Annihilation anxiety and CBT-"techniques"

[zaniara]

but I relate to this, way too much.

I'm sorry you do.

Is this a form or PDF?

I've never seen it actually. Only read about in a research paper

I`m not sure this is what i have.. some things don`t seem to ad up in my case.

But i do feel comepletely overwhelmed and i can`t cope or deal with it anymore. It`s way to much.
Every little sound, light or movement seems to make my head explode and there is no way out, you can`t escape what ever you do.
My whole body was so restless i couldn`t sit or lay down. If i did, my body started jerking pretty hard making it impossible to relax in any way. I couln`t get out of this cycle whatever i did. The worst 5 days i slept maybe 2hrs total. Trying to sit or lay down and withing seconds or minutes it feels like you can't breath and you need to move and gasp for air.

I relate to a lot of what you describe. But possibly it was two different things in me making that happen then. (I am heading for a full neuropsychological assessment to see if I also have ADHD.) I also, like you, suffer from bad migraines, and sometimes I don't know whats what (the aura shit can be pretty severe).

If something in what I wrote was helpful do take it with you, but if it wasn't just leave it. I'm so sorry you have had to endure that. Good it's a tiny bit better now. Do you think it could be a flashback you get stuck in? Possibly worsened by the brain-injury and meds messing with you? I hope that dog comes soon.

 

[zaniara]

always had this. I was tortured but I don’t remember much about it. I remember being bound. It all had to do with sex. Anyway, the anxiety was horrible, I was always in fight or flight over the most inconsequential and unimportant things. Nobody knew what was wrong with me including me but I finally realized (because being like this does not help with being aware)

I'm so sorry you had to endure so horrible things. Have you got good help with it all?

I feel some of your pain. I was also abused at a young age by a pedophile and only remember short clips that come as flashbacks. The million dollar question for me (maybe you as well) is do I really want to remember? What is worse, knowing or not knowing?

I'm so sorry you too had to go such horrible stuff. But as for remembering or not.. your body do either way and the trauma still make you suffer.. so.. I've not heard about any other way to heal it but to work through the memories. But I never got the full memories (my brain probably stopped recording some of the times too)- only enough to put the broken pieces together and heal from the effect of the traumas. They don't torment me anymore (no more nightmares or flashbacks). Do you have a therapist?

 

[shimmerz]

@zaniara congratulations for getting out of it! OMG the suffering in this type of anxiety. I am so very happy for you! I feel like I have found a new friend!

 

[LilyRose]

I've never seen it actually. Only read about in a research paper

I relate to a lot of what you describe. But possibly it was two different things in me making that happen then. (I am heading for a full neuropsychological assessment to see if I also have ADHD.) I also, like you, suffer from bad migraines, and sometimes I don't know whats what (the aura shit can be pretty severe).

If something in what I wrote was helpful do take it with you, but if it wasn't just leave it. I'm so sorry you have had to endure that. Good it's a tiny bit better now. Do you think it could be a flashback you get stuck in? Possibly worsened by the brain-injury and meds messing with you? I hope that dog comes soon.

Tnx. I don't know if it is a flashback... this was the first time it was this bad but my "trauma" wasn't anything like that so i don't really get it...
Yeah i hope so too, can't wait for the dog but will probably be another year.

 

[Friday]

(been thinking lately if this made my annihilation-anxiety worse).

Most likely, if you have ADHD. ADHD emotions don’t fade, like I’m given to understand most people without ADHD experience emotions. They come on full force, and stay on full force, until they’re replaced with another emotionor layered onto altering that emotion. That layering can be helpful in changing the nature of things (bitter to bittersweet is the simplest example), but it gets a bit dicey when it’s despair, then married to anguish, rage, regret, pain, helplessness, etc. As layered emotions can change the current emotion (blue + yellow = green) or can exist in tandem (like a rainbow).

One of the reasons it can be so difficult to differentiate ADHD from Bipolar Disorder without a med-trial is that ADHD emotions are almoooooost as big as bipolar emotions, but ADHD people can learn emotional monitoring and regulation whilst Bipolar people can’t (chemical cascade) -but- you throw in a comorbid anything (trauma/PTSD, depression, etc.) and you end up with a near impossible combo : Like a PTSD panic attack or flashback held in stasis by ADHD experience of emotions (coming on full force, until replaced or altered). It can be a wee bit brutal.

