Does Anbody Understand This?

[goingonhope]

This is really a question of what do you think may be causing this and/or do you identify.

I'm gonna guess and put it here in the anxiety forum section, even though I'm not certain that this is entirely what this experience is.

When I think of anxiety I think of times of:

extreme anxiousness,
heart palpitations,
urgency,
a wired type of raciness, reaction, fright or terror and confusion while in fear of impending death, loss or destruction, physiological symptoms that take control and cause many physical reactions from hyperventilation to loss and shortness of breath to chest pains and pressure to the point of feeling like one's brain might truly pop or a stroke is about to occur.

And, more but in other words, I think of my anxiety as having been something very visible and therefore something that I can identify.

However, this is what I'm currently experiencing in which I have no memory of being accustomed to. It feels new, yet debilitating. I'm not even saying it's anxiety for sure, as I don't know what for certain it really is, but I do know it is immobilizing regarding necessary and responsible needs for personal action on my part. The key word is actions and though it is not as intensely felt and this is not visible, it is powerful and quite the overwhleming or impossible obstacle to overcome.

O.k. here goes:

It feels gnawing, empty, constant, imagined as a clawing from the inside lining of my belly on out.

It feels dishonest, raw, scared, ashamed, once content and preserved in feelings of terror - ie. What's gonna happen next.

It feels tight, hidden, curled-up and successful in keeping me trapped inside and afraid of this world and people, even though intellectually I'm not afraid of this world and it's people. And, even though through so much of my efforts and healing work I'd been fortunate to not experience this and able to get out, about, mingle some and take risks. This feeling doesn't allow for much of this at all.

Whatever this is, it confuses me because it feels like it must be taken care of immediately and before I can think straight to be or to do anything other.

Naturally, this gnawing, raw feeling makes me want to respond to it by self-prescribing myself some benzo's, but due to my brain and physiological make-up I don't think such is gonna work at all anymore for getting me to where I need to reach ultimately. I don't have tons of experience with benzodiazapines, but I do have enough to now believe that what once worked for me no longer will.

I am presently immobilized with an inability to think clearly upon the present, therefore unable to respond to it and my priorities with enough action, and I'm stuck with this gnawing gut feeling and most especially this quieter yet powerful feeling convincing me that I may die, if I leave this house or if I trust the universe and it's people.

I know, I sound entirely to f'ckd and probably hopeless, but I'm not. Instead, I'm just presently confronted with something I struggle to identify.

The words that come to mind right, wrong or indifferent and (regarding what I'm trying to describe) are:

GAD
apprehension, anticipatory anxiety,
agoraphobia,
spiritual soul sickness,
the culmative effects from avoidance.

And, there are no others.

Does anyone have any thoughts whatsover on this subject?

I feel lost and stuck.

 

[goingonhope]

Another word coming to mind at the moment is:

remorse

 

[goingonhope]

Other possibly related words on my mind (yet not necessarily related to one another):

spritual hunger pain,

major depression

 

[Marie E.]

(((((Hope)))))

 

[intothelight]

(((Hope)))

Maybe partly hyper-vigilance? I experience extreme feelings of impending doom and panic from time to time. All I can do is try to wait until they pass. They can be very crippling and are difficult to deal with. Sometimes just doing something like playing solitar, cleaning and organizing cabinets, or finding a good comedy is enough to lessen the symptoms.

I hope you find something that helps you soon, as this is a tough spot to be in.

Deb

 

[goingonhope]

Thank you Marie and Deb, I so hope that something new appears to help me with this, (like some actually helpful, effective medication or something) because it has been going on for some nasty chunk of time now and it only getting scarier and scarier.

I have taken to simply selecting things here at home that need to get done and doing them. As well as the things that I want to do here at home. But the problem lies in me still after months and now even more, I'm not feeling able to select to do much other then these simpler things. Even the consideration of a shower, really just overwhelms me and this can be done at any point throughout my mornings, but I will waste other (as well as other's)precious time and I will too likely feel depleted and sick afterwards.

So there is a whole very large group of must do's that I currently struggle with and many of which are simply not getting done because of me, and quite the combination of apprehension, reoccurring feelings of doom and physical weakness, great confusion and feelings of an out of body lost experience and with me being afraid if I do remember to consider that I must leave the house, or pick up the phone, or go searching for this or that in order to accomplish all of what I'd been regularly accustomed to accomplishing.

All just very scary for me to look at and be honest about.

The phone and paperwork too, all looks too enormous and overwhelming to answer, to call or to consider attempting.

