this is very much me.

i was diagnosed with GAD (generalized anxiety disorder) about 10 or 11 years ago, but i've suffered from it for my whole life. it's a horrible thing, comes out of nowhere, after days, weeks or even months of feeling fine. suddenly i'm terrified for no reason at all and i can't make it stop for days or even weeks. thankfully i have a good psychiatrist who helps me manage it as much as is possible. i take paxil and xanax XR daily to manage the anxiety, and we just added abilify to help with the depression that occurs as well. i also have regular (not extended release) xanax for severe anxiety and/or panic attacks.

it's rough to live with, but with good support it's a bit easier. i hope anyone else suffering from this finds comfort here knowing that they are very much not alone.

Thanks for putting this in Nikki! I agree with you completely! Support is essential and medication can help as well. It may not be for everyone but I am glad you have a good support network. I've dealt with it all my life and its hard (to put it mildly) but to know we aren't alone and to also not shut out those we view as "normal" people is important.

Weekly topic and meditation may help you this week as well!

Im right there with you Nikki, right now I am in a good place but I alway wonder when this will come back, I still have moments where I feel the panic rising but so far I am doing ok with keeping it down. Acouple of things my doctor told me that seemed to help a lot is during the bad times MAKE myself do normal things like clean, shower, entertain visitors, and I sooo know this is easier said than done but I found it helped a lot. Good luck hun and lets hope you have very few, or better none, anxiety and panic.

dinky wrote:Im right there with you Nikki, right now I am in a good place but I alway wonder when this will come back, I still have moments where I feel the panic rising but so far I am doing ok with keeping it down. Acouple of things my doctor told me that seemed to help a lot is during the bad times MAKE myself do normal things like clean, shower, entertain visitors, and I sooo know this is easier said than done but I found it helped a lot. Good luck hun and lets hope you have very few, or better none, anxiety and panic.

I see the wisdom in this and at the same time my first inclination is to directly reject it lol I'm feeling this now and I sincerely do not want to be around people. I'd rather be watching sci-fi or reading. When I get panicky, tired, depressed etc I want to isolate. I like my alone time. This is true though..making myself do things does seem to help as much as I may not like it. Thanks for the advice dinky! (even if it wasn't towards me) LOL

Understand that Kel but in all honesty a part in healing is making yourself do things that seem to hard or that you dont want to do, its so easy to just sit down and do things you enjoy or even as you said have quiet time but with panic that just dont work, it consumes you and as he told me I was allowing the panic to take over and I gave into it, by doing things I NEED to do I am telling the panic "you are NOT going to stop me from doing this and eventually it gets easier and I had less panic

I am thoroughly jealous of you nikki. Not the anxiety etc because mine's probably almost as bad, but more the fact that you can actually tolerate paxil.

It made my RLS worse to the point where I had to tie my legs together and then tie them to the bed so I could get just a few minutes of sleep. It's much better now that I'm on the clonazepam, but after that, and several other experiences such as prozac landing me in hospital for reasons which I wont go into in case anybody is on prozac, I told my GP and psychiatrist they can shove the other couple of SSRIs that they haven't tried on me where the sun doesn't shine!

On Remeron/Mirtazapine now, and in combination with the clonazepam it really does the job quite well on the anxiety and depression. It's interesting that my GP recommended bezodiazepines after my neurologist wrote him a letter saying that he could try all sorts of drugs for my RLS, and then my GP took one look at the letter and said "Right, let's put you on clonazepam because that's the only drug on the neurologist's list that leads me to believe he's not trying to kill you!". Most amusing.