Help and support needed

Hi @Vino123,

I’m glad you feel comfortable to share what you’re experiencing. That alone is a very courageous and vulnerable thing to do.

I’m sorry that you are spiraling with your anxiety. As somebody who also feels like I’m fighting a never-ending battle with the intrusive thoughts in my head, I understand how alone it can make you feel. The peace is totally gone. It can be so hard to talk about too, which can make you more prone to keep it bottled up for fear of “bothering” others.

I often feel like it’s a burden on my partner—like it’s a weight that they’re forced to carry. While I don’t know the details of how it has affected your family and partner, I am sorry to hear that it’s negatively impacting those relationships right now.

I support you. If it’s any comfort, I want to say that you have already taken a big step by posting this and asking for guidance. I don’t know where you are at on your journey with tools & resources to help manage your anxiety, but I admire you asking for help in a supportive environment.

I believe in you!

Hello @vino123,

You are not alone. I, too, have been struggling with severe anxiety for the past 3 mos. I’ve struggled with anxiety off and on for a number of years, but this time around it’s very severe. I believe the severity is due to the ongoing stress I’ve been dealing with for about 2 years. My doctor wants me to start Lexapro, but the side effects have been too difficult for me to handle. I know exercise and getting enough sleep helps me. I’m new to this group, so I appreciate your honesty and your courage for posting your feelings. It made it a lot easier for me to post mine! Praying for you @vino123 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

Hello,

Here's my 2 cents, I hope it might be helpful. I've had a bit of good success with the following reasoning:

Anxiety is a special mode the body activates when a potential threat or an important problem is perceived. It focuses the mind, it alerts the body, it makes us feel on edge - motivated to be vigilant and focused on this troublesome issue, whatever it is.

There's nothing wrong with that, right? I mean that all sounds like a good thing if there's really a problem around that we want to avoid. So where have things gone wrong? In my personal experience, what goes wrong is, at least for me, is that I would start characterizing my anxiety as a problem that I needed to solve. And what does that do? It turns on my "problem-solving" mode: anxiety! It turns on anxiety to help me out. Literally to help me solve my problem. To help me maintain vigilance on the vague problematic thing.

Once I thought of this I asked myself, how could I manipulate things to control my anxiety? What if I frame anxiety as an asset instead of as a problem? If it is not seen as a problem, then anxiety won't turn on to aid in solving a problem. If you can accept this as a "solution" to the problem of anxiety, then it's no longer a problem.

The whole issue is not anxiety, it's when we mistake it as something it is not. People can have really incorrect models of how things work and what they are. People use to believe garlic ruined magnets! If people can believe that, people curtainly can confuse and asset like anxiety for a problem that they have to fix. Things improved significantly with this change in thinking.

I really hope that this message might be helpful to you. I hope you feel better soon. Wishing you future happiness.