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Excessive worries and managing anxiety

OK, so I here I go blogging about mental issues again.. :)

A recurring theme for my mental health has been anxiety. Anxiety for many different things, panic attacks and so on.

Now, I could try to describe panic attacks (for me), they start as a murmur and then build themselves up to a climax, and the process from murmur to climax is very uncomfortable. Today I'm glad to say that it has been quite some time since I've had a panic attack.

I think the most important thing around panic attacks is that you learn that they are uncomfortable, but not dangerous. It might feel dangerous, but it's just your mind having a bad time. And you can get anxiety for having a panic attack as well. That is, anxiety for anxiety.

It can seem like a vicious circle but with therapy and medication it can be managed.

Well, I was going to blog about anxiety in general, that is, lately I've had some pretty bad anxiety that is somewhat constant and uncomfortable, waxes and vanes but is ever present.

Before this anxiety I had a long period where I felt good about things and life was flowing nicely..

So yeah, I had a nice run for a month maybe where things were fine, then I started getting bad anxiety again.. I talked to the therapist during the summer whether we should start using SSRI (aka. anti-depressants) but that we would wait and see if it is necessary.

I'm still not sure if I should start with that medicine, thinking less medicine is better, but now that I've had some good time to contrast with the bad anxiety I'm thinking I should start taking more medicine. Life is too short to spend it on having a bad time..

OK, so I'll let you know how that medicine thing goes. But, back to the real spark for this post, why I'm writing this post. I've talked to people that also suffer from anxiety, and a recurring theme is that a part of the negative process with anxiety is how others will perceive and treat you. A part of the anxiety is the thought that "Oh, now I can't get anxiety, what will people think?" - so part of the problem with (social) anxiety is that one is afraid of showing feelings, behaviour and thoughts because it is a taboo or not socially normal to talk about.

That's why I'm blogging today. Because talking about it, whether it is in therapy, among friends or in public, makes anxiety smaller, lesser.

[Permalink] [By morphex] [Health (Atom feed)] [25 Nov 19:23 Europe/Oslo]