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Personal history for anyone suffering from serious anxiety: Anxiety destroyed my 20s. It kept me home-bound. I rarely went out and would have attacks at the gr

Personal history for anyone suffering from serious anxiety: Anxiety destroyed my 20s. It kept me home-bound. I rarely went out and would have attacks at the grocery store all of the time. Early on I hoped that things would come to a head and that I would eventually be immune to it, and stronger for it. But that never happened. I was afraid to seek help because I assumed they'd put me on meds that would dull my thinking. Looking back, that probably would have been fine. At every turn anxiety held me back. A stupider but freer me would have been welcome. After a lot of self-analysis and experimentation I discovered that about 70% of the problem was the Pepsi I was slugging down every day. For my body, sugar and caffeine together are like crack. I switched to diet and dropped about half of my daily anxiety in a few months. I eventually cut the caffeine out altogether. Daily anxiety almost entirely dropped, with occasional spikes for stressful situations. A friend told me to look into choline. I'm not a supplements guy, but it turns out eggs have plenty so I started eating eggs every morning. I also started running which has had a huge impact on my mood. After a while I rarely had anxiety. In fact most of the anxiety was from worrying that I was going to have an anxiety attack. I'm not cured - I don't like certain situations and those can still bring out an attack. The good news is that it's now at a point where I can fight back and "be brave", which I always though would fix it but never did. That actually works most of the time now. That was just impossible in the past. I used to think that caffeine was making me smarter. It was definitely giving me bursts of ideas, but ultimately it didn't give me anything I wasn't going to have already. I was abusing a drug, not thoughtfully taking a medication. I basically had to become enraged at how my life was going in order to do something about it. The bottom line is to never stop trying to solve it. Try the meds, exercise, diet, meditation, electroshock, whatever. Try everything until you figure it out.

