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Hi Everyone, I decided to join this forum and share my story.
My nightmare started just over a year ago. Myself, my daughter and my parents where heading for a day out near the cost. The day started off good enough, i was even happy to get out for the day, but then something happened half way into the journey. As i was staring down the motorway we were on my heart started to race. I started to shake and feel sick. After pulling over I realised i was having an anxiety. Having suffered these in the past, I had a good idea how to calm myself down again. However, my usual coping strategy didn't work this time. Instead, i started to suffer minor anxiety attacks through the rest of the day.
These anxiety attacks grew quickly spiralled out of control over the course of the next few days. It took a week of a very small dose of Valium to help bring me back down, but it did nothing to stop the sensation that my mind was quickly unravelling. Almost every thought that came into my mind would illicit some form of panic. I felt certain I was going insane. I also felt like I was starting to lose myself and i even started having panic attacks at the thought of looking at myself in the mirror because I felt certain I wouldn't recognise myself anymore.
Then came the obsessive thoughts that just didn't seem to have an end. What made this worse was the sensory-motor obsessions such as blinking, breathing, heart beat and just about everything else. I also developed an obsession with my arms and hands that I felt certain was going to drive me insane. And that last one was the longest and hardest to overcome.
My own thoughts started to scare me. At its peak, i felt there was no way out of this torture for me. And just to make matters worse, half way through the year, my uncle, a man who taught me so much about the world, took his own life. On top of everything else i was going through, i felt like every last bit of hope had been snatched away from me. By this point i felt certain that the only respite i would get is by going the same road as my uncle and taking my own life.
In one last act of desperation, I went to my doctor and told her exactly how i felt. She immediately put me on anti-depressants called Citropram. My nightmare worsened just days after taking them. I felt like i was being pulled apart from the inside. On top of that was the hyper-awareness of my own body. I had never felt so uncomfortable in my skin in my entire life. Then just to really top things off came the disassociation. Not only did i have to suffer but now i got to suffer and sit in the passenger seat while it happened.
My doctor told me it would take at least a month for the benefits of the pills to really be noticed. So, i soldiered on. I tried my level best to stick with the pills. The one thing the pills did do, was bring my anxiety to a full stop. Every time i became anxious, a strange warmth would erupt from my stomach and course all over my body. This didn't stop the thoughts that made me anxious, but it allowed me to remain calm enough to at least be semi-functional.
Eventually, though, I couldn't take it anymore and asked my doc if there was another pill i could take. This time she switched me over to mitrazapine, which I'm still on at the moment. By this point I had become strong enough to deal with the anxiety, although i still felt like it was always present, circling in the background just waiting to completely ruin my day. The disassociation died down, but it still made its self present in the way i viewed the world. Some days i would feel like i was nothing more than a ghost. Other times i felt when i looked out at the world i was seeing nothing but a very elaborate painting. I had voices in my head re-affirming these beliefs by telling me that either i wasn't real, my thoughts weren't real or the world in general wasn't real. This was more harrowing than the anxiety attacks, at least you physically feel something with them. But in this case i was left second guessing everything that entered my mind, such as thoughts and memories.
I didn't help myself by watching videos on mind control conspiracies. Before all this, I used to watch and read this kind of material all the time and feel no different. By this point in my life though, they were making me second guess everything i knew about myself which only compounded the problem. Like a lot of other people i started to wish there was some kind of pill that I could take that would make me forget about it all. A pill that would let me return to blissful ignorance and blind acceptance.
And its at this point I actually started to recover. I had been for a few therapy sessions thanks to my doc, which did help get me up and going again. But it wasn't until my second or third session when i realised I didn't need a pill to forget. By this point i had gotten into the habit of thought blocking. I had became so good at it, that i had a really hard time, and still do, recalling all those days leading up to this point in my life.
As the days passed, i found my attention slowly turning away from myself and instead i found myself starting to think about the future that i might still have. I used to love writing fiction, and had even published a few books on amazon before all this started. I found my imagination wanted to start to play again. But because of the constant thought blocking, i still have days where i fear the thoughts that come into my mind. But those too are gradually starting to fade into the past. I feel like I'm slowly coming back to reality again. I'm not quite there yet. I still get episodes of disassociation when i get really stressed, and the anxiety still circles in the background, but even that is becoming more of an annoyance than something i worry about.
There is no question that the pills I'm on have helped to some degree, but even my psychiatric nurse has told me that I will do most of the hard work myself. The pills only help to give you that initial boost. The things that have helped me get this far are talking to people (mostly family members), my little girl who's given me the courage to keep fighting when i felt like calling it quits. I've played more video games in the last year than i have done for most of my adult life (i'll be 39 next month), I've taught myself video and audio editing. I've gone back to reading tarot and playing cards.
It goes without saying that you can't escape what's going on in your head, but you can wilfully forget about those horrible thoughts and feelings by distracting yourself. Spend at least an hour each day putting your mental focus on something other than yourself and with each passing day you will start to forget all about the horrible stuff in your head that makes you feel so bad. It's by no means a quick cure, but it has certainly proven to be effective for me.
One thing I'm starting to discover, at least for me personally, is that there does seem to be some kind of end game to this nightmare. For me, it feels like, after spending so many years stressed out, hurt and desperately trying to achieve whatever goal I've set for myself, that my mind and spirit have forced me into a place where i have no option but to take a good hard look at myself and to recognise what is truly important in life and what is not.
I'm sorry for such a long winded post, but i hope it helps give someone out there a little hope that you can, with some perseverance, overcome this part of your life and move on to a much brighter future.
