People dealing with anxiety.

[The Blue Nova]

who in here has anxiety and needs constant reassurance, I know a lot of people with anxiety myself included who do need constant reassurance when they are feeling anxious.

[Brood Lone Wolf Funker]

I have severe anxiety, sometimes to the point of not being able to or wanting to leave my house

[sternrogers01]

Any place I go to, I have to be driven rather than walk because I hate coming across groups of teenagers or dog walkers. I also mostly skip all family functions except for a few that I can be in some control of. Just recently I turned down going to Wales for my aunt's 90th because I can't bear the thought of being away from home for more than a few hours.

[Deleted]

Oh, God. I've bee dealing with anxiety issues for a long time. A few years, to be exact.

It's gotten so bad that I'm now scared to see mom in rehab, and right now she's having a relapse with sepsis, but I'm just too afraid to go see her.

Part of the issue is due to my Asperger's, and I never did get over my fear of crowds and being around lots of people. But it affects even my day-to-day life now.

I'm finally getting some therapy for it, but I don't think I'll ever be free from what may be GAD.

[Blindkarevik]

I have it quite a bit. What really heightens is my insecurity.... you can have 50 people tell me how great I am throughout a day, but just one person tells me I'm terrible... and my mind thinks that one person is telling the truth and the other 50 are just bullshit.

It's the main reason why I left my call center job, because every single call could be the one that ruins my day and if a call was going well, I'd wanna get off the phone as quickly as possible before I ruined it. Just constantly anxiety the entire time.

One thing people generally seem to be surprised by, is when I tell them I don't have any friends. I'm a pretty funny, nice dude... but I'm so sure I annoy everyone, and I don't want to push my friendship on anybody, I purposely don't go out of my way to talk to anybody or try to make plans with them. If I get a negative response like, "Man, I would totally hang.. but I have this going on on that day." ... rather than take it at face value and figure out when to hang later on, I figure it's an excuse thrown at me to not hang out, but not to sound like a complete dick.

I always try to look on the bright side though.... anxiety can keep a guy humble. So that means I constantly try to work hard every day, because I don't feel like I'm above anybody else and I have no time to rest on my accomplishments. It also means I'll make others happy around me, before I worry about myself... so it makes me pretty unselfish.

Aside from that, what sucks is I really don't have a day to myself until everyone else is in bed. I never get too involved in anything for fear that I'll be needed for something at some point and need to tear myself away. So whether I work all day or have a day off, I still seem to have the exact same amount of actual free time.. usually like, two hours before I go to bed each night.

[The Ichi]

When I'm with a group I don't want to leave the group too much for fear of thinking they'll start talking about me.

So yeah, pretty badly.

[Ludwig Kaiser’s Walk]

I had it to where I tried to take my own life. All I wanted to do was sleep, but because of my anxiety, I would stay up through the night and rarely sleep because my mind would always be racing. Did I say the right thing in that random text 4 days ago? Stuff like that would bother me to no end.

I saw no end for it and that was as I was trying to get counseling and I had medication. I couldn't get out of bed for weeks at a time, besides to use the restroom. So, I tried to take my own life and was thankfully unsuccessful. I was hospitalized and was able to get on a different medication.

Things didn't get better immediately, I spent the better part of August, September, and October in my house. Rotating between the couch and my bed, my cats were my only friends.

I'm not sure what did it, but I slowly started to break out of the crippling fear of what was beyond my home. I remember shaking so bad the first time that I drobe after I got out of the hospital that I had to pull over and convince myself that I could do it...I was less than a mile from home.

Now, I still have anxiety and it still causes an occasional panic attack, but I mostly have things under control. I still avoid social situations besides sporting events where I can control who I talk to, but things are much better. I even started student teaching in my last semester of college this morning and graduate in April.

[Ludwig Kaiser’s Walk]

I guess I didn't answer the OP at all, my bad.

I always have needed constant reassurance in everything I've ever done. It's frustrating.

[Zaq "That Guy" Buzzkill]

It's spooky that this thread came up now, as just today I met with someone to see if I can be part of an anxiety support group.
I am going to be part of it, which I'm thankful for but damn it's hard to live with.

[Deleted]

Jan 5, 2016 11:58:56 GMT -5 Brood Lone Wolf Funker said:

I have severe anxiety, sometimes to the point of not being able to or wanting to leave my house

I go through stretches like that too, but I've never felt like it was anxiety. More depression and being unsatisfied with the world outside my house, feeling like I don't fit in anywhere, etc. Not saying at all that it's not anxiety for you, just interesting how different problems can lead to the same behaviors. Anxiety and depression are almost always co-morbid, usually one's a little more dominant.

