fear/anxiety over nothing all the time.

[sallyst123]

hi im a mum to 3 beautiful healthy happy kids i have a great partner we both work full time. we,re not rich its menial paid but we are employed so luckier than a lot at the moment, i have loads of positives but i cant escape the feeling of dread & anxiety every minute of every day. i honestly cant put it down to anything in particular obv we have the usual issues never having money we seem to survive day to day rather than live, we dont have savings never been on holiday etc but thats not really a problem its just how it is.
i just cant stop worrying im scared all the time over everything its to the point that my i cant talk to anyone about it anymore because my hubby doesnt want to hear it he just thinks its unnecessary & making me ill which it is. im even scared of the postman & what bills hes gonna be bringing me to the point i ring home at 10.30 everyday to ask him "have we any post what is it what do they say", at work ive just had a promotion & im scared im doing a shit job & letting everyone down, im scared or paronid that people are talking about me behind my back (just saying how crap/useless i am). & then im scared that i will lose my job cause im so rubbish.
im absolutly terrified im letting my children down by missing there sports days, move up days,putting them into nursery when im at work,they are constantly missing their friends bday partys because they have to go into nursery on a saturday as we both wk weekends. i just feel completly useless. i take them to church every week but ive never got them christened (mostly cause we couldnt afford the cost of it) so feel like ive let them down that way. its just constant to the point now where every so often i feel like i cant breath.
im even worring now about christmas ive started buying already but i panic at the thought they will wake up in xmas day with nothing under the tree/food in the cupboard etc it happened to me as a child once & i never want that to happen to them. it ridculous, i know its stupid but i just want to cry at the thought.
ive never been to the docs i dont want them to think im just some stupid whinger but was hoping maybe if anyone else as felt like this at some point & gotten through it you could let me know what it is any coping techniques anything to help cause i think if i carry on carrying this knot in my tummy around, my hubby gonna leave nor would i blame him. we dont have any family around us just myself him & the kids we do it by ourselves.
as i said before i know how lucky i am the kids are wonderful & every so often when i feel like im getting sucked down i give my head a wobble & carry on but i thought i might reach out this time to make sure im not alone & if other have felt this way.
sorry for the long post thanks for reading

Hi Sally

You sound pretty much exactly like I did a few months ago. I have always been a worrier, but over the last couple of years my anxiety had gotten worse and worse, so that by the end of last year it was like a free-floating, pretty much constant feeling of anxiety and panic. It was horrible .

I was very, very reluctant to tell anybody, mostly because I felt that if anybody knew how I was feeling, their reaction would be that I need to pull myself together - I have a good life, nice home, lovely husband & children, etc, etc. In short, I never really knew why my anxiety started ramping up when it did, which made it worse because I wondered if I was just going mad.

Anyway, in April I finally confided in a friend and completely broke down in a heap whilst telling her - I'd bottled it up for so long. And she pretty much frog-marched me to the GP that day.

And I am so, so glad I went. He wasn't surprised or confused at all about why I was feeling the way I was. He explained that anxiety (or Generalised Anxiety Disorder, as he diagnosed it), is an illness like any other - ie it is not under your control whether you develop it or not, and it can quite often just be caused by problems with hormone levels, or chemicals in the brain (serotonin) being out of kilter for a million different reasons. He said if you had problem with your leg you would get it fixed, and it should be the same with your mind.

He prescribed me a low dose of Sertraline, which is an anti-depressant but is also very effective for anxiety. And now approx. 3 months on, I feel so much better . I still have the odd wobbly day, but that is all it is, and I can honestly say I'm feeling like my old self 95% of the time.

It's not an instant cure; the first few weeks were very up and down for me, and the initial side-effects can be a bit crappy too. But overall for me this has been a really positive experience. We have a thread in this Section - 'Sertraline Buddies - support for anybody taking sertraline' which I use a lot and have found really helpful so you may like to take a look - it's been going for a few months now so it's lovely to see the posts from people who started off feeling like you do and then come back to say how much better they are feeling .

Do you think you could face making an appointment with your GP? You really do not have to live with feeling like you do any longer - the help is out there

thank you chuff. its so bad i never tell anyone because i know people have it so much worse. i guess thats the great thing about this group. people arent going to judge me to much. i am extremly grateful for the things i have but i would like to have a day where i can wake up without the feeling of OMG again.
i dont know about going to docs. im not depressed, just need to learn to breath again if that makes sense & not get so caught up in my own little whirlwind.
but thank you for your respose its nice to know there is someone else like me out there