At my wit's end.

Hey everyone. I'm going to try and keep this brief and concise but brevity was never one of my strong points. However, I shall try. Here goes...

Ever since I was a little kid I've been plagued with worries that made my parents raise their eyebrows because they seemed to come out of nowhere, or be grossly exaggerated compared to the situation that triggered them. For example, my mom remembers me bursting into tears on my ninth birthday and freaking out because I was halfway through my childhood. It sounds cutesy but it was a genuinely terrifying thought to me at the time - and that's just one example of those kinds of things happening. As I've gotten older (I'm 19 now) things have only gotten worse.

I don't remember the last time I went through a full day without being overrun by anxiety over SOMETHING, or often times nothing at all. Simple things such as waking up in the morning are a chore sometimes because of how cluttered my brain is with pointless worrying; I feel like the only thing I can do to stay safe is stay in bed. When my anxiety IS triggered, rather than popping out of nowhere, it's never by anything enormous but my mind makes it into something huge; I forget to reply to a casual email at work and immediately worry that I'm going to be reprimanded and fired, for example. Every time people try and tell me that my worries aren't founded in logic but I can always find a way to rationalize them. When I try and remind myself that my last anxiety felt rational too and look how THAT went, I always end up saying "yeah but...but I really feel like THIS is something legitimate!" It always happens that way. I freak out and worry, then rationalize my feelings by thinking that I wouldn't feel this freaked out and worried if SOMETHING wasn't going on.

This is beginning to affect me physically. I have scratches all over my arms because when I get anxious I scratch at my skin to try and make myself feel better; as such my arms are always littered with pink scratch marks. I have trouble sleeping because I wake up in the middle of the night with my heart racing and my head spinning. Oftentimes I get this feeling in my chest like there's a rubber band squeezing around it, pulling tighter and tighter and making it hard to breathe. I'm always tired and get splitting headaches from all the time I spend dwelling on the things I worry about. My mom says if I keep on like this I'm going to put myself in an early grave.

I don't want this to continue. For awhile I thought it was helping rather than harming me - after all, if you worry and expect the worst you'll be prepared for it when it happens, right? Better to be responsible, better to be safe than sorry? These were all the things I told myself to try and feel better about the way I am with this, but it's not working anymore. I want to live a life unburdened by what often seems like a constant crushing fear of life itself. My boyfriend has been really supportive of me through this and is being all I could've asked for and more in this situation, but I also know that my worrying, especially when it gets in the way of me being able to trust him, could eventually drive us apart if something doesn't change. My family wants me to see a psychiatrist and see if it truly is GAD that I have, but I'm terrified of that being the case. What advice do you guys have for me, if any? Whatever it may be I would greatly appreciate hearing it. And if you've read this far, thank you very much.

Hi, Wormy! If you have so much anxiety and it's hurting you and influencing your life, you should definitely see a psychiatrist. Nothing bad will happen if you do and if they are competent. There is therapy and medication for you to try and I have met people that have this illness and have gotten help. Please don't give up and give yourself a chance

Thank you for the response I appreciate that a lot. I'm going to try this stuff my mom's heard about called Rescue Remedy. It's made from flower extracts and supposedly has extracts to help "terror and panic, irritation and impatience, inattentiveness and irrational thoughts." I really hope it works! If not then we'll go from there I guess, but this is definitely worth a shot.

Good luck, Wormy! The best option really is seeing a good doctor, though.

I know. And that idea is definitely not off the table It's just hard to find a time to get in there because my school and work schedules are insane, and the doctor's office I'm set up with has kind of a complicated system for getting appointments. So I'm just trying this in the meantime while waiting to get in and see someone. You know?

I hope it works, let me know. And here's another smile hehe