jsonne 13y ago
This has been very much so my experience. I've had anxiety problems for about a year now. (I'm 23). I cut out caffeine and quit smoking. Working out and taking vitamin supplements have helped a ton too. More importantly though you're right. I was in a really bad place and it finally pissed me off enough to do something about it.
Torgo 13y ago
The only thing on that list that I have not tried is the electroshock :-(
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  Don't give up anyway! It's may be weak to say this, but it's the best I've got. Also, consider that "whatever" includes a whole lot of things.. it includes everything but giving up :) edit: I don't remember where I have this idea from, and it may be stupid, but it kinda stuck with me: if you can't find out how to solve a problem, try to find a way to make it worse, as that can give you hints how to overcome it. I have no idea how this could be applied to anxiety, not in general and of course not to yours; or wether that's a good idea even (surely might not be without friends or professional care around). But since you said you're all out of clues I thought I'd mention it anyway, even if it's just to bring people "out of the woodworks" which will tell me why exactly this is a bad idea (I really have the feeling it might be). I'll simply trust you'll not go off and do something dangerous with it; but maybe you can reverse engineer it a little that way.
  - dktbs 13y ago
    this might not be what you are describing, but it sounds like exposure therapy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_therapy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_therapy
- softbuilder 13y ago
  I may have been joking about electroshock. :)
- Skywing 13y ago
  Have you tried things like wearing a rubber band around your wrist, and when you feel a panic attack coming on you can use it to slap your wrist and kind of derail your current train of thought? Like the parent poster, I often would have panic attacks while worrying about whether or not I was about to have a panic attack. Like, if I could make it to to wherever I was trying to go I knew I'd be fine, but getting there was hard because my mind would race while driving there and I'd have an anxiety attack usually. My dad told me to try the rubber band thing and it actually kind of worked. Sort of a placebo effect maybe, but anything is good if it gets you past that moment. I also got into the habit of telling myself that I was going to be alright. I knew panic attacks only lasted a few minutes and I knew I always got through them, so I had to tell myself that I'd get through the current one and be fine in a few minutes - even though it'd feel like hours. It really took me about a full year of giving it 100% effort to get over my anxiety, to a point where I could at least sense an attack coming on and I could kind of prepare myself to calm down. A lot of mine was proper breathing. It sounds really weird, but I think I realized that I would basically slow my breathing down to almost not breathing when I got nervous, and that would make me light headed or something which would trigger a panic attack. Some other things that helped me a lot were to just tell my friends up front that I felt like I was having a panic attack. You'd be surprised how little amount of other people will judge you for saying it. Most people offer up advice and feel sympathetic, so telling them usually helped me calm down. I also went out and bought a bicycle and a basketball hoop. When I was feeling like I might have an anxiety attack, I'd just go outside and shoot a few hoops (I suck at sports, it was just something to do), or I'd go ride my bike around. I did try herbs. I never took prescriptions. I don't think herbs every actually did anything, but sometimes it felt good to just be "taking action" and they had a placebo effect in that sense, I guess. That's just me, though. Also, I take stuff really personal usually, and I'd bottle stuff up. I used to get very frustrated when something I'd been programming on for awhile hits a snag or I can't figure out how to do something, despite weeks of Googling and stuff. It may sound lame, but sometimes it felt really good to just let it all out. Whether it was crying or yelling or whatever. I had one time driving home from work, having a panic attack, that I couldn't handle it and I just started crying for some reason. It felt great after. I had other times where I'd just yell in my car and that'd be enough to kind of derail an anxiety attack. I don't know man, I don't think there's really a 1 size fits all solution to anxiety. It's just finding something that you can use as a tool to help yourself get through that 1 moment in time. Don't look at solving the whole thing, just look at solving each panic attack, and then use those tools to get you through 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, etc.
zachcb 13y ago
The only thing that has blunted my panic attacks are herbs - Ashwagandha and Holy Basil. These herbs bring me calm and help me stay relaxed when my mind is in the right place. Our life in the creation of our minds....so the first thing to do is make sure you're eliminating toxic thoughts that can cause anxiety and spur panic attacks. After that, the herbs can be of tremendous helps without the harmful side effects of benzodiazepines.
kirse 13y ago
"The value and necessity of anxiety mean that it will persist until the last breath. It is impossible to extinguish, no matter the level at which it affects you." In contrast to your post, I found it interesting that the author of the article has pretty much reached a hopeless conclusion after many years of wear and tear, basically resigning himself to the conclusion that anxiety is beyond his control... (i.e. learned helplessness) I fully agree with you though... I think everyone needs to come to that point of emotional awareness where they understand anxiety to the point of not fearing it, but using it as a gauge in their "life wellbeing" checklist. I personally find that when anxiety hits for an extended period of time, that's a caution flag for me to step back and take a look at the last "X time period" and do some reflection. Anxiety for me is generally one of those indicators that life has been going in a wrong direction (physically/mentally/spiritually/emotionally) for a little bit too long... It tends to be more of a symptom of larger life issues and in that case you're right, it's always better to find the root rather than hack at the weeds.
- hosh 13y ago
  I've had some intense anxiety issues, though not as intense as the thread parent. I too found that changing my diet and exercising helped. One of the most effective methods for me is meditation. Ironically, during meditation, you also accept the anxiety. Or to be precise, you accept the experience of anxiety. The thing is, I also know that all things are transient. That includes anxiety. If you mindfully observe anxiety as it arises, you can literally see it created, come into full force ... and then start fading away. When the mind starts avoiding the experience of anxiety, it tends to get stronger. Further, the avoidance itself triggers secondary waves of anxiety, so you enter this feedback loop of anxiety. Ultimately, anxiety is the feeling of avoidance. If you've gained the skill where you direct your awareness at the anxiety itself, you start being able to see things more clearly. You can learn about this through http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html or participating in a Vipassana retreat. There is also the method described by this book: http://www.amazon.com/Feeding-Your-Demons-Resolving-Conflict/dp/0316013137 http://www.amazon.com/Feeding-Your-Demons-Resolving-Conflict... There are also carefully conducted entheogen sessions that can help treat this.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
re_todd 13y ago
Sounds like me as well. My 20s really sucked. Most of my friends were dating and travelling, but I had too much anxiety to do either. I lived an hour from a big city, but had too much anxiety on the freeways to go there. Most of my friends were always going to the city to museums, concerts, and to have a good time. My panic attacks on the freeways and around members of the opposite sex were rough, I see my 20s as the Dark Ages. Cutting my caffeine intake over half helped out a lot.
com2kid 13y ago
> After a lot of self-analysis and experimentation I discovered that about 70% of the problem was the Pepsi I was slugging down every day. For my body, sugar and caffeine together are like crack. I switched to diet and dropped about half of my daily anxiety in a few months. I eventually cut the caffeine out altogether. This, so many times over. When someone comes into /r/adhd and asks "I'm having troubles with anxiety, help!" my first response is "cut out caffeine then come back in a few weeks." People do not realize, caffeine is a drug, it has side effects. One of those side effects is anxiety.
ScottBurson 13y ago
> I switched to diet and dropped about half of my daily anxiety in a few months. My wife had panic attacks for years until she was persuaded, for other reasons, to stop using caffeine and artificial sweeteners. A couple of months later, her panic attacks stopped, and they haven't returned. She's convinced one of the sweeteners -- she mostly used cyclamates, but also some sucralose -- screwed with her brain chemistry. (She's always avoided aspartame as it gave her a splitting headache, so it wasn't that.) There are plenty of reasons to avoid artificial sweeteners, so I wouldn't necessarily weight this anecdatum too heavily, but I thought it worth passing on anyway.
- Lewton 13y ago
  -stops consuming caffeine, a drug known to exacerbate anxiety, and artificial sweeteners -stops having anxiety attacks -blames artificial sweeteners for anxiety attacks ???????
  - ScottBurson 13y ago
    Sorry, I left out an important detail: she had quit caffeine several times before without experiencing this benefit.
- desouzt 13y ago
  Definitely agree with this. My girlfriend suffers from anxiety and her nutrionist told her to immediately cut out the artifical sweeteners and she's already noticed a difference.
StavrosK 13y ago
What's anxiety like?
- softbuilder 13y ago
  It's like being chased by a tiger, except there is no tiger, and you know it. So it's some of the worst fear you've ever felt in your life, coupled with feeling stupid because you know it is irrational and you should just "get over it". Except you can't.
  - StavrosK 13y ago
    Wow, that sounds excruciating.

