There have been times where I have had to pace the floors because I couldnt sleep or sit in one spot, and I would be so exhausted. I dont think I need something to take all year around/daily.

Not a big fan of zanax, what else is there for me? I am starting to have my “yearly” episode now….

The anxiety could be caused from post traumatic stress syndrome from things that happened in your lifetime that were out of your control. Certain stresses can bring on an attack even mild stress and it becomes hard to remain calm.

I pray alot and put it in the hands of God and know my guardian angel is protecting me and that helps tremendously. I am also on anti-depressants (Effexor) which helps a great deal.

I also was taking 5mg valuim when I felt I couldn’t control what was happening. It calmed my fears and I felt more in control. It helps a great deal when you feel you are in control of the situation.

I hope this helps. See your doctor or physciatrist to see if your suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome and how they can treat it.

They stopped after a few months. Lately I’ve experienced mild ones. They are scary and uncomfortable. I always feel that sense of things being “unreal”. That has always been a hard thing to describe. I lost a good friend in a car accident a few weeks ago. The next morning I got the news. I guess I was trying to hold in my feelings all day, then that night I ended up in the ER w/ extreme anxiety attacks. I really thought I was dying.

My bp was 180/120 and my heart rate was 151 when I got there. It took much meds to calm me down. My son, age 10 was with me, as the attacks came on in the car w/ him and my husband in the car w/ me. That was the worst one ever.

Tonight I’m awake b/c everytime I lay down to try to sleep, I get this overwhelming feeling again like I’m gonna stop breathing and my body starts feeling weird and numb. It is 2:30 in the morning and I guess I’m gonna have to stay up all night.

This is driving me crazy!!!!

my name is Zayz i have been suffering from panic attacks since my 10th grade year and have read alot about it but sometimes i really feel like if i am going to die.

Most of my attacks are always about worry that i am going to get a heart attack or die from a stroke.

……has anyone experience this
….if you do,it would be nice to chat to someone who understands, so i could feel normal

zayz90@yahoo.com

When I was a child, I would suffer panic on school mornings so severe that I could work myself into vomiting and diarrhea and hysterical blindness. My attendence was terrible, to the degree the school started to think I was being abused. When you miss school, going back is so hard. You’re constantly catching up and feel alienated from other students.

My mother, who had terrible anxiety of her own, could be manipulated into letting me stay home…by playing her anxiety. “Mom, if you make me go to school today, the school could burn down, or there might be a freak accident, or I could die in a bus crash.” It was a hideous codependence. It sounds like I was just being a terrible child, but I literally felt like I would die if I went to school. I hid from the bus when it came to get me, and spent all day hiding under my neighbor’s bushes, panicking both the school and my mother when I came up missing. When she’d try to drive me to school on days I missed, I’d leap out of the car at an intersection and run sobbing…feeling like my life depended on it. This frightened her more than dealing with the school’s increasing frustration with me.

Very little was known about anxiety in children, and my teachers became terribly impatient with me, always having to help me through my makeup work and arranging special tests and other inconvieniences. It was pure hell. It peaked in eighth grade when it got so bad that I considered suicide. Of course I never told anyone this.

By highschool, there was less structure and I began to relax a little. It was easier to be invisable when I needed to be, and it was easier when I found classes that I fit in with. No one would ever have believed me about my anxiety. I was an honor roll student, and held many lead roles in drama club, I forced myself not to miss anymore than the maximum number of alloted days to pass my classes. But I missed every day I could, and I was grateful for the breaks. Drama was a way for me to take a break from being myself, and I found it theraputic. I also made lots of screwed up missfit friends in drama that helped me put my issues into perspective. I became a caretaker (as I had been to my mother).

My anxiety has followed me as an adult, and at times has made my work situation difficult. I’m overly sensative, I’m not assertive enough when I feel taken advantage of or treated unfairly, and when I get angry I’m prone to crying, which is very embarassing. Sometimes the anxiety is bad enough to cause me to miss or leave work. I’ve found that I do best in jobs that challenge my mind and don’t have too much repitition. As absurd as this seems, I work best under pressure, maybe because I’m so used to it…it makes me feel like I have an advantage/skill other people don’t.

