First of all, good god apparently I used to come here 6+ years ago fairly frequently... I barely remember posting here and boy is it embarrassing finding your old internet posts... lol.
I don't know if I am really posting for any reason other than to try to collect my thoughts and get them organized
Within the last 6 years I've made numerous strides and there is a lot that I can be proud of... however ever present is the constant anxiety I tend to feel. I have finally made the decision to go to the doctor (I have put it off mostly due to the fact that I've dealt with it relatively well and thought I could just.. get through) and get an official diagnosis as well as perhaps some medication to help me.
The earliest I remember anxiety affecting me was perhaps 11 years old. I remember panic attacks and hypochondria throughout my teenage years. I remember excessive worry. I remember at age 19 or so going to the doctor, being told I "probably had" GAD, and being prescribed Lexapro. I didn't feel like it helped much so I stopped after the initial dosage and did not go back.
I am a rational and logical enough person to realize that my worries are excessive but that doesn't help me control them. Some examples that I am still dealing with are:
1) Always assuming the worst. For example, if someone I love is out driving their car, and it gets to be late, and they do not answer their phone, my brain automatically goes to the worst case scenario - they've gotten in a car wreck. They've been shot and killed. They've been kidnapped and will end up missing and I'll never get any answers as to what happened. It's ridiculous. Another example is my boss calling me into his office, and even though everyone gets called down there from time to time (usually to discuss various things... nothing bad) my mind goes straight to wondering what I've done wrong lately, and what I'm going to do once I'm fired. Again, ridiculous.
2) hypochondria... luckily this isn't a constant thing but if something new pops up and I google the symptoms (first mistake) of course webmd tends to say everything could be a cause of some life threatening disease. So my latest stint was wondering curiously why I had so many small bruises on my legs. The google search started out innocently enough as I expected to just see similar stories (which I did), but to my horror I saw that this is also apparently a symptom of leukemia. So yes, my heart starts to beat, I start to feel numb and I spend the next x amount of days obsessing over the symptoms of leukemia (and hoping my brain doesn't give me any!).
3) Stupid worries... IE - when I am with my girlfriend or mother I don't like to get too separated from them in stores... because if I have difficultly finding them again I will start to panic, its like my brain realizes that they are grown adults with free will but at the same time there are those thoughts - "what if i cant find them, what if they're gone, what will I do without them?" etc.
I will say that things have been mostly manageable since i have not had a panic attack in 10 years or so but things got really bad last year when my mom got sick. She had a kidney infection, which was a relief to hear because of course I was thinking she had something far worse. But after a few months of treatment she still wasn't getting better. I got really bad... I would constantly google kidney cancer (a lot of her symptoms were similar) and almost convince myself she had it. I shut down emotionally because I was so consumed with worry and fear. Even after she got better (she just had a really mean infection that took several courses of medication to help cure) I was still plagued with thoughts such as how easy it is to die in this world... how easy it would be for my parents or gf or friends to get some deadly disease or get in a car wreck or be shot or whatever.
I got so overwhelmed that I gave into the fact that I needed some help. I ended up seeing a psychologist that was not much help and it's really turned me off of them (though I will be willing to try again.. I just dread shopping around for the right one. Me and this lady stared at each other and ended up talking about shoes for half of one of the 2 sessions I tried with her).
Anyway. On top of the things I mentioned I also have pretty bad muscle tension... at any given moment if I consciously think about my muscle tension I realized that my shoulders are tense and have to make myself relax them (and they just return to being tense when I stop thinking about it). I got a massage a few weeks ago and she said I was so tight and tense I must lift weights/play sports (uhh not so much. lol).
Anyway. I do not believe myself to be depressed but I do wonder how much the anxiety makes me who I am (a negative person, cynical, a complainer, etc). Do you all think I will be prescribed medication by a doctor and do you think they will help with any of those things?
Thank you all for listening.