Oh how i hate anxiety

I thought I would do a blog on anxiety as it is an issue that is affecting me a lot recently, so much so that at times I do not want to go out or don’t feel myself.

I have suffered from anxiety since I was 15. I can remember my first panic attack like it was yesterday; I woke up suddenly in the night and felt like my heart was racing. I felt scared and I remember feeling like I was going to die. For some strange reason I didn’t wake my parents, instead I went outside my house and started pacing up and down my road. To this day I don’t know why I did this, if I had to guess I would say that I thought if I kept moving then I would settle down and I would not die. My neighbour came out of the house and I suppose thought I was on drugs. She came and tried to calm me down and when I told her what had happened she said she thought I was having a panic attack.  She sat with me and told me that she had suffered from panic attacks and that I was not going to die, it was just the bodies’ way of dealing with stress.

I spoke to my mum about this on the day and she told me she suffered from anxiety and so did her twin sister. She suggested that I should go to the doctors and speak to them, I did this and to be honest I didn’t really find them very useful.  I carried on having panic attacks a few times a year but learnt how to cope with them and as I wasn’t experiencing them regularly they didn’t really bother me; but in April that all changed.

I was on the underground to work when I suddenly felt extremely scared and was getting bad palpitations and chest pain. I felt like I just needed to get off the train and when I eventually got off I just ran like I had never had before. I had never felt like this before, to me this was a much different type of panic attack, actually at the time I actually felt like I was having a heart attack. So I got home and my sister and I went to the hospital where they confirmed that I was not having a heart attack but a panic attack.

To me it didn’t feel like it was just a panic it felt much worse, this feeling carried on non-stop. I had been into hospital 10 times in a month and was not getting any better. In June after taking my children to school I came home and just collapsed. I went to a different hospital and that is when the diagnoses process started. This eventually led to me being diagnosed with AF and POTS.

I was beginning to get treated for my Atrial Fibrillation and POTS but I was still having panic attacks and always anxious. I felt like feeling anxious was only making my AF and pots worse so I went to my GP and basically begged for help, I was lucky my doctor understood and refereed me to have cognitive therapy while also prescribing me anti depressives at a low dose, to help with the anxiety. I didn’t really want to go on anti-depressives and I feel that there is a stigma attached to taking them, but after discussing it with my doctor I felt I should give it a try.

So two months on and I still feel anxious a lot of the time. I really do believe that being anxious makes my POTS much worse as I feel trapped and am scared to go out, always worrying that I will collapse or feel too dizzy to walk, or even not be able to socialise with my friends because of the anxiety. Another aspect of my anxiety is that I always feel like something bad is going to happen to me or that I am going to die and this is what generally will set me in to a panic. Since I have been doing cognitive therapy though I have learnt that it is my own negative thoughts that cause me to panic, and that the more you feel negative, the more you panic. For example, I don’t want to go out because I feel that I will collapse, this will then cause me to get even more anxious and then my heart rate will go up even more, making me panic more; the cycle is complete and never ends.

Although I do know that really it’s just my negative thoughts that are stopping me. I need to realise that yes I have POTS and AF and they have changed my life and yes I have really bad POTS days and if I go out there is a chance I could collapse, but if I don’t try then I will never know how strong I am. I am actually laughing while I write this as while I can write what I should be doing, doing it is another story altogether

It is really hard to not think negatively but I don’t want to be like this anymore I want to attempt to be able to watch TV without think of bad things. I am only two weeks into my cognitive therapy and I am determined to give it my all, I want to beat this as yes I have POTS and AF and I probably  always will, but I will not feel anxious any more.

I would really like to know about anyone else who suffers badly from anxiety and how you deal with it.

Also I will keep you guys up dated and do a blog on how my cognitive therapy is going and from now on it is all about positive thoughts.