I feel like I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Hello! I decided to describe my situation to you because I just don't know what to do anymore. I'll try to make this short. I've been suffering from really bad anxiety since I was 12. Depression followed soon after at about 13. Back then I had no idea what was wrong with me and never talked to anyone about it. I stopped going to school and told my parents I was sick every morning.

This lead to a lot of arguments and there was only screaming all day long so I locked myself away. Everyone simply thought I didn't wanted to go to school, that I was just lazy. I changed schools and things got better. After about half a year I felt okay with it. No more anxiety in the morning, only depressed when it got quite around me.

After 10th grade I went to a new school and started to get bad anxiety again and I stopped sleeping at night because I was too anxious, tried to go to school on most days and slept in the afternoon. I kept this up for a couple months until I had a complete breakdown in the bathroom one morning. I tried to explain to my parents what was wrong and they send me to a therapist (I only went there three times) and decided it was best for me to take a break.

Said break turned into the rest of the year and in summer I decided to do distance learning which worked just fine. In summer I went to the holidays with my parents for two weeks and that's where everything went wrong. During my break from school I did nothing. Just nothing. I laid in bed all day, was on my laptop all day and barely left the house. I was convinced I could handle going on vacation. The first night away I had the worst panic attack of my life and I was hyperventilating for hours, crying and shaking so bad I couldn't even stand.

The second day wasn't any different. The third and fourth day I was crying the entire day and I was begging my parents to please let me go home, to just put me on the next flight back home or on the train or something and even offered to pay the whole thing myself. They refused and the rest of the vacation was okay, no more anxiety. Nothing. Whenever I think about that vacation I want to throw up. It makes me feel sick and I work myself very easily into a panic attack when I think too much about it. I got anxious again on the last day and I was convinced that when I'm back home, back in my safezone, everything would be fine. It wasn't.

I had a panic attack every single night for a week and my mom had to sit with me for hours because It was so bad. Nothing would calm me down and I was shaking 24/7. This went on for months. And every time I would scream at my mom and beg her to please call an ambulance because I thought I was dying. During those months I barely slept, barely ate anything and lost quite some weight. It got better, the panic subsided, the attacks got less frequent. I had my last attack about two months ago. But at some point, maybe 3-4 months ago, I started to feel really strange.

Nothing felt real anymore. I ignored this, blamed it on the anxiety and left it with that. But the feeling got worse and worse over the last two months. I googled a lot of my symptoms and read a lot about DP/DR. I first went into full health anxiety mode and was convinced that I was having a brain tumor or something and had more medical tests done than I can count. But I'm perfectly healthy. A month ago I started to get really bad memory issues. Now I'm at the point where I can't even remember yesterday. It's just gone from my memory.

I can't tell you what I did yesterday, or the last couple months. I don't remember. And it's scaring me. I was at the doctor this morning and I was sitting there and waiting and couldn't really remember how I got there. It was still there somehow, but all blurry and I wasn't sure if what I was remembering actually happened or not. The whole world looks strange. I'm looking down at my hands and I don't recognize them. I can't handle looking in the mirror. Looking myself into the eyes makes me panic. It's just strange. I feel faint all the time, like I might pass out if I just close my eyes. When people talk to me I feel like my head is underwater. It's not making sense what they're saying.

But I talk to them, I answer them, and while I do so I simply ask myself how? How am I talking? I'm not leaving the house anymore. I went to the doctor this morning and that was the only time I left the house this month. Last month I went grocery shopping with my mom and went to the hairdresser. Those were the only times for the last two months.

I don't want to go outside. It's overwhelming, everything just feels wrong and I can't handle it. I'm completely confused when I'm outside and just want to get home because I'm scared. I can't get myself out of bed anymore. I just can't. I suffer from maladaptive daydreaming (obsessive daydreaming that goes on for hours and feels very real) which I'm doing all day long. I completely isolated myself and detached myself from reality. I called all the therapists near me in the last couple days but they either aren't taking new patients at the moment or they can't give me an appointment until March.

I don't know what to do. I feel like I might break down at any given second. I'm terrified. I feel like I'm losing my mind. Every single day during the last month I wanted to go the neares hospital, tell them I'm suicidal so they put me in a psych ward. But I don't want that. I just want to feel normal again. What if I am losing my mind? What if this never gets better? Those questions repeat themselves in my head all the time. And the main thing that keeps repeating itself is always your're gonna have to kill yourself. This is never going to be okay again and there's no other way out.

Please note that I'm in no way suicidal, I would never do something like that. I could never do something like that. I want to get better and I know that's my anxiety and desperation speaking in my head. I tried to explain to my parents quite often what I'm going through but it's complicated. I showed them some articles on panic attacks and DP/DR and I think that helped quite a bit. I don't know what to do? I can't wait until March to talk to someone. I'm struggling through every single day at the moment. I'm sorry this got quite long.

Please read my reply to Faded White Brain...... I hope it will help. You need to heal what's under your DP/DR. Your system is preserving itself because it's overloaded. I know it sounds stupid but DP/DR are protection mechanisms. It's a sign that your mind and body can't take it any more, are overwhelmed, so they shut down.
I look at people who prosper , achieve their goals, while I'm stack in a mad circle. But I feel I have a great potential. So do you. Most of all, potential for happiness, whatever it means for us. More, I had times in my life when I felt so well I could move mountains.
Please , find a good therapist, not just regular psychologist. Some therapists work via skype. It's not always good, because in some cases patient needs to be in real touch with therapist, but that widens options for finding a good one. If you feel your body rigid ( I do) , go for massage.