 

[mamachick]

Is it a "sense of foreshortened future?"
I have this and it lightens up for awhile but never goes away. It is a symptom of ptsd. In the beginning, it was much as you described, but there was something else to it. This is how it feels to me:

It feels almost fluidlike through my body.
It feels like the future is doomed and this is all there is.
Nothing matters
I cant do anything to change things
Heavy, like weight around ankles and on shoulders
paralizing
lack of ability to initiate or motivation to carry through
strong desire to just avoid
good is beyond reach for me
sense of contentment knowing kids are well.

 

[mamachick]

I mean to say that it has not gone away for me, but I know that can change.

 

[Srain]

For me it sounded much how I was first describing that feeling that hit me after I had found myself isolating more/or maybe because of feeling it ...I can no longer recall... but that feeling like you mentioned, in the pit of my stomach that feels like it "should be" taken care of by benzos but somehow I know it won't be. That struck me because I am intimately familiar with GAD and this was NOT it, it was more menacing and something I hadn't ever felt before. I tried to speak with therapists(not PTSD trained) about it but was told it was my middle age-perimenopause...nah, that was NOT it, I tried to make it fit but it was not it. It was too much to be that.

For me, what Intothelight and Brat17 wrote fit it better, it was the beginnings of fear I had never consciously experienced before, a fear of having the "sense of foreshortened future?" and then some. I had never had that but it was more, I was feeling threatened from everywhere inside and out, I never felt like that in my life that could recall.

Maybe this is the feeling. Someone else helped me to ID the feeling for me...once I could it that's when I could begin figuring out how to understand it and which direction to go to deal with it.

 

[simplekindofgirl]

Goingonhope- I think you have put it into words, as close as possible about how it feels to live with PTSD. Call it anxiety, call it panic, call it what you will, but the feeling, the sensation of it is very real. And it can be so haunting that you (by you I mean we all) are immobilized. I call this my PTSD Paralysis. I get stuck in that moment, that feeling- whether it pertains to my traumas or not- and I just can not move to even attempt to get out of it.

Have you tried the diary section? Wait- sorry, have you thought about writing in the diary section? Using your experiences, getting them out of you? It is not a fix, but, it may give you just enough relief to start to move again so that you can better deal with your symptoms and feelings. It is just a suggestion. But you are rather good at using words, and well, writing can help.

I hope that you will feel better today- and every day. Hugs to you.

 

[Grama-Herc]

OH! My Friend, you are in complete panic mode, at least IMHO! And it does not even need to be about anything special. Just plain Panic. There is nothing more paralizing than a full blown Panic Attack and it can last for quite a long time. Panic actually feeds off itself, becomes a vicious circle and is hard to get out of, or at least this has been my experience.

BREATHE MY FRIEND BREATHE

 

[Sterre]

I have taken to simply selecting things here at home that need to get done and doing them. As well as the things that I want to do here at home. But the problem lies in me still after months and now even more, I'm not feeling able to select to do much other then these simpler things. Even the consideration of a shower, really just overwhelms me and this can be done at any point throughout my mornings, but I will waste other (as well as other's)precious time and I will too likely feel depleted and sick afterwards.

So there is a whole very large group of must do's that I currently struggle with and many of which are simply not getting done because of me, and quite the combination of apprehension, reoccurring feelings of doom and physical weakness, great confusion and feelings of an out of body lost experience and with me being afraid if I do remember to consider that I must leave the house, or pick up the phone, or go searching for this or that in order to accomplish all of what I'd been regularly accustomed to accomplishing.

The phone and paperwork too, all looks too enormous and overwhelming to answer, to call or to consider attempting.

Oh my, I know how this feels! I have been there almost two years ago, when I abrubtly stopped taking medication and was experiencing rebound effects from quitting my AD's.

Even the most simple things where huge tasks, that I could not get my head around.
When I wanted to take a shower ( someting I do everyday) I could not figure out how I was going to undress myself, turn the water on, and get in to the shower. It where to many steps or something like that.
I could get undressed, remember to grab a towel, and that was it, then I was stuck with what the next step could be. All the while the water was running, but I couldnt figure out how to get into the shower.

If I wanted to make myself a cup of thea, I could put water in the watercoocker, turn it on, and then the task became to overwhelming. To think of what cup is should take, or what thea, and how to poutr the water in the cup, was just to much. I was tyred and stuck after putting water in the coocker and turn it on, That was all my brain could take.

It was scary and tyresome.
Needless to say that I could not accomplish other things. So I just cooked very simple meals for me and my daughter, and al the paperwork just grew to a pile.
I did the things I could do, and slept alot.

I think it was a sudden depression kicking in hard. My thinking proces felt like clay, everything was slow, and sometimes I experienced de-realisation, like an out of body experience.
Scary indeed.

I got trough it by accpeting that I could only perform the most simple tasks, and raise/start my medication at that time. It didnt take long for me to feel better.
It felt like my brains where adjusting something , or so?

Good luck to you ((((Goingonhope)))) it will pass, that you can be sure of.