jsonne 13y ago

This has been very much so my experience. I've had anxiety problems for about a year now. (I'm 23). I cut out caffeine and quit smoking. Working out and taking vitamin supplements have helped a ton too. More importantly though you're right. I was in a really bad place and it finally pissed me off enough to do something about it.

Torgo 13y ago

The only thing on that list that I have not tried is the electroshock :-(

PavlovsCat 13y ago
Don't give up anyway! It's may be weak to say this, but it's the best I've got. Also, consider that "whatever" includes a whole lot of things.. it includes everything but giving up :) edit: I don't remember where I have this idea from, and it may be stupid, but it kinda stuck with me: if you can't find out how to solve a problem, try to find a way to make it worse, as that can give you hints how to overcome it. I have no idea how this could be applied to anxiety, not in general and of course not to yours; or wether that's a good idea even (surely might not be without friends or professional care around). But since you said you're all out of clues I thought I'd mention it anyway, even if it's just to bring people "out of the woodworks" which will tell me why exactly this is a bad idea (I really have the feeling it might be). I'll simply trust you'll not go off and do something dangerous with it; but maybe you can reverse engineer it a little that way.
- dktbs 13y ago
  this might not be what you are describing, but it sounds like exposure therapy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_therapy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_therapy
softbuilder 13y ago
I may have been joking about electroshock. :)
Skywing 13y ago
Have you tried things like wearing a rubber band around your wrist, and when you feel a panic attack coming on you can use it to slap your wrist and kind of derail your current train of thought? Like the parent poster, I often would have panic attacks while worrying about whether or not I was about to have a panic attack. Like, if I could make it to to wherever I was trying to go I knew I'd be fine, but getting there was hard because my mind would race while driving there and I'd have an anxiety attack usually. My dad told me to try the rubber band thing and it actually kind of worked. Sort of a placebo effect maybe, but anything is good if it gets you past that moment. I also got into the habit of telling myself that I was going to be alright. I knew panic attacks only lasted a few minutes and I knew I always got through them, so I had to tell myself that I'd get through the current one and be fine in a few minutes - even though it'd feel like hours. It really took me about a full year of giving it 100% effort to get over my anxiety, to a point where I could at least sense an attack coming on and I could kind of prepare myself to calm down. A lot of mine was proper breathing. It sounds really weird, but I think I realized that I would basically slow my breathing down to almost not breathing when I got nervous, and that would make me light headed or something which would trigger a panic attack. Some other things that helped me a lot were to just tell my friends up front that I felt like I was having a panic attack. You'd be surprised how little amount of other people will judge you for saying it. Most people offer up advice and feel sympathetic, so telling them usually helped me calm down. I also went out and bought a bicycle and a basketball hoop. When I was feeling like I might have an anxiety attack, I'd just go outside and shoot a few hoops (I suck at sports, it was just something to do), or I'd go ride my bike around. I did try herbs. I never took prescriptions. I don't think herbs every actually did anything, but sometimes it felt good to just be "taking action" and they had a placebo effect in that sense, I guess. That's just me, though. Also, I take stuff really personal usually, and I'd bottle stuff up. I used to get very frustrated when something I'd been programming on for awhile hits a snag or I can't figure out how to do something, despite weeks of Googling and stuff. It may sound lame, but sometimes it felt really good to just let it all out. Whether it was crying or yelling or whatever. I had one time driving home from work, having a panic attack, that I couldn't handle it and I just started crying for some reason. It felt great after. I had other times where I'd just yell in my car and that'd be enough to kind of derail an anxiety attack. I don't know man, I don't think there's really a 1 size fits all solution to anxiety. It's just finding something that you can use as a tool to help yourself get through that 1 moment in time. Don't look at solving the whole thing, just look at solving each panic attack, and then use those tools to get you through 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, etc.

