Extreme Anxiety After Feeling Nothing For Years

[brandonsmom777]

Hi everyone. It's been awhile since I've posted here. I've been in therapy for complex trauma, ocd, body dysmorphic disorder and an eating disorder for the last 6 months or so with an actually trauma therapist that knows what she's doing. Not sure how I got so messed up. I don't remember much of my childhood but there are certainly many things within recent years to make things a lot worse. I dissociate constantly. There really isn't a moment in the day where I'm not in my body. I grew accustomed to it after awhile and it stopped feeling so scary. When I first entered therapy I felt nothing. I told my therapist how numb I felt and just wanted to feel again. During our time together she clearly sees how much I've been through and that I'm clearly traumatized. She said we need to go slow but I wanted to get better NOW! For the last 2 months or so all of a sudden I'm having severe anxiety every freaking day. It starts from the moment I wake up til I go to sleep. I've been in this weird dissociative fog for like 6 years and now I feel like everything is amplified inside me. My chest is always tight, I tremble, I can't concentrate on anything. I get dizzy bc I'm constantly hyperventilating. I'm scared of where all this anxiety is coming from. My T thinks it's cuz I'm doing a lot of work and that my feelings are resurfacing. Ok, great. But I don't know what I'm feeling because of the dissociation so I'm just anxious all the time. I can't breathe. I started a low dose of Ativan and it helps but I don't want to become dependent on it. My OCD has gotten worse as well as my other issues so I'm starting an SNRI. I have to. I've been drinking a lot to cope w the anxiety and feel like crap. Just reaching out I guess. This is really hard and I feel like I need support. I'm scared. I'm also a hypochondriac (yay for me ) and it's gotten 10x worse so I can't even focus on my feelings because I think every feeling in my body is a death threat. It's ridiculous. I really am praying the SNRI helps. Never truly given meds a shot but idk what anyone thinks I'm taking em. Screw this lol hope everyone else is coping and doing well :)

 

[Deleted member 28942]

Hi @brandonsmom777,

I know how you feel. The same happened to me when i started therapy. Feelings started resurfacing, anxiety, fears, insomnia, etc. For me 20 mg of Prozac, an SSRI antidepressant, helped me to sleep and lowered the anxiety. Occasionally it still happens but it is not as intolerable. Also, the feeling still come and go and I guess it takes a longer time for CPTD. There are a lot of buried feelings. Somedays, I go to work everything is great and near the end the sadness starts resurfacing. When, I go home I start crying. I am slowly letting it out. It is hard. Many days I feel like I am not good enough. It will get better over time. I am glad you have a good trauma therapist to work with. You can ask her to work on self soothing techniques. If she does EMDR you can do the installation of Safe Place. If not, she probably has other tools she can use. You are on the beginning of a journey of awakening and it is hard but worth it.

Take Care,
UniversalBeing

 

[Skylynx]

Brandonsmom, I had this intense, relentless anxiety, too. I discovered that if i could get raging angry, it forced out the anxiety. I especially did this about T who was too rough with me. It was hard to feel so angry for the one I needed so much to care about me, so, I would have to imagine T doing something really mean to work up enough anger. I would go outdoors at home and run awhile to work up deep breathing, then go into the house and scream rage into a pillow. It's like the primal scream therapy which was a technique some years ago. But it did work for several days at a time, and I finally realized the fear was between me and my inner child. When I made friends with my inner kid and helped her instead of judging her, the anxiety went away for good.