Need some advice and help

[FelixTheCat]

Hello everyone!

I am currently going through huge anxiety episodes accompanied maybe by depression spells. I feel very detached and it freaks me out even more, feels a bit like I am going insane.

I went to doctors just in case to check with my health; my blood tests are normal (a bit of vitamin D deficiency), I am waiting for MRI scans and two doctors said I probably have depression aaaaand I am seeing psychotherapist next week. *shrug*

 

It has been like this for 3 weeks. I am not entirely sure what caused this all, but I did make everything worse by telling myself I have some horrible, terminal disease *cough*

I just wanted to ask, what would you do in similar situation? Do I continue meditate or maybe put it aside for now as it may bring about more anxiety? Anything helps. Thank you

[HII]

What are you anxious about in those episodes? Any guesses what might be the causes?

[Shin]

59 minutes ago, FelixTheCat said:

 

I just wanted to ask, what would you do in similar situation? Do I continue meditate or maybe put it aside for now as it may bring about more anxiety? Anything helps. Thank you

Don't that's a trap.

It's by becoming conscious of the anxiety that it will subsides, not by avoiding it.

[FelixTheCat]

29 minutes ago, HII said:

What are you anxious about in those episodes? Any guesses what might be the causes?

Well my very first panic attack came out of blue: I was just reading book in my room and all of sudden I have this strong feel detachment and then I start freaking out and start shaking. I talked to my psychologist recently and she thinks this random panic attack was due to a burnout as I have been very strict with myself for the past 3 months (although I thought I was doing great hahaha). Since it felt like it happened for no reason, I automatically think, 'that's it, I damaged my brain, I am going to die' or something like that. Basically all of the subsequent panic attacks, after the first one, were caused by me, convincing myself that I am physically ill and I am going to die. This problem that I have with me freaking out about my symptromps is not a new thing; I've been like this for years and I honestly hate it. Sorry if this is too long

 

[FelixTheCat]

17 minutes ago, Shin said:

Don't that's a trap.

It's by becoming conscious of the anxiety that it will subsides, not by avoiding it.

Okay, thank you! I will try, this reassures me a lot. I actually had a break from meditation, but I intuitively think I should get back to it!

[FelixTheCat]

I wanted to say thank your very much for your replies, it makes it much better if there is someone to listen!

[Shin]

Don't hesitate to come back, ask other questions

[jhmarrio]

1 hour ago, Shin said:

Don't that's a trap.

It's by becoming conscious of the anxiety that it will subsides, not by avoiding it.

Be careful with this. If you are having serious anxiety, meditating may be a bit of a stretch in this acute state and could actually have adverse affects (fuel feelings of inadequacy if you find you can't maintain your practice/focus, which in effect makes your anxiety worse... and (from my experience) this can be vicious cycle). An analogy that hopefully will help explain my point: If you had a bruised leg, then mild exercise may be the key to getting it well. If your leg was broken, then any exercise could actually make it worse. You'd need to let the leg heal a bit and THEN physio it back to health. Now just replace the "leg" with the "mind" (or whatever area you conceptualize your anxiety being). So the big question left is what to do in the mean time to get out of this acute state? What helped me climb out of these states when I was younger: Getting back to basics - eat right, get enough sleep, reach out to friends/family and share what your going through, see a doctor (if this is warranted) and most importantly be patient and really cut yourself some slack - you're doing the best you can... and you can do it!!  

By no means am I denouncing meditation BTW. I attribute a lot of what I have and where I am today to establishing a regular meditation practice. I just wanted to point out that it may not be what you need right now. Hope this helps and best of luck!!

[Akim]

Here is advice from Jordan Peterson about anxiety. Lay out what you anxious about, in detail, decompose it into small problems, do safe gradual exposure. As a result you get braver "there is something in me that responds to taking that on as a voluntary challenge and grows and thrives as a consequence ... the people who pick up the stressor voluntarily use a whole different psychophysiological system, system of approach and challenge" which is basically way better on you emotionally than avoidance system and in the process you grow self esteem, learn that you are stronger than you thought.

 

[HII]

@Akim That's why I always ask people what the cause of their problem is. But this gets kinda difficult when they say "well, attacks just come out of the blue for no reason". What do you do then? 

[Akim]

@HII  Well, I don't have clinical experience of curing people of anxiety, but may be you can still expose yourself to things that you are afraid of. There should be some. In that way you train your approach system to counteract avoidance system and beliefs that you are incapable of dealing with complex situations and should retreat. If pray/panic/avoidance system can just go off for some reason that we could not determine, we can still train its opposite, approach system, self esteem, bravery, which should probably help. Also as an idea, you sit and think what you are afraid of and write down answers. It is kind of approach in itself, you are not running away from yourself but do investigation, ready to face your fears at least in your head.

[FelixTheCat]

@Shin  Alright, will do! Thank you for your kindness!

