Crippling Anxiety

Hi, I'm sorry to hear of your hardship. That sounds awful to feel to way. I'd recommend finding a therapist who you get along with; it can make a huge difference to get help. Besides that recommendation, I can relate with struggling with anxieties. Personality what I have found is that it seems that when I am anxious it is just my body trying to keep me alert, focused, and vigilant about some percieved problem. It doesn't really matter what the problem is as long as it matters to me. Lets assume anxiety behaves more or less the same for any problem we have. Kind of like how any emotion behaves; we don't have a brand new kind of emotion for every event in our lives, we recycle happiness for good times and recycle sadness for bad times, we recycle anxiety too etc.. So lets look at an example of beating an anxiety. I used to be very, very anxious about public speaking. Even just giving a presentation in a classroom I would shake, feel ill, have racing thoughts, and talk really fast, sweat, feal dread, etc.. Over time though, I got a little better. Then I got a job where I had to give a presentation every single week. It was very nerve wracking at first because I was focused on my performance. But it got better, I got used to talking in front of people. The nerves went away. The nebulous fears were replaced with actual first-hand experiences. I explored what I was scared of until there was nothing unfamiliar about it, no places for vague fears to hide. Years have passed and now I am a very good public speaker. I've given long prensentations to auditoriums full of people, I've taught classrooms where I'm in front of students 8 hours a day for my job - and its actually feels fun instead of scary! Okay, I've shared that story as a general anecdotal. We feel anxious when we think we don't have a handle on a situation - so we need to change that. We often feel we don't have a handle on a situation because we don't know what to expect (or we have an expectation but want an alternative). For me, after lots of public speaking I became familiar with what to expect, and thus was more in control. Maybe try and write down some plans for the different things on your mind. Write down the good things that could happen, and the things you fear happening. Then for eash bad thing, write down what you would do if it happened in order to solve the issue. For instance, if I got fired (it would suck but) I'd just go find another job. If I were sleepless, I'd write down the anxious thought to be dealt with later, and train my thoughts to wonder to pleasant thoughts. Just some ideas. I hope something in this long post is useful to you. I know it can sometimes feel overwhelming but you can unwind these anxieties. You're not alone. Wishing you happiness ahead.