Hi all! I am 24 years old female and, I think, I’ve been anxious for my whole life. Notice - I have never been diagnosed so I may not have anxiety disorder. Also - English is not my native language, so I am sorry for any potential language mistakes. I want to talk not only about anxiety, but about everything that bothers me, if that is okay. I think that it’s all connected.
Possible TRIGGERS - eating disorder, infertility, depression? Self harm
When I was a little girl and my mom’s friends came to greet us, I immediately stopped moving and could not move at all or say anything. I literally could not speak or somewhat interact with other people beside my parents and grandparents, with whom I spent the majority of my early childhood. I cried every time my parents dropped me at kindergarten - and I do not know why. I knew that my parents would come to pick me up, I was not afraid to lose them. I guess I was just afraid of kindergarten itself. At sleep breaks I could not sleep and cried the whole time. I was literally the only child who was allowed to take a plush toy to bed, because it was prohibited in our kindergarten.
Later I noticed that I cannot say “good morning” to the people I know, but not good. Neighbours, for example. Or my aunt. People, with whom I am supposed to be polite and nice. And they all thought that I am simply rude, but I was like paralysed and unable to greet them. I still cannot do that. I have a beautiful husband, who helps me a lot, and I cannot say “good evening” to his beautiful and awesome mother. I just simply stand and wave to her. I cannot call people by their names, and I could not do that since childhood too. At this point I know a hundred and one way to address somebody without telling their name directly. I cannot say “Hi, Janet” for example, I’d say simply “Hi”. I’d rather say “she” than call her by her name.
My best friend helped me a lot during my early teen years. I could not buy anything at stores, because I was paralysed when it came to asking for something. She made me go and buy stuff. Now I can do my own groceries, and it feels good I guess.
When I was 16, I started to spend my time with “cool kids”. I started smoking and heavy drinking with them. Smoking calmed me down, and alcohol helped my anxiety to go away completely, and those years I remember with good nostalgia. I know that it all was very, very bad, but I genuinely had fun. I was carefree. I mostly did what I wanted to do and I knew who am I. I did a lot of stupid things I regret now, I said a lot of stupid things, I lied a lot to everybody, but I did not care, and that feeling was awesome.
At the same time I stopped eating. I was always a bit chubby as a kid, but my weight was okay, I haven’t been overweight at all. But one of my male friends at a time (and I had a crush on him) told me that if a girl weights over 50kg, she is fat. I weighted 53kg at a time with my height being about 163cm. But I stopped eating for two weeks. I used to eat one small low-fat yoghurt in the morning, and for the rest of the day I drank black coffee and that’s it. I fainted a lot, but I began to weight 48kg, but that was not enough. I wanted to be skinny. Like, really skinny. The next 4 years were a race between binge eating for two weeks and then drink-only diet for two weeks. At some moment I met my future husband, and he made me eat. My stomach hurt but I ate because he was almost the first person in my life who truly cared about me and my mental health. My parents do not believe in mental health disorders and mental health doctors. I told my mother once that I do not eat and just puke those little amounts of food that I consume, and she just asked me - “oh, is it anorexia?” And I told her “no”, and the conversation was over. And she continued to ask me to “go on a diet” till this very moment. I told her many times to stop, she does not listen to me. She always wanted me to be skinny.
At about age 16 I found out that I have hormonal issues, my ovaries do not work as intended. Doctors and I blame my eating disorder (again - I haven’t been diagnosed with it). I started taking the pill. At the age 20 I began to gain a lot of weight and it was hard for me. I finally accepted my weight and began to love my looks earlier this year, at the age 24. I am not extremely overweight, I am still okay, but it was very hard. The only and the biggest issue left is that I can’t have children. That was my dream since I was a little girl - to have my own children, to become pregnant, to feel it. We are trying to conceive for a year and a half now, and nothing is happening. I hope for the best.
When I was about to graduate (I have BA in arts), I decided to post my art online, and some random girl told me that my art is crap. For some reason it triggered me, and I spent the next two weeks just laying in my bed staring at the ceiling. I was crushed. My tutor was a crappy sad old man, who made me and all of my peers believe they are shitty artists and shitty people in general - I met my peers a couple of months ago, and they all told me that they cannot draw ever since. I loved to draw more than anything in this world, and now I cannot do this, because I immediately become anxious and sad and devastated. I have some good days when I can do this, but those days are very rare and I need to push myself really hard to do this.
The point is - I am sitting at my home for almost three years by now, occasionally going out to meet my mother once a week, or to spend time with my husband like once a month. I tried to come studying on a courses earlier, but that made me super anxious and I stopped coming there. I turned the notifications on WhatsApp (that’s where they post all course-related info) off, because they made me even more anxious.
So what I have at this moment: I have no job (because I am anxious even to look for one), I do not come outside almost at all, I cannot greet people or make phone calls or order food for myself, and I do not know who I am. My anxiety is so strong now that it became not only a part of my personality, but my personality itself. I have almost no interests, no will to do anything (even if something interests me - I do not want to do this, for example I LOVE musicals but I do not listen to them alone, only if my husband’s listening to them and I am near), no motivation.
This month I finally started to do something with it. I went to my clinic to see a therapist. Side note - in my country we have free insurance but the doctors and overall service is very crappy. I am very lucky to have my father pay for paid insurance, but I does not cover everything. I told my therapist that I am super anxious to go outside and that I have weird headaches lasting for a week - she told me to go and see neurologist. Neurologist told me to go to a massage. I was laying there yesterday and thinking - what’s the point? That is pointless. Yes, I have sore neck, but you should cure the reason of the pain and not the symptoms, right? I can home yesterday crying, I lied on my bed and spent my whole day like this. I want to see a psychiatrist or psychotherapist but to do this for free I need my therapist to tell me to do so, and she thinks that headache is my main problem. No it’s not. I have other symptoms too, I was just afraid to tell about them to her: headache, dizziness, tachycardia, I clench my teeth as hell especially during sleep, occasional insomnia, and the weirdest ones: sometimes during pre-sleep time I close my eyes and feel like the room is spinning; also again during pre-sleep time with closed eyes I feel like I begin to shrink and grow in size. I genuinely though that was normal until I asked my online friends, and they told me that that is weird as hell and not normal at all.
I am sure I’m forgetting something, but that is my story and I wanted to share it with you. Love you. Hope for the best.
Edit: forgot to say that I am constantly worrying that maybe I am not anxious but indeed just lazy and that it’s all just my imagination, because I haven’t seen a specialist not once in my life (because my parents do not believe in them and later I was just too anxious to see a doctor). Don’t know where the truth lies.
Also - my best friend who is now a doctor herself prescribed me Atharax, and I slept like a child but it had no effect on my anxiety. And my therapist prescribed me Adaptol (Mebicar), but it has no effect at all. My neurologist told me to take magnesium.
Edit2: it pisses me off that rationally I understand that I have nothing to worry about, but this irrational anxiety is killing me. I am constantly worrying about everything. I am rationally not afraid to come to people and talk to them, but when I do so, my voice begin to shake, I am unable to make up words, my hands and legs are shaking. I hate when people call me “shy”, because I am not. I love being around people, and I am desperate for attention, I am very happy when people discuss me etc etc. I just cannot do this because I begin to be anxious for no reason. Like, I need to talk to somebody important - I cannot do this, I’m just frozen unable to move, standing there and crying. Even thinking about those kind of situations provoke those feelings.
I also noticed that I’m constantly doing something like scratching, shaking my legs, playing with my hair, etc. Can’t just sit still and do nothing. Also - concentration issues.
My mother always told me to hide my feelings because “feelings are for weak”. I tried to ask her to help me find a specialist, but it all ended up to be a huge scandal and she just told me to get a life coach (what?).
I tried crying for help for many times, but now I understand that I’m my only friend at this situation.
Edit3: when I was a teen, I practiced self-harm for some time, and by this point it helps me sometimes just to squeeze my arm really hard with my nails to stop anxiety attack. Don’t know why.
Submitted April 24, 2019 at 03:11PM by palemoth http://bit.ly/2PuTdxB
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