@jhmarrio Hey thank you very much for your reply! It makes all sense to me and I think there is definitely truth in it. I can see meditation might aggravate my anxiety a bit. I feel I do need to get back on my legs right now and then I can look deeper into my problems. I might do a little bit of mindfullness (which I think is a bit different from meditation?) since I read somewhere it can help with detachment  

@Akim Thank you for sharing this, I think actually this is very helpful! I kind of actually trying to take this whole anxiety more as a challenge (I did know this is a thing, ahahaha), but I then I would fall back into this automatic full on anxiety state. Reminding yourself that you should look at this as a challenge, helps a lot, honestly. Growing my self-esteem is so important for me because I keep on realising how impaired my self-esteem is.

@HII @Akim I agree that honestly it is actually difficult to deal with an invisible problem. My psychologist told me that panic attacks do not happen for no reason... You see, I am very neurotic about becoming successfull due to mainly 2 reasons; my low self-esteem and fear of not being able to support myself financially (don't want to burden my parents). I am still a student in uni and I am striving to do my best, but I think, I am doing this out of fear all the time, althought  for me it does not seem like it. I've set up vigorious routine for myself and started micromanage myself like insane, I did not have space for my mind wonder. I've done this because I am scared to be failure and to top that, my gaols were probably absolutely unrealistic. So, you know, I cannot really say this is exactly the reason for my total freak out, because for me doing this all hard work and having schedule, felt like accomplishment for me. I was doing very well, but maybe in hind sight I screwed myself over by numbing myself mentally. This is opinion of my psychologist as well.

 

[FelixTheCat]

I just wanted to thank everyone for helping me out!!! It really feels like I can manage anxiety better! Maybe I can keep you updated on the situation or something

[Shin]

Just now, FelixTheCat said:

I just wanted to thank everyone for helping me out!!! It really feels like I can manage anxiety better! Maybe I can keep you updated on the situation or something

Yes do that  

[HII]

5 minutes ago, FelixTheCat said:

You see, I am very neurotic about becoming successfull due to mainly 2 reasons; my low self-esteem and fear of not being able to support myself financially

Then do yourself a favor and don't get into this bullshit of "there's something wrong with my brain". It's a trap. Meds might help some people short term to keep their life together for a while until they learn to stabilize themselves with other strategies. But statistically, they do more harm than good long-term. And also from a common sense perspective, if you take drugs, you distort your emotions, so you don't get to learn to deal with them. 

As long as you can find the courage and honesty and strength, always look at your actual problems and try to find ways to deal with them, instead of creating a story which makes your symptoms into the problem. 

Just my opinion, hope you're getting well  

[FelixTheCat]

@HII  Thank you! Mind is very self-decieving and it is becoming more and more apparent to me hahaha

[Jamie Universe]

@FelixTheCat I had depression for like a year or two and my minds 'reason' was because of all the school crap going on

1. Turns out I'm gay (and you can imagine all the other shit that followed)

2. Maybe I had mental disorder? If I did, I'm pretty sure its gone now, I might've also just had some weird beliefs I believed in for no reason. Which are also gone now

 

But mainly I think my depression was based off this sort of feeling/belief that life was pointless etc. etc... And then I did enough philosophy to realize that it wasn't, and that all the pain was in a sense easily fixable. Point is, I had a perspective change, I stopped complaining about my life like a victim, and started treating it like an obstacle that I could overcome. sort of like what @Akim said.

See if you believe that your doomed to fail and die without ANY promise of getting back, that's going to reflect on you emotionally. But if you believe that "Yes I could get diagnosed with a terminal disease tomorrow, but I could've also been run over by a car yesterday, and I never thought of that and it never affected me, so why should I care about the billion ways I could die right now?" then your going to see that you worry less.

Me personally I friggin logic all my minds arguments to death. I find that all the worrying/panicking/negative emotions, a lot of times comes from a bad argument. 

 

[FelixTheCat]

@Jamie Universe  Thanks for your reply! :3

1. huehuehue I guess I could be in the same boat with you on this one

2. I used to have lots of broken beliefs that limited me in every way as well

I see! Sounds like you had tough time, but huge applouse to you that you managed to get out of your depression! It is very difficult and you need lots of courage to get there. And I agree with you, that looking at something as an obstacle that you surely can surmount makes much easier, and in my case, keeps me sane hahahaha

I have been doing something very similar recently, reasoning that being nervous will not help me in any way and just keep on circling around the same thought won't resolve it. The more you pester it, worse it gets I actually read something interesting from a book today, called ' The Unfettered Mind' by Takuan Soho (it is about sword fighting and mind, old school stuff hahaha), where he says that in Zen Buddhism, the mind that is stuck on the same thoughts, is like ice because it was frozen by fear. Thoughts should be always like water, continuously moving and changing as it can adapt to any situation quickly and appropriately. This concept kind of helped me to change my prespective on my thinking process in general