I wish you all the best.

Dear wintersoldier:

You wrote that your anxiety started when you were 12. What happened in your life when you were 12? what was your relationships with your parents then and how is it now?

atina

atina wrote:Dear wintersoldier:

You wrote that your anxiety started when you were 12. What happened in your life when you were 12? what was your relationships with your parents then and how is it now?

atina

I'm not exactly sure when the anxiety started, but it had to be around 11/12, back then elementary school just ended and my parents sent me to a very strict catholic school and I guess I couldn't really handle it. I was terrified to go to that school because I knew no one there and stuff. I could barely sleep and I was trembling all morning because I was just so scared, but I never told my parents about it because I felt like it was just stupid to be afraid of school at that age. So I always said I was sick, always faked an illness. Everyone, my parents and the school, simply thought I was being lazy. My parents got really frustrated with me and we argued every morning and kept arguing when they came back from work in the evening. I changed schools with 13 but it was the same thing over again. I got bullied really bad on that new school and the teachers weren't any better. I rarely went to school and I hated my parents more than everything because there was nothing but screaming all day long. I don't really blame them, I get how frustrated they must have been. When I started to get worse in the last half a year everything started out good, they were really understanding and my mother always talked me through panic attacks. When it got worse, when I stopped sleeping and eating and stuff, I often asked what I was supposed to do because I had no idea. A few weeks ago I asked my mom if I could get my blood tested because I thought maybe I'm just sick and that was the answer to all my problems, maybe I just have a hormonal imbalance or something (I just wish some illness would cause all this and not my mental health) and she screamed at me really bad and told me that she was sick of it, that all day long the only topic is illness here, illness there and she can't handle it anymore. Later in the evening I heard my parents argue and my mom told my dad that she wishes she could just take me to the next mental hospital, that she just doesn't know what to do with me anymore, and that if I wasn't 18 she would get me admitted to a psych ward. One day she snaps like that and the other she acts like the best mother in the world and simply tells me that she's just worried, she just wants the best for me. We have a good relationship, she's a great mother, she really is, but it just sometimes gets me really conflicted that it takes just a simple thing to have her snap like that and say things like that. My dad is a lot more understanding, he's always calm and tries to understand what's wrong.

Dear wintersoldier:

Children have a need to have a strong, loving parents, calm and loving. When this is not the case, the child ... makes believe it is so, that the screaming, radically changing, unreliable, and not so loving parent is that strong loving parent that the child needs.

You wrote that your mother is a great mother. This is what you need to believe, understandably. As a child you needed to believe it and without healing as an adult, you still believe it.

If you had a parallel experience with a good enough mother, a calm one, not sometimes, not in between the episodes of screaming and abuse, one who validated and respected your feelings, then you would have known the difference.

The reason you didn't tell your mother about how afraid you were at 12 or so about going to the new school is you wrote you believed your fear was stupid. The reason you believed your fear was stupid is because at that point, your mother ALREADY delivered to you the message that your feelings are stupid. The abuse by your mother was already in practice.

No, wintersoldier, not true: your mother was not and is not a good enough mother, not even close. She is an abusive mother. An abusive mother is most often nice at times. Every person on the face of the earth is SOMETIMES nice.

We don't want to believe it, it is distressing to be aware of this, but being aware of it, over time, is going to bring about healing for you. It will help you place your fear where it belongs.

atina

Thank you for taking your time to respond. I concentrate on the good stuff she does .. I don't have anyone besides my parents and my best friend, there's just no one there. I don't want to bother my best friend with my problems and I really cling to my parents because I feel like they're the only security I have. I never really established a relationship with anyone besides them? I've known my best friend before any of this even started and well, my parents are my parents. They're the only 3 people I ever had a stable relationship to. Even when I had friends I would barely talk to them and never call/text them until well, they disappear from your life.

Dear wintersoldier:

I read your last post. All you have are your parents and one best friend, you say. So you have to do with what is available. How old are you?
atina

I'm 18

Dear wintersoldier:

Time to make a plan then, however in the long distance, however impractical for now, but make a plan to move out and live on your own.

Like you wrote, your mother (and father and one best friend) is all you have. Your mother is sometimes nice to you but sometimes she is abusive and it has hurt you and it keeps hurting you. The more she hurts you, the weaker you are and less able you are to make a life of your own, to make friends, make a career for yourself, etc.

You have to move away from the people that hurt you. You have to find a partner in life of your choosing (not someone you are born to), a partner who will never be abusive to you.

You love your mother, it is natural. A child loves his mother NO MATTER WHO the mother is. This is natural. On the other hand, it is wise, as you become an adult, physically, that you also SEE the woman for who she is. For what she does to you. She helps you at times AND she is hurting you. She does both.

Seek relationships with others, a good psychotherapist if you can, where you will find support as you look into the truths of life, the inconvenient, yet necessary truths. Your mental health is dependent on you seeing the truth of what is in front of you.

Please do post anytime and I will respond.

atina