Your body is on fire with anxiety. You can’t sleep, and you can barely keep food down. You’re constantly ruminating about your problems, and you’re isolating yourself from other people. You may feel nauseated, experience headaches, and heartburn. Maybe you’re numbing yourself with drugs and alcohol just to get through the day. You may think you’re losing your mind. Perhaps you’ve made several trips to the ER and been given meds for anxiety.
Here’s what could be going on:
Acute stress
This is normally caused by a trauma that is recent; death of a loved one, sudden health issues, finding your partner is having an affair, or painful public humiliation; these are just a few examples. During the next 3-4 month you may feel:
- foggy and derealized
- have difficulty completing basic tasks of your day
- forgetfulness
- fatigue
- headaches
- panic attacks
- isolation
Panic Disorder
This is an anxiety disorder that can have its onset at any age, and is triggered by stress. You may experience:
- Fear of body sensations, thinking you may be having a heart attack or stroke
- fear that you may be going crazy
- alcohol and drug use to calm down
- not leaving the house to avoid getting anxious
- fear of fear, thinking that anxiety is dangerous
- Panic attacks that are regularly happening with symptoms like elevated heart rate, inability to breath, dizziness, shaking, full body tingling, feelings of unreality that are scary and sudden.
Adjustment Disorder with Anxiety or Depression
If you find yourself in a major life transition such as a big move, starting school away from home, a stressful new job, or the end of a relationship you may be having a hard time adjusting to it. This can cause:
- Panic Attacks
- Trouble getting work done
- Being unable to be present or pay attention
- Crying spells
- Insomnia
- headaches
- Stomach Aches
OCD
Sudden onset of OCD symptoms can happen at any age, and often crop up after a stressful event or trauma. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder can feel like you’re stuck in your own head, your world becoming smaller and smaller as a result of fear. You could be experiencing:
- Severe Insomnia
- Panic Attacks
- Constantly trying to “figure something out” in your head also known as Rumination
- Repetitive behaviors that you can’t control (Compulsions) such as checking, counting, lining things up just so, cleaning obsessively, tapping, noticing your body constantly.
- Feelings of doom
- Fear that you’re going to do something terrible, or have already done so but don’t remember
- Fear of harming others
- Fear that you a terrible person
- Incessant intrusive thoughts that may be very disturbing, and you wonder what’s wrong with you that you’re having them.
The Good News
It’s very frightening when two months ago you were functioning perfectly fine, and then all of the sudden you’re having these severe symptoms you’ve never had before. You’re wracking your brain trying to figure out what happened, or if you’ll ever feel normal again.
Short answer is: yes. You will not feel this way forever, and there are a lot of treatments, and resources available to you. You must seek therapy, and seeing a psychiatrist may be necessary. The first step to healing is to accept that this is something you will have to get through, and that it’s not going to go away by itself. Life has thrown you a hardship, as it does for all of us in some for or another, but it is not going to break you. You will bounce back, even stronger than you were before in most cases.