Does anybody else get absolutely exhausted after having an anxiety attack?
There ain’t a bit of coffee in this world that can perk me up after some anxiety caused by my refrigerator potentially being fucked. I guess we’ll see what happens.
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Two thoughts.
One, yeah, anxiety attacks are draining. It’s definitely a thing.
Two. It’s been helpful for me to kind of re-think the root of my anxiety. Or rather, to begin ceasing the habit of attaching it to something. Now, instead of thinking “I had this unexpected thing arise, and that caused me anxiety,” I think of it more like “this thing happened which made me more aware of the anxiety in me.”
Basically, acknowledging the anxiety is always there–and isn’t actually being caused by the event I’m associating it with. For me this is a big shift. Because if the thing that happened caused the anxiety, it means I can keep the anxiety away through constant vigilance. Which is not true, and is exhausting. It also means I don’t need to address the anxiety outside of a flare-up, which also is not helpful.
The anxiety is in me, whether I experience it now or not.
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I’m not okay but I will be.
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liked the “will be” part, not the first part. I’m glad you realize this is only temporary
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What really gets to me anxiety-wise is when I feel as though I am going to have a seizure. That often makes things worse. This is because my aura has symptoms similar to an anxiety attack. There are small differences but plenty of similarities.
Just had that. I’m hitting my vape pen hard now. Looks like I’m in the clear.
EDIT: CBD, not nicotine
So, I’m in this ADHD support group, right. It’s exactly what you are probably imagining. It’s fantastic. If you aren’t imagining it, well, let’s just say (and I’m saying this as someone with ADHD, not making judgments at all about people with the disorder) that some of us with the disorder are walking clusterfucks.
That’s on full display in there. A woman posted something about how in another support group she was persecuted and abused because of her OCD and a habit she had that she couldn’t stop, and omg how horrible is it that they were judging me because of my OCD.
That’s a fair complaint, a lot of these usually are. Until you dig a little deeper, and it turns out the “habit” was smoking and the reason everyone was calling her a horrible person was because she was pregnant.
Holy shit the comments turned faster than I have ever seen in my life. Just pure rage. (Smoking during pregnancy has been linked to ADHD, I’m told by this same group. I have no idea if that’s true or not).
Anyway I don’t know what the point of this post is, but some people are just completely hopeless to me. I’m really feeling that right now with one of my best friends who is suicidal. I just feel like he has no chance, the way he’s going about life and the way he views reality.
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Been going to therapy twice a week. It’s helping.
I ended up taking out my first line of credit to get us through this month. That was a tough pill to swallow. I’d rather be poor than in debt (studentloans4lyfe of course), but actually broke only takes you so far. I’m still crossing my fingers my EIDL increase gets approved this month, but I have to prepare for what’s next if not.
My sibling suggested I consider outpatient therapy. Not as a “you’re broken go away” kind of thing. I’m just finally in a safe enough place to get (and welcome) help. I don’t have to live the rest of my life in such anguish. I paid up my health insurance for the month to make sure I can continue any necessary treatment options in the coming weeks.
The question guiding me is: What could someone else do for me that I do not have the power to do for myself?
And to finally let someone help me with those things. I tried it on my own and accept now that I don’t have the answers.
I miss hanging out with everyone at Unstuck, but I’m not sure what I want or need my place here to be anymore.
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Hope it gets better soon. Really, really hope you stick around because you are a very positive presence and what you’ve done in the arts and entertainment category should be an example to us on how to properly moderate and grow our off topic sections.
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Whatever you decide just make sure you look after yourself. You’re a very special person.
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Therapy is pretty helpful. I’m only going once a week and am trying to change how I perceive myself and others.
The one thing I’ve been told is to be more forgiving of myself when I make mistakes. Apparently, I’m far more forgiving of others than I am of myself. It doesn’t stop the anxiety but it keeps it under control to a degree.
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I’m going twice a month and my therapist thinks that’s a lot
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It’s a pity it’s so expensive to get therapy. I would definitely go if I was more flush with cash. Mental health should be better covered by the government. Even here in Australia it’s only really emergency mental healthcare that’s covered totally, which obviously isn’t ideal.
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Thank you for sharing this. Your statement about being forgiving of yourself reminded me of a meme that I saw earlier this week & a conversation that I had with my GF regarding the feeling of guilt.
Most everyone knows who Freud was, but not as many know Max Stirner, a 19th century German philosopher known for his work on nihilism and existentialism among other things.
Anyway, MsConwoman and I were talking about how one of the mini-breakthroughs that she had was in re-framing the memories she has that are associated with guilt. For example, when she was a child she had broken some item at a store, and had attached a feeling to the memory that was not only laden with guilt but also with a sense of being a bad person who did a bad thing. That sense of guilt, that leads to shame, that leads to [insert negative self-perception here] gets repeated and internalized, becoming a part of who we are.
Every time we recall a memory we are rewriting it–essentially creating a new memory. Now, quite often the rewritten memory is so similar to the previous iteration that there is very little difference. But there is no limit to how differently we can rewrite the memory. We can push it. We can shape it. It’s size and characteristics are not defined by the laws of physics. To me at least, it can seem a little scary to acknowledge having that kind of power.
