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Paralyzing Fear

991 Views 8 Replies 7 Participants Last post by  Psyborg
I am completely paralyzed by fear lately. I am afraid of everything. Everything I see or hear scares me. I am constantly in fight or flight mode and can feel adrenaline coursing through my body. I feel like I am in a closet looking through a peephole watching a murderer walk closer and closer, and just knowing he's going to open the door and kill me. This is pure, primal fear. Xanax alleviates it for a short time but then it comes right back. It is the most terrifying and debilitating feeling I can imagine. Obviously when I feel like this my dpdr intensifies greatly, leading to a feeling like I'm going crazy which makes me feel even more afraid. I just finished tapering off of effexor, could this be why? Everything in me just wants to run to the hospital but I know they can't help me. It is so disheartening to know there's nowhere you can go for help. Have any of you dealt with this feeling? I have tried meditation but it scares me, exercise scares me, talking to other people scared me. I look at my dog whom I love so much and I'm just filled with fear. I can't live like this. To be honest I would do anything to make it stop. Please help.
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Hi, lulu, I'm so sorry to hear you are feeling this way, and yes, after my last nervous breakdown I felt the same way, I was a nervous wreck, shaking like a leaf and scared of everything. Nothing helped, but I started taking spirulina - the only thing I could take without panicking - and ashwaghanda helped too.

What I did do was attend to the things I could attend to, like self-supporting dialogue, countering negative voices and building constructive ones. As awful as it all feels, it is all just paranoia and bad conditioning, so keep dismissing it all as just that.

The subconscious is sometimes likened to a garden, and many of the bad seeds aren't planted by us, they came from negative people, but we can start weeding and replanting, so I would say to start thinking in the ways you would like to be, just as if it's already happened. When you're half-asleep, Imagine how it would feel to be completely recovered. Persist and don't be discouraged by anyone, expectation is direction.

Focusing on the things you can do also has the added benefit of taking your mind off symptoms, which are usually irrelevant anyway, but we can build them up too much. Play video games if you are feeling immediately anxious, while reminding yourself it's just paranoia and you are completely safe. It's just kinks your mind needs to untangle.
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