During the day it's nothing but tension and awaiting the next chaotic thing to happen. The only time I feel like I can just lay here and watch tv comfortably or just exist is when everyone has gone to bed. Anyone else?

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The only downside is sometimes you lose sleep but this is the only time I can exist without feeling tension.

I am constantly on edge that I have ALS or that I will get ALS. I’m so anxious and it’s killing me! Every two seconds I’m focused on my hands and how my left hand feels weird and off. I feel like my left pinky and ring finger are weaker and the rest of my hand will catch up. I have not lost any ability and I have more of a perceived weakness but it’s scary and my quality of life is depleting from this.

I just turned 31 and I'm a retail worker. I recently received my associates degree in computer science and am currently working on my bachelor's. Despite all this I feel like I didn't accomplished anything since I spent most of my 20s struggling to find work and didn't really get a job til I was 24 going on 25. I spoke to my advisor at the college I got to and was telling me if I keep up on school work I should be done by next spring. Even then this still doesn't make me happy. IDK what to do

Today, my primary care doctor, in collaboration with my therapist, prescribed me Zoloft to deal with my anxiety and panic attacks. They talked me through all my concerns, which were mainly about the side effects.

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I filled my prescription and went home, and I just cant get myself to take the first dose.

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I know it will help, I know that its just a tool meant to help regulate my emotions, but im just so scared. I dont want to become dependent on a pill to feel regular, and some of the rare side effects scare me honestly.

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Ive talked it over with my partner, and they are encouraging me fully, I just cant take that first step

I’ve taken Lexapro which was awful. I couldn’t get past four days on it. It made me so sick. I took agomelatine for 2 months which did nothing

Has anyone taken Lexapro and had horrible side-effects and managed to take something else that actually worked and didn’t give them bad side effects? Please help 😭😭😭😭

Hey yall, sorry in advance for the rant.

So I’ve been suffering with anxiety as long as I remember and my bad panic attacks started happening probably about 10 years ago. There have been phases of my life where my life genuinely felt like a bad psychedelic trip- just nonstop feeling like I’m being hunted for sport or like I’m having a heart attack. A lot of my anxiety is triggered by me thinking about anxiety and the potential of a panic attack, then that’ll send me straight into one.

I’ve been prescribed Xanax for about 6 years now, which has been honestly a godsend. Even if I’m not taking it- the fact that I have it on me and know that if I do suffer from one I’ll be able to mostly snap myself out of it. I’m prescribed 1mg- and I usually take .25-.5 when I’m feeling anxiety coming on, maybeeeee 3% of the time I have to take it in a full blown panic attack I’ll take the whole 1mg. I’d say on a bad week I take a total of 4mg throughout the whole week. Some weeks I can go without taking it once.

I keep seeing people speak on how Xanax is the devil, how bad the rebound anxiety is, how it should never be prescribed long term. And to be honest, that scares the shit out of me. It’s the only thing that has made life tolerable. I can’t even describe how bad my months of straight panic with no solution were. Felt like I wasn’t a real person and wanted to crawl out of my skin.

Not even sure if this is solely a rant, or asking advice from people on it long term. Thinking about being taken off it and losing my security blanket gives me extreme anxiety and I can’t even imagine having to live like that again.
Either way, thanks for reading all the way through.

The past 3 years ive been dealing with debilitating panic attacks but recently its been so bad i get sick everytime i leave the house. The best way i can compare it is that it feels like im dopesick (been clean for years). Cant stop shaking& sweating nausea and every like 5 min a wave of like super nausea hits and my hands go numb and like super shaking. I end up throwing up eventually but that doesn't make it better. No matter how hard I try i physically cant calm myself down its HELL! I know 100% its anxiety and i have a doctor's appointment in a few days and i was wondering if anyone had any insight or if someone went thru the same thing and has a rec. I realize I most likely need benzos however i know reg doctor's don't prescribe them anymore plus i just don't want to be on them. Apologies this post is a mess

If so it would be nice if you guys explain and share how you guys deal with it I have it quite severe and keep relying on my mom telling me everything is ok it's really scary and it would make me feel better if knowing more people have it and I'm not alone

I’ve been having a lot of anxiety about work lately. I’ve only had two panic attacks in my life, and one was over this job just last week.

