hpdw

Morning friends . First of all it's 69 days since my last drink .
The thing I wanted to tell you about is setback in recovery from anxiety symptoms , Symptoms that I have been troubled with for over 40 years from mild to manageable to sheer panic and once I was even hospitalised for 3 weeks when my symptoms became debilitating and I couldn't face life ( they used to call it nervous breakdown but they don,t use that term these days .) Anyway I eventually recovered to a degree and they let me home . As the years went on I continued to drink and use diazepam in a sew saw fashion and as I got older the effects of alcohol became unbearable and I needed a week to recover doping myself with diazepam , the depression and feeling of sheer doom and foreboding was a living nightmare .I still hadn't learned my lesson though as i continued with this insanity for a long time till one very very bad episode had me off work for 3 weeks . Thats when I decided to go to AA and stayed sober for 2 years ,. The anxiety still persisted though but the longer I stayed sober the better it got . It became what i thought was "just the way I am " . After my 2 years sober I went back out and drank and found that I was even worse than before in terms of nightmare withdrawals after each binge . ( I never went back to AA except for one meeting last year )

Fast forward to when I found SR . I managed various spells of sobriety I think the longest was 5 Months ( I'd need to check back my posts ) and each time I picked up after some sobriety was always worse than before .
Anyway to shorten this story here I am at 69 days and have been working very very hard at understanding the anxiety part of my life that is to work out WHY it is there and HOW it perpetuates and I have came up with very good information which I won,t go into here as it,s different for everyone . Ill just say though that its with understanding that anxiety in and off itself is not a disease and by knowing this my symptoms are improving .
I have also recently made good progress with a better diet and increased my walking and certain stretches that I do 3-5 times a day in a bid to clear tension headaches ( this is working ) .

Setbacks . The reason for me posting this is that I had the most horrible night last night waking 3 times in panic and fear . This is very distressing and to say I got up at 6.30am disappointed is an understatement . However hard as it is I got straight into my deep breathing and brought back to mind that I am in control and the acceptance that this will pass . I made my tea as usual ( gave up coffee) then proceeded to write this down . It,s almost 8am and I feel much better and while it is difficult to keep myself from remembering last night I push it away smiling ,in fact i,m laughing telling myself that not everything needs an explanation ,all is well .

Dee74

I'm glad you're feeling better this morning Thomas

Battling with anxiety has been a lifelong thing with me. I feel I'm the best I've ever been right now, but I still have episodes.

The difference is I know this is just a thing, it will pass, and I don't tend to awfulise nearly as much as I once would.

Various things have helped me. Exercise and diet certainly - and balance. I can;t stress the over importance of that. I'm used to giving my all to people - thats noble in a way, sure, but it's way less so when there's nothing left in reserve for me. I have to watch that even now.

The biggest change for me though was giving up alcohol and drugs.

It took a long time for me to get to a place like where I am now, but every step was worth it

Things will get better Thomas, I guarantee it

D

Jojay

Hi Thomas.Sorry to hear anxiety is getting you down.I found that deep breathing exercises really helped more than any thing else,when I was in the grip of an attack.And posting on here for support.I haven't had one for over a year and I'm now 18 months sober.Stay strong and well done with not drinking.

hpdw

Thanks Dee ,I,m happy for you that you are in a much better place anxiety wise and your sobriety always inspires me .
Also your line about giving too much of yourself and leaving nothing left for you is a thing I need to work on . Sometimes I think I take too much on around family issues . My youngest son split from a 10 year relationship and I feel I got too emotionally involved and it takes its toll . I tried to fix something that wasn't mine to fix .

What I found helped me greatly this morning was that I told myself "you walked 2 miles in the country yesterday and felt great , no anxiety ,no panic , no weird sensations ,accept this as a bad night and forget it "


Thanks

Stronger2017

Anxiety is tough sometimes for me too😌 This is definitely something I want to work on in the coming months. And as Dee said, balance is a massive part of fixing the problem. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Thomas🙏

theVman31

Hi Thomas.

Suffered all my life too.

Im two months sober today and I feel better. I suppose better able to handle an anxious or stressful situation.

My anxiety causes alot of symptoms, under arm sweating, in intense social challenging situations I can break out in a forhead sweat, agoraphobie too (i absoulutely dread the cantine at work (stupid isnt it) sometimes muscle spasm or cramp (quite simply not being able to open my hand or lombago bad enough to not be able to put on my socks) On one occasion in work I was in a very stressful situation and I got a stress / anxiety provoked vertigo attack so bad that i couldnt get off my chair. The room was turning. ( i have really bad ear buzzing tinnitus aswell)

Complicated when we think about it all so i'll try not to think about it
I have to work on diet too...