The turning point for me was when I started taking Paxil. It was a different life. I could relax, I could enjoy myself without total self conciousness, and it occured to me…Oh my God…THIS is what NORMAL people feel like all the time. It became REAL in my mind that I my symptoms were NOT MY FAULT. Anxiety like I experienc, is a chemical spill in your head. It is not a character flaw, it is not a personality disorder, it’s not in your imagination. I loved Paxil, but it had sexual side effects and I gained a lot of weight. I now take Bupropion, which is not for anxiety, but it helps me with my compulsive behavior and depression and gives me a little extra energy to face my anxiety on my own and use strategies to live with it.

To all of you who suffer anxiety, I am writing this for ONE REASON…if you have children, you MUST get treatment. I love my mother to death, and I don’t blame her for her issues since she hardly chose them…but being exposed to her anxiety as a child was SO SO SO DAMAGING to me. She kept me in a constant state of heightened fear about everything because she was so afraid. Children PICK UP ON YOUR ANXIETY. It hurts them, and it screws up their development of feeling safe in the world.

My mother is too afraid of medication to seek any treatment, and I have to keep the medications that I take a secret from her because she will stress and obsess about possible side effects and call me in tears begging me to stop taking them. She has panic attacks and sleeps at my house because of her anxiety regularly. I’ve taken her to the emergency room over a dozen times this year for anxiety related false alarms. I’m always so afraid that the one time I tell her she’s just suffering anxiety, she really WILL have something life threatening wrong with her and die. It’s a horrible place to be put in with your elderly parent. You understand how REAL it is to them. But worse, you see yourself in them, and it makes you angry and hurt to have been handed down this legacy.

This might sound incredibly selfish, but there are times I’ve seriously asked myself….Why can’t I be as important to my mother as her fear is? It hurts to be put second to fear. It hurts to have your childhood and self esteam and sense of safety controlled by another person’s fear.

To teachers…please understand that your truant kids and your drop out kids might have serious problems with anxiety. Try to treat them gently and help them get counseling. This disorder is hell.

I’m 36, and I still deal with a lot of anxiety when dealing with people, in particular my inlaws….which has been very very hard on my marriage. My meds help a lot, and I’m very very conscious of my anxiety affecting my relationship with my own daughter. I want this cycle to end. I don’t want my daughter to live in the prison of fear and dependence that I did.

This problem has so many layers and is so difficult to understand. You really can’t understand it unless you’ve lived it.

Don’t give up. You can feel normal again. You can repair relationships and make your career work. There IS help out there if you’re brave enough to seek it, and care enough about your family to face the social stigma and admit what you’re dealing with. There is no shame in having this problem. There is shame in harming people who love you, though. For your sake, and for theirs, please please please seek treatment. You are worth it.

i cant stand it and i cant stand my kids seeing me like this when it hits it hits hard….

i am on meds but id rather not be i just want it all to go away so if anyone has any true info to give me pls email me at mariewilson81@hotmail.com
thx

I just want to run away from everthing,I just want to feel normal, and be able to deal with things, I think what has brought it on this time is that we have emmigrated, and I feel so lonely, frightened, and thinking we have done the wrong thing,

It is so horrible living this way,

I freak out for no reason & i cry for no reason. i get breathless & feel sick in the stomach & feel like im going to faint.It makes me out to be a bad mother, & i hate it.

Has anyone got any idea what i have or what i can do about it. i need help with what i got, before i lose my children. For im scared that cause i dont go to places with my children that teachers or other people will ring DOC’s.

I have times where I feel tingling in my legs and upper body and wierd muscle spasms! they really scare me but I realized theres no cure but to believe in myself.

Last year I was diagnosed with epilepsy! that took control of my life and my brain so whenever I have an anxiety attack I usually think it’s going to be a seizure!!! I also have severe asthma!!! For me, my life isn’t what you would call perfect! it’s the total opposite always thinking whether or not i’ll have a panic attack!!

I’m so frustrated with people telling me the same things to cure myself! I’m only 15 I too also feels as if theres no one who really understands!

i lay down and fall asleep for 5 mins and wake in a rage,i yell i screem, and i want to die…i,ve been told i have panic attacks,and angzity. i,m 54 yrs old …

it all started when i was 39….i,ve just about had enough.i.m on zanaz,,sleeping pills.heart pills and enything to passvie my attacks …

i have no one who understands whats happening,and say i,m crazy