zachcb 13y ago

The only thing that has blunted my panic attacks are herbs - Ashwagandha and Holy Basil. These herbs bring me calm and help me stay relaxed when my mind is in the right place. Our life in the creation of our minds....so the first thing to do is make sure you're eliminating toxic thoughts that can cause anxiety and spur panic attacks. After that, the herbs can be of tremendous helps without the harmful side effects of benzodiazepines.

kirse 13y ago

"The value and necessity of anxiety mean that it will persist until the last breath. It is impossible to extinguish, no matter the level at which it affects you." In contrast to your post, I found it interesting that the author of the article has pretty much reached a hopeless conclusion after many years of wear and tear, basically resigning himself to the conclusion that anxiety is beyond his control... (i.e. learned helplessness) I fully agree with you though... I think everyone needs to come to that point of emotional awareness where they understand anxiety to the point of not fearing it, but using it as a gauge in their "life wellbeing" checklist. I personally find that when anxiety hits for an extended period of time, that's a caution flag for me to step back and take a look at the last "X time period" and do some reflection. Anxiety for me is generally one of those indicators that life has been going in a wrong direction (physically/mentally/spiritually/emotionally) for a little bit too long... It tends to be more of a symptom of larger life issues and in that case you're right, it's always better to find the root rather than hack at the weeds.

hosh 13y ago
I've had some intense anxiety issues, though not as intense as the thread parent. I too found that changing my diet and exercising helped. One of the most effective methods for me is meditation. Ironically, during meditation, you also accept the anxiety. Or to be precise, you accept the experience of anxiety. The thing is, I also know that all things are transient. That includes anxiety. If you mindfully observe anxiety as it arises, you can literally see it created, come into full force ... and then start fading away. When the mind starts avoiding the experience of anxiety, it tends to get stronger. Further, the avoidance itself triggers secondary waves of anxiety, so you enter this feedback loop of anxiety. Ultimately, anxiety is the feeling of avoidance. If you've gained the skill where you direct your awareness at the anxiety itself, you start being able to see things more clearly. You can learn about this through http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html or participating in a Vipassana retreat. There is also the method described by this book: http://www.amazon.com/Feeding-Your-Demons-Resolving-Conflict/dp/0316013137 http://www.amazon.com/Feeding-Your-Demons-Resolving-Conflict... There are also carefully conducted entheogen sessions that can help treat this.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

re_todd 13y ago

Sounds like me as well. My 20s really sucked. Most of my friends were dating and travelling, but I had too much anxiety to do either. I lived an hour from a big city, but had too much anxiety on the freeways to go there. Most of my friends were always going to the city to museums, concerts, and to have a good time. My panic attacks on the freeways and around members of the opposite sex were rough, I see my 20s as the Dark Ages. Cutting my caffeine intake over half helped out a lot.

com2kid 13y ago

> After a lot of self-analysis and experimentation I discovered that about 70% of the problem was the Pepsi I was slugging down every day. For my body, sugar and caffeine together are like crack. I switched to diet and dropped about half of my daily anxiety in a few months. I eventually cut the caffeine out altogether. This, so many times over. When someone comes into /r/adhd and asks "I'm having troubles with anxiety, help!" my first response is "cut out caffeine then come back in a few weeks." People do not realize, caffeine is a drug, it has side effects. One of those side effects is anxiety.

ScottBurson 13y ago

> I switched to diet and dropped about half of my daily anxiety in a few months. My wife had panic attacks for years until she was persuaded, for other reasons, to stop using caffeine and artificial sweeteners. A couple of months later, her panic attacks stopped, and they haven't returned. She's convinced one of the sweeteners -- she mostly used cyclamates, but also some sucralose -- screwed with her brain chemistry. (She's always avoided aspartame as it gave her a splitting headache, so it wasn't that.) There are plenty of reasons to avoid artificial sweeteners, so I wouldn't necessarily weight this anecdatum too heavily, but I thought it worth passing on anyway.

Lewton 13y ago
-stops consuming caffeine, a drug known to exacerbate anxiety, and artificial sweeteners -stops having anxiety attacks -blames artificial sweeteners for anxiety attacks ???????
- ScottBurson 13y ago
  Sorry, I left out an important detail: she had quit caffeine several times before without experiencing this benefit.
desouzt 13y ago
Definitely agree with this. My girlfriend suffers from anxiety and her nutrionist told her to immediately cut out the artifical sweeteners and she's already noticed a difference.

StavrosK 13y ago

What's anxiety like?

softbuilder 13y ago
It's like being chased by a tiger, except there is no tiger, and you know it. So it's some of the worst fear you've ever felt in your life, coupled with feeling stupid because you know it is irrational and you should just "get over it". Except you can't.
- StavrosK 13y ago
  Wow, that sounds excruciating.