I'll quote a famous scots man : "not everything needs an explanation"

Jules714

Congrats on 69? 65 days? I'm sorry. Short term memory is shot.
I don't know if this will help but my experience:
Yesterday I didn't feel well so I stayed at home. In the afternoon I took a small nap and woke up with anxiety. The pangs in my stomach woke me. Having been feeling under the weather I did not go about my usual busy schedule. I did not get this long dog walks in. I'm unsure if there is a correlation, but food for thought.
I KNOW drinking makes my anxiety unbarable. The attacks are far and few between these days.
Feel better!
Jules

hpdw

Stronger sorry you feel like this sometimes I hope you improve .

TheVman the symptoms you mention sound awful but with the right tools can be lessened and eventually disappear . Try not to shrink away from situations like the canteen , breath deeply and just let the sensations wash over you . Do this enough times and anxiety gives up ." It's fear of the state you are in " Claire Weekes that keeps anxiety symptoms going .

Jules were close in sober days . Not drinking is my my first priority .
I,m glad your episodes are few and far between . So are mine but for an unknown reason I had a bad night last night . However now I am just grand .


I'll quote a famous scots man : "not everything needs an explanation"

A famous person on SR told me very similar , Clue ? = D

biminiblue

I sometimes wake during the night in a panic, too. I know in my case, I either snore or stop breathing for who-knows-how-long, and the result is anxiety, just like in awake-me. When I get fearful I hold my breath. Totally an instinctual automatic thing, but I have to remind myself to breathe sometimes. Like at the dentist or when someone cuts me off and I have to jam on the brakes. That over-reaction can become too automatic, I think.



That's why breathing exercises work for me. It makes me - - wait for it - - breathe.

The other thing about waking in the morning with anxiety is that cortisol is at its highest just before waking in the morning; so that will increase heart rate and gives me that feeling of anxiousness. All perfectly normal given my genetics. I tend to be on high-alert fairly easily.

I think (and yes, I'm reaching here, but hear me out) that genetics will over time favor those who are alert and ready to act so all of this is just Nature doing its thing. Our fast-paced life means we ( I ) necessarily have to be on high alert much of the time. It can become a bad habit/hair trigger response.

Thank God for my quiet time, my nature walks, and my little home. My sanctuary. I reset and do it all over again.

This too will pass.

hpdw

I think sometimes dreams set off an episode of hyperventilation and squirt some adrenalin or cortisol or whatever chemicals make us flight or flee when really there is nothing to fight or flee from . I did have a disturbing dream last night which id rather forget . I know cortisol drops as the day goes on and at its lowest at night then as you say rises in the morning . I don't know but maybe as I worked nightshifts for years and all the boozing its just gonna take time for me to settle . 40 + years of anxious behaviour wont vanish in a few weeks but compared to where I was a few months ago is a huge difference .

I am at peace tonight going to bed knowing I didn,t drink today .

Linners820

I've been struggling also. This past year the anxiety has gotten progressively worse. Near panic attacks while driving, and a variety pack of disturbing stress dreams (driving over a bridge that's almost vertical, a tsunami that I see coming from a distance and know I'm never going to be able to outrun it, or the classic showing up to take an exam and realizing you haven't attended that class all semester and therefore know nothing...take your pick). Sometimes I wake up and see I've been crying in my sleep. I hate when the dreams kind of linger with you throughout the day and you remember snippets of them and feel upset again. I'm glad you were able to get up and smile and look at the positive.

hpdw

Hi Linners820 ,
It,s not nice when snippets of disturbing dreams linger during the next day .
Claire Weekes talks about how our nervous system can become sensitised .
People with high levels of anxiety process situations much more acutely , we catastrophize , over think ,jump to conclusions etc .
She teaches that its the fear of fear that keeps us sensitised , that by ACCEPTANCE of sensations and symptoms we lose the "second fear" as she calls it .
Believe me when I got up yesterday the last thing I felt like doing was smiling but I did , i shrugged my shoulders and accepted I had a bad night .

I recommend pass through panic by claire Weekes . I have the spoken MP3 version which I still occasionally listen to .

I recommend reading material where acceptance is practised . Not fighting anxiety symptoms and sensations is the answer .

Yes I still get episodes but nowhere compared to what I used to be like.
Social events are a problem for me still though .

Linners820

Thanks for that info, Thomas. I'm going to look her up.