Goodevening all, I hope i am posting this on the right forum. I don't think i have GAD (yet) but it seemed like the most appropriate place to discuss this.
I am almost 22 years old/young, and I can consider myself to be quite new to the world of (severe) anxiety. It started about 10 weeks ago after being woken up in deep sleep, with the result of feeling unbelievably confused. This confusion led to a tension in my head which caused my first ever panic attack (i could have sworn i have a brain tumor, but you all know the feeling). I started taking Oxazepam, which helped me overcome the anxiety in less than a week (yay).
After this fear for physical symptoms passed, it was soon enough replaced by an intense fear for depression (because i felt a bit down sometimes). This time, my therapist added CBT to my treatment to manage the symptoms, and EMDR therapy to take care of the likely cause of the anxiety (a succession of deaths of my father, boss, grandma). This all seemed to gradually resolve my problems (emdr works fast yo).
However, what happened next has been the most terrifying yet (and the reason i am writing this). One evening I suddenly became extremely aware of that every single thing you do will eventually pass and become a memory at best, and that everyone you know and love will eventually die. Of course i have known this all my life, but this sudden extreme awareness scared the living s*** out of me. I could not stop thinking about how useless it is to do anything, if you know it will pass anyway.
The morning after this depressing night, the concept of time suddenly seemed utterly bizarre to me. It felt like i had been thrown into a new world which i did not understand. "How can yesterday be suddenly gone? Was yesterday even real? Is the past real? How can I know the past really happened" These thoughts of course came with a few bursts of anxiety, and left me with a sense of scary derealization, dissociation, or just a very unreal feeling (can't really diagnose it, maybe anyone here knows?)
Since this morning, the thought that the past is gone and will never come back has really haunted me and led to a couple of (the most scary yet) panic attacks. I usually love to read up on philosophy and the concept of time, but these sudden existential thoughts are just too stressful for me.
On the one hand I would love to go back to my old careless self, living from day to day and having fun. But on the other hand, going back to this kind of life somehow feels like living in denial of the horrifying truth. Simply filling your days with pleasurable things untill the day you die suddenly feels like a very sad thing.
My question to y'all is if anyone recognizes themselves in my story? I have searched the web and many forums but have not found anyone who describes the thoughts i'm having. I would really love to hear about your experiences and discuss them, so feel free to comment