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The Anxiety thread

Victoria

Senior Member
Messages
1,377
Location
Melbourne, Australia
Jenbooks,

I used to dread going to bed 5-6 years ago. I also was in a constant state of anxiety & stress back then.

No matter what time I went to bed back then, I would always wake up 2 hours later in extreme pain (mainly bowel/stomach pain). It would last for 4-5 hours. Sometimes I contemplated getting up, dressing & calling a taxi to the local hospital emergency dept & asking for a shot of serious pain killers. After a couple of hours of this excruciating pain, I would wish I was dead. I would drift off to sleep out of sheer exhaustion, just before the alarm rang for me to get up to get ready for work.

I would be so exhausted that I knew I wouldn't be able to think straight & would ring my boss & leave a message that I would be late for work. I then lay down to get a few more hours sleep & would arrive at work at 10-11.00am. But 2.00pm my back pain would be so severe that I would sometimes have to leave work & get a taxi home. (Can't remember how I kept up with my workload back in those days).

Then I started getting up & writing a diary in the early hours (waiting for the severe pain episode to run it's 4-5 hour course). This writing down (what I was thinking & feeling) not only passed the time, but gave me a 'voice' to express my frustration & anger.

Even though I knew that each nightly episode would be over in 4-5 hours, I dreaded going to sleep.

It must have been about May 2006, that a muscular/skeletal specialist who was doing the nerve blocks on my spine who finally diagnosed Fibromyalgia & my GP presecribed Amitryptiline to help me sleep. I DID sleep much better after that, but it wasn't the whole solution to my problems. Note: I had already been diagnosed with IBS back in 2004. And had been diagnosed with severe spinal disc disease also.

I must have written about 300 pages of misery & anger over a course of about 2 years. I was thinking about transcribing it into a book at one stage (but the thought of re-reading all those words was depressing in itself LOL).

Unless you can resolve your anxiety, or reduce it to a manageable level, your physical symptoms are not manageable either.

That's my theory.

You have to treat the mind as well as the body. They are totally interconnected.

I cannot stress enough how resolving your mental health is of the utmost importance.
 

Tia

Senior Member
Messages
247
Some of the anxiety might be caused by hypoglycemia and oversleeping.
Addressing those issues might help to decrease anxiety, at least the ones caused by those.

I wrote a post here about the way over-dreaming and over-sleeping causes anxiety and depression:
Anyone else here sleeping long periods of time 11 hours

And one where I explain how I found an easy way to improve hypoglycemia immediately
Hypoglycemia what helped the most

Check them out if you want.

Interesting because when I used to sleep long periods at a time I got anxiety. I just knew it was related and now there are others out there thinking the same! :O

Victoria: I've written a journal for 21 years to. :)
 

sleepy237

Senior Member
Messages
246
Location
Hell
:hug: hey Tia, I don t know how i missed this thread been reading the forums long enough. I've had anxiety since onset, its a reaction to the symptoms and the illness as a whole, the future, the life i had turned upside down the full package. You've had some great replies here already mentioning the Dr Claire Weekes books EFT etc.

Guided relaxation is also good and I believe that breathing is the most/only control we have over the autonomic nervous system. I have breathed myself out of panic attacks before they can fully escalate so it does work IMHO.

Great contribution to forum Tia , hugs speak soon ~Sleepy