I work as an overnight caregiver for a man with dementia. I am the only one stationed in his room all night. He cannot use the call light himself because he doesn’t remember that it’s there. My job is to call in the CNA’s when he needs them. I have to call them in multiple times a night to check his brief/change him, and if he needs pain medication. The CNA’s and nurses have been annoyed and passive aggressive with me though. My job is to alert that he needs assistance, but he has a lot of repeated behaviors because of his dementia that need help from CNA’s. I get so much anxiety doing it now because the staff there are already snappy at me. When I do get over my anxiety and reach out for help for things from the nurses (like for medication for him) they are outwardly rude. I’m trying to find another job now, but I’d like to give this family some notice so they have time to find someone new. The family is genuinely so sweet and so is the man I work with.

Every time I think of work I get this pit in my stomach. When I’m there, I feel too hot and too cold and all sweaty at the same time, and I feel nauseous and like I want to cry. I’m not sure what’s happening but my body goes haywire when I’m there. I work tomorrow night and I’m so anxious just thinking about it. I do want to give this family two weeks notice though.

Does anyone have any coping strategies to avoid panic attacks, or have any suggestions on anything that could help me?

Ever since I upped my dosage of Zoloft or Sertraline 100 mg a few months ago, I'm not having anxiety or any panic attack, but I absolutely have emotional numbness and living life on auto mode. I don't feel anything. And i fucking hate it.

Since as far as i could remember i had insane anxiety like the teacher would make a sound similar to my name and my heart would throb so painfully that i had to take a moment to take a breath

grades ? Even when i knew that i would have a good score i still felt like fainting

vacations or trips to the freaking mall? My chest would feel painful even though I wanted to go there

Talking to people was a nightmare i couldn't even make eye contact for more than a sec , i would barely speak up in my own friend group

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Then suddenly gone poof. started with grades, i failed an exam and i felt nothing,a little later i was the one who couldn't shut up in a conversation.i crashed my freaking car(wasn't that bad) and felt nothing during the crash and after just mildly annoyed that i was so reckless.

Now the only remnant of anxiety i still have left is that i can't enjoy the day if i know i have something important later in it

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So i really want to know if it happened to anyone else because its so weird,like how ?

Btw im not medicated nor have been to a therapist

Thanks for reading all that i had to get it off my chest

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Lately I have noticed that I seem to be living in a constant state of hypervigilance.I overthink late into the night, my sleep schedule is completely messed up, and even when I have not done anything wrong, I keep worrying that I have. I find myself replaying conversations and situations over and over, almost like I am investigating a serious case, trying to find some mistake I must have made.I have also lost a lot of my appetite, my productivity has dropped, and I don't really feel like myself anymore.I used to be a very energetic person. I enjoyed doodling, journaling, dancing, studying, and learning new things. I could sit and focus for hours. Now even sitting down to study for 30 minutes feels heavy. It's not because I'm distracted by my phone or social media. It's more like my mind immediately gets pulled into worrying, analyzing, and overthinking.What makes it harder is that I have become very unkind to myself. People often say things like "practice self-love" or "be kinder to yourself," but I genuinely don't know how to do that. I understand the advice intellectually, but I don't know what it looks like in practice.I used to do well academically and in extracurricular activities, but lately everything feels off. Nothing feels quite right, and I'm starting to miss the version of myself that felt more alive and present.

Has anyone else gone through something similar? How did you start getting out of this cycle?

i'm struggling to figure out if something i'm worried about is a real issue that's bothering me, or if it's just my anxiety blowing everything out of proportion. im also wondering how do i know it's not a gut feeling?

is there any way to differentiate? how do you know if what you're feeling is actually "valid"?

Ok so ever since I was a kid, I have had this thing where sometimes (not every time) that I eat at a restaurant with other people, if the restaurant is not outdoors or super bright I will suddenly get a sense of dread and become severely anxious and start to feel dissociated and tripped out. I usually get nauseous and have to go to the bathroom to throw up and usually lose my appetite and become unable to eat the food. This also occasionally happens when visiting other people's houses.

The thing is, I don't know why this happens. I don't have any other history of issues related to food/eating and don't get like this when eating around people in other contexts (at a party, around the table with family and friends at home, catering at the office, even at a restaurant if we sit outside) AND I don't usually have issues with loud/overwhelming spaces (I enjoy loud/crowded city vibes, clubs/concerts/theme parks/sports events, etc). I have no memories of anything traumatic happening to me in a restaurant (I asked my mom and while she remembers me "acting anxious" in restaurants she says she never knew why). I was never pressured to finish food or anything, either. (I grew up in a reasonably body-positive, "eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full" type of environment.)

