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Anxiety
I have bad bad bad anxiety. I get really, abnormally nervous about everything I do. I'm almost eighteen years old and I've never had a job and I don't even have my license yet. I'm always having panic attacks and I even freak out about hanging out with my own friends. I tend to avoid social situations all the time. So my question is, will this ever go away? It just seems like it's getting worse. People that know what they're talking about and have been through this only answer please. I'm just scared it will keep getting worse and I'll turn into one of those people who never leaves the house.
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I've had a lot of experience with this and even ended up going to therapy. They tried to get me to take anti-anxiety meds, but I wouldn't for fear that I would have to take them my entire life. I was only sixteen at the time and didn't want to depend on meds so early in life. My therapist told me that they can give you the meds during therapy while they teach you how to handle things on your own. Then, once you've completed therapy, you can be weaned off of the meds. If you're okay with take medication for a while, that might be an option to consider.
I could really go on forever about this subject. But I'll keep it brief. I got over my anxiety by totally re-routing the way I thought. I had such a negative outlook that I made it impossible for myself to not get anxiety. I got stomach ulcers and everything because I made myself so anxious and nervous all the time.
I would always say to myself, "No, you can't go to the movie with your friends. You'll get too anxious. You'll end up having a panic attack or throwing up in the middle of the theater." I would start thinking these things to myself days before the day I was supposed to go out. By the time the day got there that I was to go see a movie, I would have psyched myself out of going completely.
I used cognitive thinking to get over it. If someone asked me on Monday if I could go out on Friday, I would start telling myself "Yes, you're going to go out. You're going to have a good time and everything is going to be okay." I would tell myself every day. Every time the subject was brought up or popped up in my head, I would keep telling myself that everything would be perfectly fine.
At first, it didn't have much effect and I was cursing my therapist for thinking it could possibly work. But once I really committed and stuck with it for a while, it started working. I honestly can't tell you how long it took because one day I was getting ready to go out with my friends and I just stopped and thought to myself, "Wow. I've known that we were going out tonight for 5 days and I haven't thought about it once. I haven't thought about bad things that might happen or anything." Then I just continued getting ready and left.
Ever since then, it's been the same way. I never even think about staying in due to nerves anymore. It's all about retraining your thought processes. It's hard to do, but it really works. I got a workbook about getting over panic attacks and anxiety while I was changing my ways of thinking. it had questions and you would just fill in the lines provided. For some reason, it really helped me. It sorta put it into a different perspective. To see it written down made me realize what was going on. It also offers insight as to how many people have anxiety.
The workbook is called: Panic Attacks Workbook: A Guided Program for Beating the Panic Trick and it's written by Dr. David Carbonell
Here it is on Amazon if you think you may want to buy it. It's only 12 bucks and it works wonders; just read the reviews.
[Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
Good luck,
Darby(:
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