Help Please!

Hi, new to this forum, found you while browsing, spent a good hour reading other peoples story's/problems, very helpful.

As for me, well, I don't know what's going on, it's all a new experience at the age of 29. I presume in my case it's all stress related. Split from my girlfriend after 12 years, a month after she proposed to me, which was very confusing at the time. Since then I met someone else, fell head over heels and got dumped again, had a pregnancy scare, fell out with my parents, I could go on for ages, this is just in the last 3-4 months, it's been a struggle to say the least.

During the last 3-4 weeks I have been suffering what I think might be panic attacks, the 1st time was obviously frightening, but they are getting more frequent. The latest episode was the worst, been staying with the ex for a few days to see if we could work things out, but had an argument. Now i'm not violent, far from it, but I went into the bathroom and just completely lost it, shocked myself. Basically, i've got a sore hand and need a new door. The next thing I remember I was sitting on the bathroom floor, don't know how I got down there, and had all the symptoms that have been described on here, chest pains, couldn't breathe, was drenched in sweat, dizzy, shaking etc. Had the night off work, felt completely exhausted and slept like a baby for over 12 hours! I also keep breaking out in a nervous sweat over minor things thats seem to become big issues.

The way I feel at the moment is, well, I work on a shift with 30 lads, i'm petrified of it happening at work for obvious reasons, had tonight off too, I really don't want to go back in at the minute. It's like I don't feel normal anymore.

Just want to know, how serious is this that is happening to me? Is it something that will just go away once all my problems are resolved? Am I making a big issue out of something minor? I really don't know

thanks

Lee

Hi Lee

It's hard to diagnose whether you have a panic disorder because you can only glean so much information from what you write and we are not medically trained anyway.

Personally my anxiety has never manifested itself in a violent way as you seem to describe but we are all different and these things affect us differently. The breathing difficulties, shaking, sweating, etc certainly sound like classic symptoms of anxiety and if they disappeared without any treatment, that's normally a pretty good indication that the problem is psychological.

The question of how serious it is has two answers. Physically it is not very serious at all because your body is only doing what it is programmed to do when you experience extreme fear. Psychologically it can be very damaging if you let it (like I did). Anxiety gets you to form all sorts of habits (like not going to work for example) and the longer these habits seem rewarding to you, the more ingrained the anxiety becomes. You are rewarding yourself (by feeling a bit better) for taking evasive action (staying off work) when you would probably be better off going in to work if you possibly can and disappearing off to the toilet or something (or even better, fronting it out) if your workmates put pressure on you.

Anxiety doesn't necessarily disappear when your problems do for the reasons I have given above. It is down to you to realise that the physical effects of it are harmless and treat it as insignificant so that it doesn't get a grip on your life.

There is plenty of free information to download on my blog (address at the bottom) this will probably give you a better understanding than I can by replying here.

I wish you the very best of luck. Feel free to get in touch with me by PM if you have any specific questions.

Regards

Chris

Free links to anxiety related documents - http://anxietylinks.blogspot.com