My nightmare started just over a year ago. Myself, my daughter and my parents where heading for a day out near the cost. The day started off good enough, i was even happy to get out for the day, but then something happened half way into the journey. As i was staring down the motorway we were on my heart started to race. I started to shake and feel sick. After pulling over I realised i was having an anxiety. Having suffered these in the past, I had a good idea how to calm myself down again. However, my usual coping strategy didn't work this time. Instead, i started to suffer minor anxiety attacks through the rest of the day.
These anxiety attacks grew quickly spiralled out of control over the course of the next few days. It took a week of a very small dose of Valium to help bring me back down, but it did nothing to stop the sensation that my mind was quickly unravelling. Almost every thought that came into my mind would illicit some form of panic. I felt certain I was going insane. I also felt like I was starting to lose myself and i even started having panic attacks at the thought of looking at myself in the mirror because I felt certain I wouldn't recognise myself anymore.
Then came the obsessive thoughts that just didn't seem to have an end. What made this worse was the sensory-motor obsessions such as blinking, breathing, heart beat and just about everything else. I also developed an obsession with my arms and hands that I felt certain was going to drive me insane. And that last one was the longest and hardest to overcome.
My own thoughts started to scare me. At its peak, i felt there was no way out of this torture for me. And just to make matters worse, half way through the year, my uncle, a man who taught me so much about the world, took his own life. On top of everything else i was going through, i felt like every last bit of hope had been snatched away from me. By this point i felt certain that the only respite i would get is by going the same road as my uncle and taking my own life.
In one last act of desperation, I went to my doctor and told her exactly how i felt. She immediately put me on anti-depressants called Citropram. My nightmare worsened just days after taking them. I felt like i was being pulled apart from the inside. On top of that was the hyper-awareness of my own body. I had never felt so uncomfortable in my skin in my entire life. Then just to really top things off came the disassociation. Not only did i have to suffer but now i got to suffer and sit in the passenger seat while it happened.
My doctor told me it would take at least a month for the benefits of the pills to really be noticed. So, i soldiered on. I tried my level best to stick with the pills. The one thing the pills did do, was bring my anxiety to a full stop. Every time i became anxious, a strange warmth would erupt from my stomach and course all over my body. This didn't stop the thoughts that made me anxious, but it allowed me to remain calm enough to at least be semi-functional.
Eventually, though, I couldn't take it anymore and asked my doc if there was another pill i could take. This time she switched me over to mitrazapine, which I'm still on at the moment. By this point I had become strong enough to deal with the anxiety, although i still felt like it was always present, circling in the background just waiting to completely ruin my day. The disassociation died down, but it still made its self present in the way i viewed the world. Some days i would feel like i was nothing more than a ghost. Other times i felt when i looked out at the world i was seeing nothing but a very elaborate painting. I had voices in my head re-affirming these beliefs by telling me that either i wasn't real, my thoughts weren't real or the world in general wasn't real. This was more harrowing than the anxiety attacks, at least you physically feel something with them. But in this case i was left second guessing everything that entered my mind, such as thoughts and memories.
I didn't help myself by watching videos on mind control conspiracies. Before all this, I used to watch and read this kind of material all the time and feel no different. By this point in my life though, they were making me second guess everything i knew about myself which only compounded the problem. Like a lot of other people i started to wish there was some kind of pill that I could take that would make me forget about it all. A pill that would let me return to blissful ignorance and blind acceptance.
And its at this point I actually started to recover. I had been for a few therapy sessions thanks to my doc, which did help get me up and going again. But it wasn't until my second or third session when i realised I didn't need a pill to forget. By this point i had gotten into the habit of thought blocking. I had became so good at it, that i had a really hard time, and still do, recalling all those days leading up to this point in my life.
As the days passed, i found my attention slowly turning away from myself and instead i found myself starting to think about the future that i might still have. I used to love writing fiction, and had even published a few books on amazon before all this started. I found my imagination wanted to start to play again. But because of the constant thought blocking, i still have days where i fear the thoughts that come into my mind. But those too are gradually starting to fade into the past. I feel like I'm slowly coming back to reality again. I'm not quite there yet. I still get episodes of disassociation when i get really stressed, and the anxiety still circles in the background, but even that is becoming more of an annoyance than something i worry about.
There is no question that the pills I'm on have helped to some degree, but even my psychiatric nurse has told me that I will do most of the hard work myself. The pills only help to give you that initial boost. The things that have helped me get this far are talking to people (mostly family members), my little girl who's given me the courage to keep fighting when i felt like calling it quits. I've played more video games in the last year than i have done for most of my adult life (i'll be 39 next month), I've taught myself video and audio editing. I've gone back to reading tarot and playing cards.
It goes without saying that you can't escape what's going on in your head, but you can wilfully forget about those horrible thoughts and feelings by distracting yourself. Spend at least an hour each day putting your mental focus on something other than yourself and with each passing day you will start to forget all about the horrible stuff in your head that makes you feel so bad. It's by no means a quick cure, but it has certainly proven to be effective for me.
One thing I'm starting to discover, at least for me personally, is that there does seem to be some kind of end game to this nightmare. For me, it feels like, after spending so many years stressed out, hurt and desperately trying to achieve whatever goal I've set for myself, that my mind and spirit have forced me into a place where i have no option but to take a good hard look at myself and to recognise what is truly important in life and what is not.
I'm sorry for such a long winded post, but i hope it helps give someone out there a little hope that you can, with some perseverance, overcome this part of your life and move on to a much brighter future.