Spoiler: A few examples / cases in point

- Most of my panic attacks are fairly short-lived. A few hours at most, and a few days worth of side effects... if I haven’t had many recently & am out of practice with dealing with them. But my longest ever lasted from Thanksgiving (Nov.) to February. 4 months. First few days I just lay very still and let it wash over me, waiting for it to end, but eventually I had to get up and do things. First week or two was seeeeeeeriously surreal. But eventually one just gets used to it. Even if it freaks your doctor out, because you’re acting normally, but your HR is through the roof and all your muscles are shivering and your blood is so oxygen & Co2 rich that even though you can’t take a deep breath? You can hold your breath until he gets bored of waiting (at that point I could hold my breath for 2+ minutes even without adrenaline surging through my system... I don’t know how long he waited until he waved me off, and ordered a metric shit ton of tests. Most? Came back fairly normal (healthy heart, even if it was beating like a rabbit; healthy lungs, tox screen clear / not a drug reaction), although my bloodwork was apparently something special to look at... all the gasses were off, adrenaline/cortisol/etc. sky high, potassium low, calcium high, etc.

Medically speaking? I was “locked” in fight/flight. But psychologically I’d divorced myself from my emotions, so my affect (by the time I’d gone into my doctor for something unrelated) was Volvo-driving soccer mom cheerful/normal. He hit me with benzos, I fell asleep, and as the drugs wore off my HR & everything else jacked back up, so by the time I woke? I was back in full fight/flight. So it wasn’t something I was doing to myself / spinning myself up instead of working on calming down... my body had just decided to go full tilt boogie. We discussed whether or not to send me home with benzos... I was against it, as I’ve dealt with this for years -never this long, but this wasn’t a new thing by any means- and he eventually agreed that I’d have to be on them 24/7 which makes the addiction potential too high & then we’d be looking at marathon panic attacks AND benzo withdrawals. Yuck. Pass. <<< If I can catch a bad cycle BEFORE it kicks off? Sure. Benzos can be useful. But if I’m already to the point of needing them all day / every day, for longer than a couple days? It’s too late.

- Similarly? I have come to learn that when most people say they’ve been crying for days/weeks, they’re exaggerating for effect. If I say it? What I mean is I’m crying all day, without a break, falling asleep, waking up to a soaking wet pillow & tears still running down my face (and my eyes swollen shut, snot for days, ravaged throat, etc. To continue crying. All day. Fall asleep. Wake up to a soaked pillow.

^^^
Both of those examples are proooooobably my ADHD & PTSD joining together, to create co-morbid symptoms that are “that’s more than PTSD in play” & “that’s not how ADHD usually manifests”, but are super common & expected by Trauma therapists who work with people who have both ADHD & PTSD. Not at all dissimilar to how people with PTSD + Major Depressive Disorder can get crushingly violent depressions far beyond the scope of the depressive cycles they’re used to dealing with (and struggle finding any kind of medication-combo that can deal with the sudden violent spikes), or the opposite where they get stuck in hypomanic loops as the anxiety and panic raises the depressive symptoms up so high as to be unrecognizable -on the surface- AS depression. Comorbid disorders? Make things interesting.

But when I’m locked in 20+ hours a day of flashbacks & panic attacks? For days/weeks/months/years (And, if I’m lucky, 4 hours of nightmares; instead of surviving on catnaps)... or so dissociated that I mistake the sun rising & setting for a car turning around in my driveway briefly flashing bright light into my eyes? Or having to remain perfectly absolutely still for days as the rage-storm washes over me (very much like a firestorm, endless sourceless rage. It comes out of nowhere, and is tied to nothing... the only way I’ve ever found to break out of it is to either rise UP out of the rage into cool clear thinking breathing space of no-emotions whatsoever, or to pass all the way through it to where other emotions exist). That’s -for me- most likely just PTSD. Maybe not. It may well be my ADHD brain making connections between thought-streams, and layering flashbacks & panic attacks the way it layers thoughts and emotions... replacing one with the next, or blending them together. Or hyperfocusing on -nothing- (lights are on, but no one is home // major disassociation. Which would be super quirky, as mental hyperactivity being altered to hyperfocus on absolute and complete stillness is freaking bizarre. But still -theoretically- possible), ditto in reverse the rage-storm being PTSD dysreg married to ADHD hyperfocus. Shrug. No idea. I DO know that sometimes what works best in managing what’s going on is just PTSD tools / ADHD tools don’t help at all, whilst other times it’s a combo of both PTSD & ADHD tools. So whilst I suspect those symptoms are just PTSD, based on what works to deal with them? My baseline neurology means that might not be the case.

for example torture can fragment a person so that it breaks into pieces and develop this problem later in life.

Yep.

I always felt that not even death would end it.

I always found, the times I died, that the only thing death changed was taking away any and every possibility of changing things. All the pain, all the problems, but utterly helpless to do anything about them. It’s where I developed one of my Rules... “If your death hurts? Die better. If your life hurts? Live better.”

