Chronic Anxiety

[user07677]

Hi there, I've suffered with anxiety for a good 10 years and last year was the worst it's been and I had to take a year out of college, I have just started back up and I am struggling but trying best I can, I go in for 2 1/2 days which isn't much to many people but it's a lot for me with not really being able to do much in the last year but I feel like a failure as I haven't been able to go today and I feel like I have let everyone down and it's really getting me down it really is as people don't think I'm really trying but I'm giving it all I can and I really want this for myself but sometimes it really is too much, I just wondered if anyone else has experienced a similar situation and how they managed to overcome the anxiety or make it a bit more manageable.

Have you tried antidepressants ?

What triggered the anxiety 10 years ago?

@KangarooKenny hi I did get offered them but I didn't want to take them without trying every option first but I think it is something that I will be enquiring about.

@Eyesopenwideawake I suffer with ptsd from an event that happened when I was younger and ever since that it has always come out in anxiety and caused a lot of phobias which lead to the everyday problems.

I think you will find it life changing.
It was certainly life saving for my DH

OK. When we suffer from a trauma a part of our mind is 'assigned' to figure out what happened so that we can avoid being in that unpleasant or dangerous situation again. This is fine if it's (say) a car accident and we can pinpoint a defect with the car, or bad road conditions, or we know that we or the other person did something wrong - we therefore have the answers we need. The mind can then file away the information and stop thinking about it.

If however the trauma was inexplicable, completely random or the people involved can't or won't explain their actions (abuse being the obvious example) then the mind will keep going over the incident(s) - examining in from every angle, asking if we could be responsible in some way or if there's anything we should have done differently to change the outcome. Why? Because the human mind is genetically programmed to work things out in order to learn from them.

When the mind can't find an acceptable reason (maybe because there just isn't one) it might adopt the strategy of avoiding anything that might cause us harm - even though it has nothing to do with the trauma. It doesn't know what happened therefore everything is potentially dangerous which gives rise to the anxieties and phobias you describe.

Does this make sense to you?