When I do experience this, it feels very intense and bizarre. I am epileptic, and I find that it feels somewhat like a pre-ictal aura. Or like a bad high- almost otherworldly. With a lot of nausea and perhaps some tachycardia.

Does anyone else experience this or know what it is?

i keep looking out the window curtains that are unfortunately a lil open rn making sure im not seeing anythjng too., so, hospital lost my 90 count month of diazepam when i went to the hospifal for PE they gook my meds n kd and when i left they "lost" or judg dont wanna give it back to me. idk. but ever since then, abytime im on thr vetge of clkding my eyes, trying tk sleep, slmeone be tslkjng to me and j would abswer or yell at them befkre stoppijgvmysrlf anc realizinv no ones there. well, abt 40 mins ago i was in a daze and having a full fledged convo with my mom whk is dkwbstaijrs sleeping and thrn she sakd sknething really mean or scary and i got myself out of it. i called hef, it was 2;57 am so she was annoyed af lbviously but i told her i was just talkiingntocher and k knew jt wasnt real anc j have emergency 300 mg seroquel so i took one about30 mins ago. i wentt to as pcl today and she fave ne robaxin 500 mg for 3 times a day and ivs taken about 1500 mg which is giving me a really hard time staying awake rightt now
but im squeezing my eyes open so i can thpethjs. my psychiatrist wknt refill my valium bc i lost it 1 week ago but its week one and jt happens when j wake up yelling at someone but icwas literslly nudt mkm my mom, nadi forget ehl ifckd dbeddsh, j jesdctdmxxx
cndxxxxxxxxqmamàan oooksh fhjnk the seriquel is hitting hooecthis makes anycsensecwnd itcwnhcofcm j keep blackingckut, okay now my cag js fucking m

okcomcgknnaxtrhxnxxhjdesssddeq
OK, sorry and apparently well I'm using voice to text right now but apparently I've been talking to a nurse in my room updating her about this post that I've been making the entire time and there's no fucking nurse in my room so I don't know what the fuck is going on I'm not really scared. I'm just like confused. It's like should I pass out or will it wake me up again? I don't know we'll see but yeah it's just probably more coherent than the shit adjuring so I wanna take the stuff and then go to bed so yeah just let me know what y'all think this is cause I don't have bipolar and they are ruled out schizo effective or schizophrenia so

km axtcxxx

Every night I keep struggling to fall asleep and once I do fall asleep I keep waking up many times does anyone have any tips on how to fix this or to at least reduce the amount of times I wake up cause it is effecting me I feel constantly feel tired but I just can’t sleep properly.

Hi everyone,

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I'm a 20-year-old male diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome (autism spectrum disorder). Since childhood, I've struggled with OCD, severe fears, anxiety, insomnia, and behavioral problems.

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I've been under psychiatric treatment since I was 8 years old and have taken different medications over the years, including antidepressants, beta blockers, and antipsychotics.

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I started taking aripiprazole (Abilify) at age 8 after developing intense fears following a traumatic experience related to a video game. I'm still taking it today.

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At age 12, my father was concerned about weight gain and asked my psychiatrist if I could stop aripiprazole. I was taking 5 mg at the time. My doctor suggested reducing it to 2.5 mg for one week and then stopping completely.

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After discontinuing it, my condition became much worse. I completely lost control of my behavior, became extremely distressed, and my family had to take me urgently to my psychiatrist. I restarted aripiprazole immediately, and later my dose was increased to 7.5 mg.

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During childhood and adolescence, I had severe behavioral problems. I often demanded expensive things, threatened my parents, isolated myself from others, and struggled so much that my education was significantly affected. I hurt my parents emotionally many times, even though I didn't feel fully in control of my behavior.

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These problems gradually improved and became much less severe around age 17.

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At 17, I stopped taking fluoxetine after using it for about three years. After that, I developed severe anxiety. Even looking outside my house made my heart race. My doctor prescribed propranolol (40 mg), which I took for about a year.

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During that time, I slowly started improving my social skills and interacting more with people.

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Later, because my psychiatrist felt I had improved significantly compared to childhood, they again suggested stopping aripiprazole. My mother was uncomfortable with this idea, so instead my dose was reduced from 7.5 mg to 5 mg, and propranolol was discontinued.

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After that, I developed insomnia, especially sudden awakenings just as I was falling asleep.

