Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr.mmmKay
Has your anxiety become better as you got older?
I've always had social anxiety, whch is possibly related to the asperger's.
As for the general anxiety, I always had it but never knew what it was and no one ever did anything about it. If I was afraid to do something or go somewhere my parents would just yell at me for being lazy.
As for the panic attacks, that didn't start until about 2 years ago around the holidays. I noticed that whenever I drank any alcohol I had trouble breathing and got more anxious (I had been using alcohol on the regular to sleep and be less anxious). So I stopped drinking, and haven't drank any since.
Then about 5 months after that I was lifting weights in my room one day and all of a sudden my hands and feet got totally numb, I got really dizzy and lightheaded. My heart was racing, and I felt cold. I honestly thought I was having a heart attack and was dying. I laid down on my bed and just tried to breathe. I couldn't operate my phone to call 911 because my hands were so numb. Right before I started lifting weights that day, I had put a cake in the oven. Our oven doesn't have a timer, so my first thought was "oh noes if I die my cake will burn!"
After about 20 minutes I gradually felt better, and my cake was fine.
For the next few weeks after that I would get short of breath all the time whenever I did anything or got the slightest bit nervous. It kept getting worse until I couldn't even go to work anymore because I thought I wouldn't be able to breathe. It was always the worst at night. As soon as I fell asleep I would stop breathing and pop up gasping for air. Several times I went 4-5 straight days with no sleep at all, just pacing around my room wondering wtf is wrong with me. Also I would break out in hives on my whole body for no reason, usually in the morning.
Long story short(ish) I went to the hospital 3 times and saw 7 different doctors and none of them had any idea what was wrong with me, other than that I had some high markers for inflammation and fasting blood glucose.
I eventually figured out on my own that the symptoms always got worse when I was nervous or my heart rate went up, or when I ate lots of sugar. I asked one of the docs to refer me to a psychologist. When I went to the psychologist she said most of those symptoms sounded like common panic attack symptoms and she gave me a book to read about anxiety. Since then it's been slowly getting better. I haven't had a real panic attack for almost a year.