I do have anxiety but a lot of it comes from body image stuff, since I'm very overweight. For example, I was in a waiting room at the eating disorder clinic I go to the other day. A girl was in there with me, probably around 15, and she started up a conversation, she was very nice. But then she was looking at her phone laughing, and I immediately thought she had taken a picture of me and sent it to her friends and was making fun of me.

What I did though was tell her. "Wanna know how paranoid I am? I see you with your phone laughing and I think you took a picture of me and sent it to your friends so you could all make fun of me". Which of course wasn't the case, and she apologized over and over for making me feel that way, though I assured her she did nothing and it was all in my head. But just mentioning that feeling was liberating, and we chatted for 15 minutes after that. I wouldn't have been able to do that last year. It was easier to do since we're both at an eating disorder clinic so we both know what's going on with that, but it was still something of a breakthrough. A lot of people are more understanding than we realize, because we're so freaked out about everything and worried about being judged.

Anxiety and depression and all that shit, you've just gotta keep chipping away at it. Sadly, these are thought to be lifelong disorders where they ebb and flow. There's no "cure", the only way is to be vigilant. Therapy, medication, mindful activities, exercise, meditation, there's a lot of tools just gotta find what you can do and stay on top of it.

[wakko]

I have it, and take prescription medication for it. It helps, but I still have issues. Especially since I can't drive and have to walk. When my mind is not occupied with something, it can get bad.

[Deleted]

Yes. I have anxiety, insomnia, depression, bipolar disorder, and have recently been diagnosed as bein on the Autism spectrum.

It's a rough life, but take your meds, see your doctor regularly, attend any therapy and group therapy available to you, and have a good support system. In fact anyone here with some kind of mental illness that wants a peer to talk to can pm me anytime if they want to talk.

[Unaffiliated]

I can't tell whether I have mild anxiety or if my insecurities fall within what's considered normal.

I face similar situations to many of the stories here but to a much lesser extent. For some reason I get very uneasy about carrying food in front of people, even though I'm not insecure about my diet. I've wanted to go into certain shops and restaurants but end up not doing so after looking in from the outside, afraid of having to interact with the people inside. I just started driving recently and am always terrified of hitting something or someone or going too slow and pissing off other drivers. Also, any kind of negative expression towards me (car honking, getting told off) will nag at me for a while, but usually not to the point it disrupts my daily routine.

I think the big difference between my anxiety and the extreme cases is that mine usually doesn't prevent me from doing things. I don't stay inside to avoid everything that is outside, but being outside terrifies me every step of the way.

[Strotha]

I have serious issues with anxiety and depression. My anxiety even prevents me from posting here a lot of the time, because I'm so convinced I'm a freak, idiot and outcast that I convince myself my opinions mean nothing and nobody cares what I think. I also need constant reassurance that I'm not an idiot and the people in my life do indeed care about me. I hate myself and tend to project that onto other people and assume everybody feels the same way about me as I do, and whenever someone does dislike or insult me, I always ignore all the good things and just assume that I'm genuinely a worthless irredeemable failure of a person.

[ben:friendship frog]

I have GAD/SAD and take medication for it which does seem to help. I don't need constant reassurance but I do need to keep myself busy otherwise I can find it really easy to just stay in the house for days at a time and then of course it gets harder to go out when I have to.

[J is Justice]

I've had it bad this year. What happens with me is, whenever I'm doing something I enjoy, I'm always asking myself if I really am enjoying it. Like, I'm always questioning my emotions, and I can't just live in the moment. It's annoying as f***.

[StuntGranny®]

I've had anxiety issues my entire life. Even as a little kid, I would constantly cry because I was worried constantly/would go to pieces over every little thing. As an adult, I do the same thing (Except minus the crying because I'M A MAN, GODDAMMIT!). I've put my family and wife through hell because of it.

I finally gave in and went the the doctor. He put me on Paxil. The side-effects were brutal, to say the very least. After the initial onslaught of god awful side-effects, I started gaining weight for no reason in particular (I barely eat and I go to the gym routinely), so he switched me to Lexapro. Still gained weight with that, so he recently switched me to Viibyrd. If this doesn't work, I'm done with the medicine.

The medicine has definitely helped, but the side-effects/unexplained weight gain are almost not worth the help I'm getting.

[EvenBaldobombHasAJob]

I have a pretty serious anxiety disorder. I take effexor to regulate it and trazodone to help with my depression and insomnia. I also have to be accomodated at work because of it.

[OGBoardPoster2005]

I'm at this stage where one person's ill feelings towards me is dictating my self esteem and confidence. It sucks because I actually think I might be doing well, but feel like I'm a shit person because of them.

[Professor Chaos]

I've always dealt with it but the past 3 months have been the worst. After 15 years of doing my job to perfection I was told I had to take a 70% paycut so I quit. Ever since the only conversations I've had with people have been job interviews where I get a rejection email the next day. Gonna run out of money soon and end up a broke homeless bum it looks like.