Posted by 4WD on June 20, 2005, at 0:56:20
In reply to space, time, reality, fear, panic..., posted by portage on June 19, 2005, at 22:06:51
> Those of you who suffer from anxiety disorders...
>
> Do you ever have trouble coping with the concept of reality, of space and time?
> I do at times... My" panic attacks" (doctor's current diagnosis) involve intense dissosication and distortion of all of my senses. Hot flashes. Paranoia. The feeling that "time" is moving sideways, backwards, staggering.
>
> More frequently, I also have been having thoughts regarding the nature of reality. Scary thoughts, about all that can't be controlled, and about how much of perception is an illusion. About the nature of mental illness. IS it mental illness.
>
> When I become anxious ...time can move slow, space can bend ...Is this my "pathology"? Is it a FALSE take on reality?- I wonder, or are we all just happily ignorant to the fluidity of reality because of the biology of our brain? or am i crazy?
> Sometimes I feel a bit psychic, like I know an event will occur immediatly before it does...
> To be sure- I'm very cynical when it comes to supernatural phenomena and I'm not in the least superstitious, but these thoughts are becoming bore invasive and more persuasive.
> Sometimes these awful thoughts repeat, and sometimes I find myself doing repetative things, repeating words. I worry I'm getting a glimpse of the beginnings of OCD.
>
> I'm afraid that I soon may become paranoid, that my anxiety is causing my grasp on reality to break. and i'm afraid of a complete breakdown.
> When I'm anxious, Sometimes The ground looks too far away. Sometimes I forget my own limbs, they dont feel like mine. I dissociate. Up until a week ago my panic attacks where out of the blue.
> But NOW, for the past week, I have been preoccupied with thoughts of attacks and questions of my perceptions- and they seem to trigger the attacks now. I'm becomeing paranoid that I'm hearing things (even though I don't think I ever have). I say to people "did you just hear that?" alllll the time. When I see something strange I worry that I'm hallucinating (even though I really havent done that either). Strange or unusual sensations make me scared- like today I took a bath, I usually take showers, and taking the bath I feaked out because of how weird the water felt on my skin. its soo creepy.
> Am I totally alone here? Maybe I'm becoming delusional- trying to convince myself I'm crazy, as crazy as THAT is. I just dont know... Maybe this is something of a delusion- because I dont think my panic attacks warrent such a preocupation with worry of insanity.To be sure- the symptoms ARE REAL, but the worry about more symptoms is just too much. HYPOCHONDRIA seems most likely. I KNOW they are panic attacks. But I can't control my worries that its something terribly worse.
> I dont know..anyone with anxiety have any simmilar problems??
In short, yes. Sometimes when I am intensely anxious I feel like I might be "going crazy." I feel detached from the world. I get the hot flash thing and this wave of shame and guilt will come over me. I think I might be about to lose my mind. And the fear that I will "snap" just makes the original fear much worse.If I find myself in a strange situation, for example, someone is saying something that doesn't make sense but other people around me are acting like everything is okay, I start to think maybe I'm crazy. Maybe it does make sense but I'm just weird. Sometimes it's a feeling like I'm detaching and can't feel the world. Other times it's like I feel it all too much. There can be intense terror. Crawling on the floor, screaming at the ceiling for it to please stop terror.
For me, though, this wasn't "attacks." It would be constant. For hours. Whole days. I didn't want to take my Klonopin for fear of dependency and because I had just started going to Narcotics Anonymous meetings to deal with my earlier occasional abuse of pain meds and they had told me I shouldn't take any mood altering drug. So I tried to just stand it. When I reached the point of packing for the psych ward, I decided to take the klonopin.
On an appropriate dose of Klonopin, these feelings disappeared. I no longer am terrified. I still have the detached feeling sometimes, mostly when I am around a lot of other people or am in an unfamiliar situation.
What meds are you on? Are you on an antianxiety med? This feeling of terror was worse for me when I tried adding nortriptyline in an attempt to help it. I believe it is possible this happened to me as a result of Effexor withdrawal. I've now been off Effexor for three months and the terror is gone. It's now mostly just nervous jitteryness and some fear. Some days it feels like the terror might come back and then I take a little more Klonopin. Other days I can get by with .25 or even .125
Have you recently started or stopped any med? Do your anxiety meds (if you take them) help these feelings? What does your pdoc say?
It doesn't sound to me as if you are going crazy. It sounds as if your anxiety is at a level so high it is intolerable. I never knew before this happened to me that anxiety could be so intense and so terrifying.
Anxiety at that level can resemble psychosis.
Please post again and let us know what meds you are on. What is your diagnosis?
You are not alone.
Marsha
poster:4WD
thread:515726
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20050617/msgs/515852.html