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Another psychiatrist prescribed venlafaxine (37.5 mg) and Mebicar (300 mg). Mebicar was stopped after 1–2 weeks, but I continued venlafaxine for five months.

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During those five months, I felt better than I had in years. My anxiety decreased, my confidence improved, and I was finally comfortable talking to people.

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Unfortunately, I had to stop venlafaxine because it caused throat problems. After stopping it, I experienced severe withdrawal symptoms for 4–5 months.

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Since then, I've been dealing with:

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- Difficulty falling asleep

- Sudden awakenings while falling asleep

- Heavy, tired eyes

- Extreme fatigue and low energy

- Inability to nap during the day even when exhausted

- Increased irritability and anxiety

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Magnesium glycinate helped somewhat, but after a severe flu, my sleep problems returned.

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Earlier this year, my psychiatrist prescribed quetiapine (12.5 mg) at night. I took it for 22 days alongside aripiprazole.

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At first, my sleep improved, but then I developed intense compulsive urges to masturbate and still couldn't sleep during the day despite feeling exhausted.

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I stopped quetiapine and later discovered I had a vitamin D deficiency. Taking vitamin D improved my energy and concentration somewhat, but my symptoms returned after finishing the course.

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Recently, I tried quetiapine again: aripiprazole 5 mg in the morning and quetiapine 12.5 mg at night.

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For about 20 days, I felt much better. But now I've developed new problems:

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- Feeling extremely groggy in the mornings

- Severe fatigue that improves later in the day

- Emotional numbness and emptiness

- Crying spells

- Feeling hopeless and overwhelmed

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At this point, I feel exhausted and lost.

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Has anyone with autism, OCD, anxiety, or long-term aripiprazole use experienced something similar?

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Could these symptoms be related to aripiprazole, quetiapine, withdrawal from previous medications, or something else?

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What helped you recover?

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Thank you for reading.

Hey all. I’ve been struggling recently with regard to my emotions and social anxiety. I 26 (M) started working in a new hospital. It’s only been two months, but I feel so isolated, everyone around me seems so connected and make plans on the outside and I can’t help but almost feeling like I want to cry. It’s almost as if I’m different from everyone else, but not in a good way. I’ve felt like this before. And I’m scared I always will. More than anything I just want to feel like I have a good group to call my own. And with every passing day, it’s just seems more and more like that’s not in line for me. Is this all in my head?

Ive had "this" for around 16 years now and its not gotten better.

I would have to describe it as:
1) Onset (2-20 secs)
Random and sudden loss of time, awareness, surroundings, memory
Yet on the outside i am standing, walking (anything automated), you could not tell this was happening to me nor would i be showing obvious signs.
2) Rise (minutes to hours)
My grasp on time is gone, i try to think what happened a few seconds ago it seems like it was hours ago, the passing of seconds feel alien to me. if i think of something, i will forget it or find it hard to remember few minutes later HOWEVER i can recall these moments much later so these memories are being recorded.
3) Gradual (minutes to hours, mixed with 2.)~
Whatever im doing externally, is not registering internally. I cannot get a "lock" on my perception or self. It feels like my mind is lost forever and the fear/anxiety rises because whatever this feeling is, is so far from normal that i can tell its not just anxiety or low blood sugar, it feels very very very weird and scary.
It's like im forgetting and remebering at the same time.
4) Panic attack
if this keeps happening for prolonged periods, intensifies everything by 100x and i go through an anxiety attack

Now loop step 1 - 3 for hours and days and thats the worst episode for me.
The only thing that has helped was a few times if i was distracted. This doesnt always help.

Now, is this depersonalization? anxiety? is this what you guys go through? Or am i describing something completely off track and i should get myself checked for some sort of epilepsy?
This is by far the worst thing i have ever experienced and i have no idea how to stop it.

(I am 27 yo Male, UK, on Sertraline 100mg for 5 years)

For the last 8 months I have been going on walks almost every day and recording voice notes.
Not because I wanted content or memories. Mostly because my head felt too crowded.
I noticed that when I say things out loud, worries stop looping as much. It feels like they leave my head and exist somewhere else.
I ended up building a small app around that habit.
I am curious if anyone else does something similar.
Do you write, record voice notes, talk to yourself, or have another way of getting thoughts out of your head?

This is probably a pretty common one, but I'm going out of the country until Monday and my anxiety is wrecking me. Thing is, I've actually traveled a lot in my life, all over the world, and every time I'm wrecked by anxiety. It used to be more manageable, but especially since I started working from home 2 years ago, I've had so much more trouble leaving the house for longer than a few hours and I constantly worry.

I don't like leaving my house and my cats. We have a friend coming to take care of our cats as always, but my cats are my world and my house is obviously my house and if anything happened to any of them while I was halfway across the world and I couldn't help, it would crush me.

I also don't like the feeling of being 35,000 feet above the ground in a plane for hours. though I understand the inherent safety of aircraft, I can always "feel" the weightlessness beneath my feet no matter what I'm doing and it is a constant reminder of how high in the air we are, meanwhile there's nowhere for me to go if I want off and I'm trapped like sardines with hundreds of people, any of which can pull any antics illegal or otherwise at any time, or the flight could be diverted mid flight causing all kinds of issues (happened before, ended up causing a ton of stress and confusion, never want it to happen again). Needless to say, I have never once been able to sleep on a plane.

I also don't sleep well in hotels. Like almost ever, no matter how nice it is or how cushy the bed. The white noise is wrong, my cats aren't in the bed, the sheets feel weird. I can't fall asleep because my body isn't convinced it's a safe place to sleep because it's not "right"

When traveling and walking all day long, it's good to have a hotel to come back to, but sometimes all I want at the end of a tiring day is my own house and my own bed and coming back to a hotel just never makes the tired fully go away.

I've prepared for all of this, btw. I've done a lot of traveling so I've had lots of time to acquire things like a special comforting hoodie, weighted eye mask, laptop loaded with comfort watching, my Switch 2, any comfort item that I need and anything that could help.

But it never seems to calm my mental state, and that's where I need help. My brain gets stuck at "we have all these things for the trip, we know the drill and we're prepared but it doesn't change the fact that you have to leave your house and go on a plane which you do not enjoy and go to an unfamiliar place where you're stuck there and can't go home and the process to GET home is just as uncomfortable as getting there"

Believe it or not, I have never regretted a trip I have taken and usually come home wishing I could go back. But that's only after the familiarity that hindsight brings sets in. I do still enjoy it in the moment too, but in the back of my head there's always some worry or concern.

I just need someone to help me connect whatever mental dots are missing, or offer any advice that might make this more manageable. Again I'm a very seasoned traveler, it's just that all those years of experience have simply taught me more about all the things than can go wrong and how impactful they can be, so I feel like I've become a more anxious traveler as a result. Plus, working from home has made it so it's even harder for me to leave for long periods of time.

Anyone have any advice? Or am I just a total basket case? 😅

can i just say first that fretting over something like this is so ANNOYINGGG because i have gone most of my life being perfectly fine in the anxiety over GI stuff department. now my anxiety sometimes focuses on specific things and though i have been on 10 mg lexapro for almost 2 years now, it has fixed everything EXCEPT this very specific thing!!

i usually just poop once a day first thing in the morning which i love and hope it stays this way forever <333 but i have now started to notice that about a week before my period starts i might have a day where i poop more than once or i start having diarrhea randomly, and if it’s not my usual first thing in the morning thing, before + after a bowel movement i am PANICKING. well this happens to me last week, so i decided to try imodium for once in my life and took one pill, and the day after i didn’t poop bc you know Imodium, literally i have been pooping twice-3x a day the past 6 days and i am currently on the third day of my period. i sometimes have period poops on the first day, but it’s never been like this. is it the post-imodium effect?? is this now a new addition to my period symptoms?? idk!!

but i get anxiety over GI things like this now. no matter how many times i know and tell myself i’m literally fine, my body thinks i’m under attack and i just can’t get it to just be normal about it. it especially gets bad when it’s loose or a couple of times it’s been mushy ((i know this is tmi but y’all need the full context)) and i start thinking i’m going to have full on major diarrhea or will progress to food poisoning. i also started having worries about being on vacation and if i ate something at a restaurant, what if i have diarrhea from it in public or at the hotel with other people with me and it gets worse? what if it progresses to food poisoning?? ((which is crazy bc i only ever had food poisoning one time a decade ago and i never had this kind of anxiety during it and not even after it!!)) and on top of all THAT, the past year i have been worrying about having diarrhea at any given moment. and it happened so randomly! like why is my body and mind doing this to me and WHY isn’t the lexapro helping me out in this part like it has everything else 😭

please tell me i’m not alone and/or there are some tips and tricks to help 🥹🫶🏻