think all bad all the time and it just remains on this program. What you must remember is, is that nothing is actually wrong with you, physically, I use to look at myself a lot and it would help me realise that I am still the same person and my mind mind just overtook me. But you will and can overcome it. Positive thinking at every point, use of language is also a main factor to recovery. If you see something sh*t on tv, don't say oh my god that was so bad, you or others will prob laugh at this but you need to take the badness out of your mind and reinstall it with positive thoughts. Do positive things, do you like to exercise? do you like this or that, if so do them and do them in bulk loads.

When I look back the main thing that helped me was listening to relaxing music and in particular these cd's of someone talking, basically you close your eyes and they take you on a journey, he comments about starting off in a safe place following this path somwhere, all this craic but in saying that it really helped me. It ain't going to go away tomorrow, and when you begin to feel better you will still have the odds occurence of anxiety. Go to bed at a respectable time, listen to relaxing music before or when u go to bed, every night, not now and again, you need to get into a routine so the program in your mind changes to one where it registers everything you are doing every day, not just now and again, that way you will just be confused. Look at yourself and tell yourself things are cool, there are times when you prob feel disorientated and unaware if things are normal, I know the feeling and I truly hope my advice helps you out in any way at all.

When you feel it coming, think of happy things, anything, your football team you support maybe, dream of them winning the league, things like that, just make your mind positive. best of luck man, and as youve heard before, it's all in your mind.

Ps: you probably wonder now what it feels like to feel normal again, this is how I was and it's a bad thought to have because you feel disorientated as I mentioned, just bear in mind, you wont actually wake up one and day and think wow, this is how it was before, you just live life the same only that your mind reverts back to a positive state. Numerous things can set this off, from a personal point of view the loss of way in life coupled with other obstacles made me fall into the anxiety world. Single out your reasons and overcome them in someway.

LegacyUser

i appreciate everything you said. thankyou so much. all advice helps! its tough, i dont want to go back to my old way of thinking, i thought i had left that behind and i suppose the last couple of days have felt like a big hitch.

LegacyUser

i dont think your mates appreciate how anxiety and panic attacks can effect you. You should have a word with them or get your parents to have a word witht them and tell them that you didnt just back out on a whim. Otherwise this stress could add to your already anxiety

I dont have what you have but my father has had it. He still doesnt like plane jouneys or places with big crowds. But at one time he hated all types of travel and didnt even like to go into place with small crowds

i think its important not to let it rule your life however at the same time i think you should take things slow.