How long have you suffered?

Hi everyone,

I'm a newbie here, so no yelling at me!

How long have you all suffered from anxiety/panic attacks? I'm 39 now and have been having panic attacks for about 14 years or so. I can even remember the exact day I had my first attack, but can't remember the date.

Even though I've had therapy, I have found nothing has ever worked for me, an my anxiety is getting worse. Even my therapist said there was nothing more she could do for me.

Non of the meditation programs work,or any of the other excercises she gave me. To top it off, I can't takesleeping tablets as they wake me up, and when I was prescribed valpam (valium) is actually made me extremely axnious, so much so that I refused to board a plane and had my luggage removed.

Does anyone else find that nothing seems to work?

Anyway, it's nice to meet you all, though I would have prefered it to have been under better circumstances!

Hi Spikeman

For a long time I have been of the opinion that, because anxiety itself has its basis in our beliefs, treatments will only work if we believe they will work - or at least believe that it's possible.

I have tried several therapies myself and sometimes I do feel better for a couple of days. I have often thought that this is probably down to some kind of subconscious thought that goes "hey, this is new, this might work" - only to lose faith in it after a few days, at which point it becomes ineffective.

I have heard from a few people who swear by the Linden Method - as advertised above (I'm not advertising it myself, just passing on what I've heard). Have you tried it?

Also, is there something in your lifestyle that is perpetuating your anxiety? Do you drink alcohol, have a bad sleeping pattern, do drugs, have a bad diet?

I was in the same boat as you until last September. I had suffered from anxiety for eight years and been agoraphobic for two years (I'd reached the point where I would hardly leave my bedroom and I spent about four days out of every week just lying in bed feeling like I was waiting to die). My doctor prescribed a drug called escitalopram and it has helped me a lot. It hasn't completely got rid of my anxiety or my agoraphobia but it has eased them a lot - and it enabled me to start making positive steps myself. I now regularly go for small walks and I have just finished laying a patio in the garden - something that would have been impossible before I started the medication. I have also gone from having five or six full-blown panic attacks every day to having maybe one every month.

Anyway, welcome to the forum. Hope you can find some help here.

Chris

I agree with you entirely. I seem to have this bloody defeatest attitude after so many years which makes me firmly beleave that nothing is ever going to work and that I may as well just accept it.

I think the first thing I need to do (any anyone else who thinks like me) is to get over that attitude and start being positive and constantly affirming "This disability can be beaten. I can do this".

As for drinking alcohol, I learnt a long time ago that I associated alcohol with anxiety and had to give it up, with all the social activities that went with it. I found that that came up with it's own problems as I became more isolated and that led to the problem of believing that I was losing all my friends (which I did in the end).

No, I don't take drugs and I have a good diet and take lots of excercise. I live in a tropical paradise (Perth, Australia - moved here 7 years ago) and live on the coast with the Indian Ocean spread out in front of me. I have palm trees and parrots all around. And yet, even living in such a wonderful place and being healthy and having a wonderful supporting partner and a son on the way, I still have this debilitating illness (and it is an illness, not some stupid phase that you can snap out of as I have been told to do before).

I feel so sorry for all of you who don't have the wonderful lifestyle I have and still have to live with the constant fear of panic and anxiety. I just wish there was an easy cure. Hopefully, one day, we'll all just wake up and all the anxiety will be gone! It's just a dream though.....

I had the anxiety monster in my life for 7 years. I kicked out of my life thanks to the Linden Method, & www.anxietycured.com. You can kick it out of your life, you just have to know how to. You're not different to anyone else, you're just an anxiety sufferer. Just believing that you will be an ex-anxiety sufferer is the first (and best step) to being one.

I've suffered from panic attacks for eight years (nine in late September/October). I started getting them when I was fourteen and first started high school, and I know now that in order to prevent myself from having them, I need to isolate myself from situations that trigger them--i.e. noise, crowds, confined spaces, and just general chaos. I sang in the university choir for four years, and our end-of-semester choir shows were always pretty chaotic, so I'd often have to go and take walks by myself before the shows and during intermission. Since I'm a performance major (I play the clarinet), being on stage itself doesn't bother me--a performance is a controlled, rehearsed environment, in which I know exactly what's going to happen next.......but I can't tolerate sitting in a noisy room backstage with everyone else between halves. Also, I find that exercising, eating right (well, as much as I can on a student's budget), getting a reasonable amount of sleep, and having a certain amount of routine in my life helps things a lot. In the beginning, I couldn't control my panic attacks, didn't know why I had them, and I was ashamed, but now I know, and I almost never let it slow me down. I've never taken medication or gone to therapy for it, because I don't want to mess up my brain with drugs, and I also believe that this is *my* challenge to deal with, not anyone else's.

Hi MermaidGirl

In answer to your other message, yes it is spam and it's best to try to ignore it. I have deleted about 15 such posts today and they are a pain in the arse. I check the site about every four hours so they don't stay on here for long.

Best wishes

Chris

i'm new to this sort of thing and feeling a little unsure........i too live in Perth WA but get freaked out by going to "suppot groups' and have tried medication and therapy and here i am years later still at the same place i was years ago.......its good to hear that other people actually suffer the same pain i go through.............. i will just keep reading all your posts its good to know i'm not alone...xx

Hey, I'm a newbie too [:

I'm 15 and I've had panic attacks for 4 years.

I had my first panic attack at a school fete. It was horrible ]: