I am sick of living with anxiety

[misskellyb]

Anxiety. I’m fed up of it. I want to cry today because it’s overwhelming me.

It’s mainly health anxiety over my kids. I over analyse any small changes in their behaviours or any illness symptoms they have and connect it with something sinnister to the point I believe they’re both terminally ill. If it isn’t illness related then I believe something bad will happen to them. But I’m anxious over everything. I’m starting to lose my confidence driving places, which I’ve never had an issue driving places before. I’m even worrying over my own health, worrying that if something bad happens to me I won’t be around for my kids growing up. I keep imagining my life without one of my kids or even without both and I just can’t comprehend it at all.

The anxiety is debilitating. It’s actually paralysing me to the point I can’t move. It’s stopping me from being productive.

Doctor has prescribed sertraline after I basically begged for it after a visit to the doctors for bowel problems, which I had bloods for and assumed I had bowel cancer. When the bloods came back negative for anything sinister I thought maybe my bowel symptoms are due to severe anxiety, and the anxiety is now at a point it’s physically making me ill.

Background: I have had some mild/moderate untreated anxiety all of my life, since even being a child. Had a bad pregnancy with my first child where I was in intensive care and I wasn’t suspected to make it. Family were called to come and say possible goodbyes. Then when I recovered the waiting game was on to see if my baby would be ok. As he’s grown up he’s displaying autism traits and just started school. Since his birth it seems we’ve never been able to escape clinical settings with his autism traits, which probably doesn’t help my anxiety. He’s not really happy going to school and it’s heartbreaking. I think the trigger to why the anxiety is getting so bad lately is since he’s started school.

I wasnt able to complete CBT due to lacking childcare. I’ve attempted it twice. I don’t think it was even going to help me anyway with how severe my anxiety is. Since I don't have childcare options I have no life anymore. No friends. I’ve had to quit my job. And I never do anything for myself without the kids so I have a lot of time to live inside my head and over analyse every little detail when it comes to my kids happiness and health and have all the time in the world to let it spiral and ruminate over past traumas.

I’ve recently started studying again on an evening to try and motivate me and take my mind off of things. But some days I find my anxiety cripples me to the point I can’t do it. I spend my evenings staring at the walls or directly through the TV.

How do I get past this when every solution is basically impossible? Will this ever go away?

Hi OP, sorry to read how hard life is for you. You say your son is autistic. Have you considered whether you may well be autistic too - your anxiety could well be neurodiversity and all that relates to it.

@Sussurations thank you so much x

@Derbybound2022 I do think I am autistic. Been considering it since I learnt the symptoms when my son was referred. I mentioned it to the GP when they gave me sertraline and he said 'let's treat the anxiety first and go from there.'

I did the is it, RAADS test? I scored about 189 roughly. X

Another vote for Self Help For Your Nerves by Claire Weekes. You can read it for free online.

https://archive.org/details/selfhelpforyourn00week

Anxiety really drags me down. It’s just exhausting. Living in the U.K. doesn’t help. This country is so overcrowded, and the traffic is so awful, that my anxiety is constantly triggered. I often wonder what I’d be like if I lived somewhere quiet and empty, with a slow pace of life and very few people. We’re not meant to live this way.

Imagine life in a village in 1900. Yes it was harder, but I doubt anyone suffered from panic attacks or OCD or insomnia. You woke to the sound of birdsong, walked to work, and never heard a phone ring or a car accelerate. In fact, the loudest sound was a church bell, or the clip clop of a horse. Think how slow and calm and quiet everything must have been. If you could bring someone who died in 1900 back to life, and put them in the same village in which they grew up, they’d think we’d all gone insane.

@JaneyGee this actually made me crack half a smile, thanks lol. X

Bit rose tinted that

Yes calm and quiet but

Starvation
Hard labour
No law enforcement
No heating
Poor housing
Murder
Rape
Domestic abuse
Poor healthcare
Illnesses

All still existed and were far worse in some cases.

I'm so sorry you have to cope with Health Anxiety and feeling absolutely terrorized by fear OP. I have similar issues and it is really difficult to cope! My anxiety absolutely rules my life at the moment too.

It sounds like you went through some very significant trauma during your first pregnancy and it has had a lasting effect, much like if you had PTSD. Have you had any counselling for that? You might be able to ask for counselling or CBT via Zoom.I think that quite a lot of NHS IAPT self-referral services in England and Wales now offer this and definitely a lot of private therapists offer Zoom sessions.

Does the Sertraline help at all?

Like you, I'm studying an online course and do find it takes my mind off things a bit but it is also a source of anxiety especially around deadline time and sometimes my anxiety is so bad that it makes it very difficult to relax enough to concentrate!

I imagine this is something that you've already seen in CBT but I find 'The Worry Tree' helpful at times!

Nice idea and you're right that constant stress from the environment has a big effect on anxiety but people definitely did have OCD in the 1900s as there are historical records of it! I bet lots of people worried about losing their children too and many did.

@Rosesandstars no I've not seen that. I'll give it a go thank you.

I was talking about the pace of life. Obviously life was physically harder, and for a poor woman it was bloody awful, but my god it was more peaceful. In 1900, there were a billion humans. Today there are eight billion and heading for ten. In some ways our quality of life has deteriorated. We’re increasingly squeezed into smaller and smaller houses, with more and more people on top of us. I would happily exchange mobile phones and central heating for more fields and trees and space.

The fact that you recognise when you’re experiencing a decline and when you can recognise that something has the potential to cause serious repercussions shows that you are very aware, awareness is crucial and can save you from so many unnecessary situations so that’s a win for you! (Sorry my win/lose statements were another way I looked at things 😅 every day I focused on ways I could beat my demon to get another win!)

Nothing vague about your replies, I understand completely!! There is so much helpful information, recommendations & advice on your original post you must be feeling a little overwhelmed with it all… and relieved that you’re not alone!

It all takes time, the road to recovery is never straight forward but as you start to rack up your wins you’ll start to see a little bit of you again! Even if all you did today or any other day was breathe, that’s a win too because you made it through!!

Be kind & gentle with yourself (therapist used to end our sessions with this statement every time without fail!) it is so necessary to do so! I’m sure whoever finds this post will also be happy to remind you of this also… and I see we have a PM feature here (I’m new to this site) so if you ever wish to reach out privately there seems to be plenty of us here with the time to spare for someone in a position we once found ourselves in 🫶🏻

@misskellyb
I sympathize with you very much. I’ve suffered anxiety on and off for a long time and it’s no way to live. i can relate to a lot of what you say, a traumatic birth, a near death experience and a child with a condition (one of my dc has a physical life threatening condition and also has to attend multiple medical appointments in the hospital where a lot of the trauma happened).
To me you sound traumatized and stuck in fight or flight. You also sound burnt out which in my experience overlaps with the anxiety. Your nervous system needs a reset. The meds are a good idea (am on them too) but I would also recommend some treatment for the actual trauma. I’ve tried lots and for me the best one was EMDR. It’s fantastic for trauma. Unless you deal with that you’ll have a very hard time getting out of fight or flight.
To give you some hope, despite my child’s ongoing issues, I am currently in a really good place. Anxiety has left me for now and i know it can return but I’m proof that you can recover from the health anxiety. Once upon a time I would never have believed I could let go of that hyper vigilance, that worry that if I don’t worry something bad will happen etc but it is possible. Sending much love and healing x

I can relate. My anxiety is crippling. I am self diagnosing myself with every ailment possible. I google and convince myself I have it. I don’t know how to stop.

Age 50 and 52 was when I found that the root cause of my lifelong anxiety was due to autism and ADHD. That impulsive to spend and do all the things all at once, moving iny when the dopamine hit has gone.