It’s interesting that in German the word for guilt is the same as the word for debt(schuld). We don’t necessarily associate those two words as easily if we are mono-linguist English speakers. Although, anyone raised in the Christian faith may recall saying the Lord’s Prayer, and asking to “forgive us our sins/debts/trespasses”.
The feeling of guilt and/or debt has played a key role in human sociology. The tit-for-tat, I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine, the sense whether it’s reciprocity or revenge. It underlies how we function and interact with other humans. How we cooperate with them, and how we hold grudges. Humanity as we know it does not exist without the sense of guilt. There is no ignoring it. There is only dealing with it as part of the condition of life.
So, how do we harness that feeling of guilt? What is the counter move? If it’s a left jab, then what is our head feint and counter? Forgiveness. That’s it. Forgiving ourselves and others. But that is easier said than done.
So, I was reflecting this week on how to approach the challenge of gaining more power over my sense of guilt and why it can be such a struggle to be as kind and forgiving to myself as I strive to be to others. What if I failed? What if I pushed a negative memory so far into a positive re-framing that it reverse judo flipped me into being some kind of self-assured asshole? As I was walking down the sidewalk thinking about all of this, I saw a black spray-painted stenciled message on the pavement: “Your anxiety is lying to you.” Yeah, it sure was. Thanks random person in my neighborhood. Thanks random meme. Thanks superuberbob. Thanks MsConwoman.
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You can barter in selfishness, or unselfishness; imo.
Unselfishly selfish is the only way. Selfishly unselfish is works alone (and you don’t leave anything for yourself — cue the politician whose son killed himself despite numerous great works). Selfish with little (to no) unselfish catches up with you.
Gotta ask for others’ forgiveness with no expectation and no quid pro quo on that one.
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TRUTH
Nothing to fear but fear itself is an axiom.
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My therapist’s recent feedback was that I need allies. Not people who will merely protect me like their possession but people who are my ally in the process of exploring and manifesting my existence in the ways that matter to me.
Her advice was to stop thinking of how to change the people who are not my allies and instead seek out people who already are my allies. To distinguish between people I won’t feel safe with unless they change and people who don’t need to be changed for my needs. We’re compatible in ways that go beyond intention and mindfulness. It’s a dynamic from who we already are. We only need time and experience together.
That’s a tough one. I want to change the two people I live with. I’ve been waiting for their permission to stop acting like an extension of who they want me to be.
I think I’ve been waiting for the same thing here.
And the therapist said that just because these people aren’t your ally in every way doesn’t mean they aren’t your ally in other ways.
So to me, her advice to find allies means that I can’t just wait to see who is or isn’t. I need to put myself out there and see who is or is not and in what ways they are an ally and in what ways they are not and what ways they could be in time but are not today and may never be. There’s no need to force anyone to be anything that is not already who they are.
Thanks, just thinking out loud about why I’ll keep posting here and see how it goes 
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On Sunday, I woke up with this feeling like I was the last person on earth. It was a physical sensation of separateness, of being totally alone. In some ways the physical sensation was the oddest thing. How can I physically “feel” alone? … I didn’t panic and the feeling subsided within a couple of days.
Has anyone else experienced this? Of an emotion that feels distinctly physical? I often describe my anxiety as feeling like a “hole” or a “pit” in my chest, but this recent experience went beyond that.
Also, in a seeming non sequiter: How have folks made the decision to stop seeing their therapist? I’ve been working with her for about a year now, and in Q4 cut back to appointments once every two weeks. Starting to think it may be time to move on–much progress and healing has been occured, and my situation is markedly different from the low point of about a year ago when I started seeing her. That said, I am not sure I want to let go of what has obviously been a helpful resource.
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Thanks to you (and SUB) for sharing this.
I’ve been doing some work with a therapist lately on childhood memories. One that I have is of being in grade 1 at school and doing something innocuous that I wasn’t supposed to. I don’t even remember what it was, or if it was actually any bad behaviour.
Anyway, the memory is of the teacher asking me why I did it, and I was crying and all I could respond with is “because I’m bad” or “because I’m naughty”. She said she wasn’t angry with me, she just wanted to know why I did it, but I wasn’t emotionally able to reason beyond the above.
My therapist found that quite sad, and for various reasons it seems like a pretty good indicator of how I had decided to process or internalize any mistakes I made by that early point in my life. It’s been with me ever since, though of course we develop coping mechanisms.
Anyway, I think part of the healing I am meant to do is to empathize with myself more, including empathizing with myself as a child and some things I found traumatic. I readily empathize with other people, but doing that for myself is like trying to see through a brick wall. I just have an immediate reaction/compulsion to stop trying to do that. I think maybe its my brains way of saying “don’t look behind that curtain, it’s only going to hurt”. It almost feels illogical to fight that coping mechanism. How much of that is what helps me function?
Anyway, I know therapists (at least good ones) are trained in how to help with this sort of thing. Ive wrote this post a few times and just deleted it thinking “why would anybody want to read that post seities”. So posting this is me taking a swing at that brick wall.
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This is really well put. Thanks
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