Learning about anxiety was a huge breakthrough for me. We actually get trapped in a cycle of where we become afraid of the anxiety we suffer from.
Anxiety often starts from stress - whether its built up over years or short term. We all deal with stress differently and whilst some people thrive on it, others crumble at a small amount. Your body will cope with so much stress before it reaches its limit and boils over ending in anxiety or a panic attack. When that happens, if it frightens you that sticks in your mind and you begin to fear anxiety and panic. If you're in a particular place when it happens you associate that place with the panic and fear the place.
Anxiety then brings on lots of side effects too - racing heart, aches and pains, headaches, feeling detached, racing thoughts, scary thoughts, guilt, fear ...... and many more. The sufferer often feels afraid of these side effects, especially the thoughts, which then in turn produce more anxiety. So this is how you get stuck in a perpetual cycle of constantly being afraid of anxiety - yet the sufferer just keeps adding more fuel to the fire which keeps it burning.
Breaking that cycle is the key. Firstly there is no point worrying about the side effects of anxiety - they are just side effects, and these will go once the anxiety starts to ease. Honestly.
When you're not well, you become tired and your mind becomes tired. This is when the bad thoughts stick. They are so common with anxiety - this is not the real you, and your mind seems to delve deeper to see what it can find to scare you. I had many of them and I was terrified. Knowing these thoughts will go as the anxiety goes is the start. When you have a thought, just let it come and go, don't give it the importance it wants as its your reaction to it that counts. By not responding to it, it will in time fade and become unimportant.
Relaxation is another key factor. Not just when you're sitting, but when you're moving about. Anxiety thrives on tension, and you're body is always tight / tense because we fight this illness. That's the wrong thing to do. Learning to let go of all tension helps to slowly calm the nerves down. Its hard when you're in the grip of bad anxiety / panic, but that's the best time to practice. Let the feelings be there, relax and just carry on. Its like ignoring it.
And of course medication. Finding the correct SSRI for you is the other key factor. All these meds are tailored to different people, and if one doesn't work for you, then its best to move on to another - just like you've just done.
SSRI's work by hanging onto your serotonin, our feel good neurotransmitters in the brain. This will slowly also make you feel calmer and happier too. This takes time, and we always feel quite rough to start with because our body is adjusting to the meds.
These meds can take many, many months before they kick in. During this time you'll get blips where you'll feel like you've gone back to the beginning - thats perfectly normal. Understanding these blips helps, as lots of people think they're ill again and increase their dose. Trouble is increasing will give you side effects again, then they have to settle and you still have to go through the blips. Quite a few people will spend years hopping up and down doses trying to stop these blips, but they just cause more problems instead of letting things settle.
You cannot get rid of anxiety in an instant ..... but you can get rid of it with patience, understanding, one constant dose / medication and more patience.
I've been on meds twice and the second time I had a different experience whereby I felt completely flat - just like you've described. It went on for months, but I knew the meds worked for me and just carried on. In time the flatness lifted.
You will feel out of it because you have all your attention / focus on yourself and how you feel. Its draining. The meds will also make you feel strange for a while too. Being scared of all this will add anxiety to that fire ... remember. I think also you're having blips, which is why you felt like yourself a few weeks ago and for it to disappear. Try and accept this is normal, and try not to fear it. Those normal times will grow more and more. Understanding what's happening will start to help.
You will be you again. Everyone can recover from anxiety. Its within you.
I can recommend a brilliant website and book that I discovered this year. It was written by a man who suffered for 10 years and then cured himself with the same method I briefly explained above. I used this method via different books / author (Dr Claire Weeks) and her explanation of anxiety was so simple it just made sense. It helped take away the mystery and though I wasn't instantly cured, it helped take some of the fear away. More reading, understanding, working towards it and then the medication is what helped me recover.
This website / book I mention is really brilliant. Its not 'just another' website. What he writes is so true. I've passed this on to many others and quite a lot have been working with his method and are making progress. Some even email him for personal advice too.
Understanding anxiety has helped me to not fear it anymore, and that has helped me to be able to now be meds free, though I take an over the counter herbal tablet.
Here's the link. I hope it helps.