As you know your child is autistic, it's really worth investigating this for yourself. ADHD meds have enormously reduced my anxiety and ability to catastrophise over tiny things.

Helping to keep yourself regulated as a (maybe) autistic woman will help with your anxieties that could be due to sensory processing, social communication and interaction and all the other autistic traits will greatly reduce your anxiety Im sure.

@Mabelface @Derbybound2022 another thing as well is my multiple ideas... x2 failed business, I've paid for multiple courses since I left college as a teenager with the idea that they'll be a future career. I get fixated on the idea until I see it through. When the high stops, the idea goes, even if I've spent the money or not.

I've worked multiple jobs, sometimes 2 jobs at once, I've never been unemployed (until now because of my caring responsibilities) but these jobs have always been for a few months here and there before it gets too much for me and I'd move to another job. I usually found myself leaving because I was fed up of the unpredictable time tables and Rota - as I hate the unknown. And also I found I never fit in anywhere I worked.

All of this in my past I never realised what it could be until I found out about autism and adhd. I've even scripted, like physically wrote out conversations on my phone to rehearse before meeting friends or going on dates. And I've never been true to myself, all through growing up I morphed in to the person I was socialising with to be exactly the same as they were, and never actually 'found myself'. I Even got myself a pair of fake boobs to fit in in my early 20s with the girls I used to socialise with, something I now regret and im trying to get out. Let's not forget those fake boobs cause me anxiety too, worrying about what damage I could have done to my body.

I've always been overwhelmed in busy places and by noise and smells. And had my fair share of emotional meltdowns throughout my time, especially when in school. School was awful and traumatic for me.

You've mentioned adhd meds have helped anxiety. What are these meds? Are they specifically for adhd? As I might push for them and tell the doctor I'd like the assessment sooner than he's planning on, because if my anxiety is linked to being ND I'd rather do that now than waste my time with sertraline if it won't help. And I believe it could be. When I was a child sometimes I'd have sleepless nights worrying about people breaking in to the house, or my mum misplacing her keys and an intruder letting themselves in. My son is very similar. It's heartbreaking. And it seemed to happen over night with no cause. He just seemed to become aware of his surroundings and possible dangers. When I got in to my late teens my anxiety faded because I was so fixated on fitting in to social circles and gained a sense of fake confidence, until I got pregnant and went through the hospital trauma and the anxiety came back tenfold. Now I am so isolated I have al the time in the work to feed my anxiety demon. I guess when I was in my early 20s my anxiety was there but I never really heard it because I was so busy keeping up an appearance and busy bodying around with all my fixations and forced socialising. I never used to sleep from being constantly wired back then.

It's great that you are realising you are AuDHD and you can learn all about your neurodiversity. I recommend searching AuDHD accounts on Instagram as there are a lot of people like you advocating and sharing their experience on there. The right medication for your Adhd will help probably more than anti-anxiety meds.

@Derbybound2022 thank you. I'll take a look. Tiktok is always suggesting adult adhd videos for me to watch, it's like the algorithm knows.

You've almost described my life. ADHD meds have to be prescribed by a psychiatrist and there may be a wait. Antidepressants do help to a point so taking them can be helpful. Definitely a good idea to really push for assessment. It was when my eldest son was diagnosed aged 26 that I had a bit of a lightbulb moment. Then I hit peri menopause and the wheels really fell off.

It's like your brain goes into overdrive, analyzing every little thing and conjuring up worst-case scenarios. The fact that you're studying again shows that you're resilient and determined to make positive changes in your life, despite the challenges. Therapy might be difficult to access right now, but there are still resources out there, like hotlines and online support groups, that could offer some relief or at least a listening ear when you need it. And please know, you're not alone in this. There are so many people out there struggling with similar feelings, like https://nationalrehabhotline.org/. It's okay to not have all the answers right now, but just know that there is hope for things to get better, even if it feels impossible at times.