 

[zaniara]

@Frida Thank you! I recognize some things. I'm sorry you have had to endure so much. I read and will reply. When not too exhausted (3 hours sleep and ill).

 

[LisaLemons]

I have gone through intensive trauma-therapy and come out "on the other side". (Life is SO much better now!)

I've heard and seen some not so helpful comments and also heard despair being misunderstood as "resistance" (=AKA "not trying hard enough"). Both by professionals (especially CBT-therapists) and sometimes online too.

So I write this if someone wants to or needs to know about this.

I used to suffer a lot from different kinds of problems. Like different kinds of anxiety. Also panic attacks. I got some help with that, by CBT-techniques and grounding techniques.

But then there was this other kind of anxiety, that could throw me into hours and hours, or worst case scenario days in a row, of being in a living hell. No meds whatsoever could stop it (only possibly being sedated- but me coming out of sedation was NOT a pretty sight!= was back at square one after waking up). And no technique could help much at all.

CBT people and doctors and other sufferers could sometimes say that it's not possible for the body to have such a high-arousal-anxiety that long, that eventually the body would lower the intensity in the adrenaline. But it was simply not true. Sure, after a while the body got tired, but very soon (minutes most of the time) it was in the same state again.

In therapy I finally learned it's actually stronger than a panic attack, and it's called annihilation anxiety. Not all people with PTSD experience it. And most of the time you suffer from it after being tortured in some ways. Me being in that state was me being trapped in trauma-memories being relieved (but most of the times without any conscious images or so, mostly body memories or as an emotional flashback).

When that happened I always felt extremely desperate and other people not understanding or giving unhelpful (though friendly) advices made me even more desperate. Also when they then said I "wasn't trying hard enough" I felt utterly helpless and hopeless and in despair (which was also some of the feelings connected to the trauma). It was the feeling of being invisible, totally alone and without any possibility to ever, ever be helped or let out of hell.

It's like being in a living hell, for sometimes day in a row. And sleep was impossible and words hard to find. Brain is not functioning and thoughts are scattered. (Was misdiagnosed as bi-polar at one point..)

If you've experienced this do know it can be a trauma being subconsciously relived(a flashback), and that if the traumas are processed you can finally be freed from this crap and never feel like that again!

And if you don't know what I'm describing please be gentle when giving advice to someone who might struggle with this, and don't start saying the person is unwilling to try "hard enough". And if you do, don't take it personally if the person gets aggressive in his/her desperation.

I'm grateful not all people have experienced annihilation-anxiety and that I'm free of it now.

Zanaria, could you please provide the techniques, etc. you used to rid yourself of annihilation anxiety, I am trying to help my 29 yo son!

 

[Sideways]

Re-opened

 

[zaniara]

So. I relapsed. In this again. And it's bad. It's coming in waves. And I needed to try to read this to try to remember that it's not real= the feeling of being ripped apart, destroyed, annihilated. That it's probably a flashback of some kind. Will read through the thread and try to make the frontal lobe connect more.

 

[zaniara]

Zanaria, could you please provide the techniques, etc. you used to rid yourself of annihilation anxiety, I am trying to help my 29 yo son!

I'm sorry I can't. Of course every grounding technique available is good to try. But when this anxiety is stemming from horrible trauma the only way out/healing is dealing with the actual trauma. Unfortunately I don't have a therapist right now.. I hope you found help.

 

[zaniara]

Annihilation anxiety is here defined as a mental content reflecting concerns over
survival, preservation of the self, and the capacity to function… These anxieties…fall
into two separate groups…When they involve the anticipation of potential threat, they
are regarded as referable to a basic danger (Freud, 1990/1926), part of an expanded
series of anticipated dangers…but annihilation anxiety may instead involve an
experience of present danger, what Freud (1926) called a traumatic moment, the
feeling of Apocalypse Now!
(Hurvich, 2003: 581-2, emphases in original)

This.. yes. A feeling of Apocalypse Now! No thoughts I can gather, nor any "problem"/threats I can deal with. Only this inner terror. I can't function. I haven't eaten today. But will try soon. I will also try to clean my apartment. In hope of that helping. I haven't been able to sit down and pray/mediate, despite needing to. Because when I do it get worse and I cry and panic. And then I most definitely won't get anything done the rest of the day. On the other hand they say crying is good, and I'm not getting anything done anyway.. so.. eat. And then pray and cry?

I think crying might be a healthy sign..before trauma-therapy I never cried when being in this.

 

[zaniara]

And there the trauma-memory came crashing in! And now it's tears and a bit of relief..