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Feeling sick

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Re: Feeling sick

Postby jasmin » Sat Dec 31, 2011 8:32 pm

Yah, that sounds OCD-ish to me too.
When I felt like I was being sucked into a hole... I had this feeling like I was sinking into the bed and like my head/the room was spinning and like I would have fallen down or fainted if I had been standing. I got thoughts like... it's hard to explain. I was freaked out and thinking things like "if the univers exists, what is beyond it". It literally HURT, the anxiety or weirded-out feeling or whatever it was was so bad. Another time I had thoughts like "we're all going to die and go into the ground" and again the feelings was INTENSE. It's like being anxious before you have to speak in front of your peers at school for an exam but 1000 times worse. I mean, it wasn't exactly fear, because that makes you alert to the world around you. It wasn't exactly sadness but there was some of that in there too. I also had nausea and I felt my like I had a fever.
It still kind of sounds to me like this is coming from a fear of being abandoned that you suffered through as a kid, to me. Wanting to go home when you were away, wanting to be safe when you were home. It's not my place to decide though, I'm not a therapist.
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Re: Feeling sick

Postby Inferior_Force » Sat Jan 07, 2012 1:40 am

Your descriptions are really interesting. I remember having similar experiences when I was a kid. I was lying in my bed waiting to fall asleep, and I tried to grasp what "eternity" meant, like: "Everything will still be there when I am dead. And when I have been dead longer than I have been alive, the world will still be there. And even after mankind goes extinct, time will still go on." It was dizzying, but I don´t think I was frightened. There were other thoughts that were pretty frightening, though. It always terrified me when it was past my bedtime, but I felt like I would never fall asleep. I had no real concept of how long a night is, and for all I knew, in order for the night to pass, I had to fall asleep first. Waiting to fall asleep was frightening, it was like I was trying to watch myself losing consciousness.

This fear is interesting insofar as I´m still particularly susceptible to anxiety attacks at night. Sometimes I feel unable to go to sleep until dawn breaks. I guess constant, low-level anxiety after dark is part of the reason why rarely go to sleep before 2 a.m., no matter how early I have to get up. It´s like I´m waiting for some kind of danger to pass before I can relax and sleep. The Internet is a safety chord I don´t want to let go of, even if sitting in front of the computer for hours makes me dizzy, gives me a headache and my whole body aches because I sit there in an unhealthy position. I guess this underlying physical discomfort which I often don´t really perceive is enough to cause a nausea attack. Recently, I tried to just go to bed whenever my anxiety intensified to a nausea attack. It worked out fine, but it is still very hard to make myself do it.

Oh, another thing I just remembered: For many years I slept with a night light, and I always asked my mum to leave on the light in the hall, and not to go to bed until I was asleep. When my sister switched off the light, or when my mum went to bed before I was asleep, I was desperate and panicky.

Do you still have these experiences?
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Re: Feeling sick

Postby jasmin » Sat Jan 07, 2012 3:59 pm

No I don't get them anymore. I was scared of the dark when I was little too and I had bad nightmares and a lot of fear but it went away with time.
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Re: Feeling sick

Postby Inferior_Force » Mon Jan 23, 2012 12:56 pm

So once again my anxiety fooled me. I was feeling dead sick when I was on my way to my class; and so I just got off the train after two stations and went back home. Immediately when I boarded the train home there was a feeling of relief. So I wasn´t ill after all. So I failed. And guess what, I don´t give a damn. I´m sick of functioning more than of anything else. I´m so sick of pretending that there is reason for hope. I´m so sick of pretending that things will be alright. I´m so sick of pretending that I am on my way to accomplish something. Not pretending in order to fool others. But pretending in order to fool myself.

I´m not being negative. I´m being realistic. Sure, there is hope that I can get my anxiety under control. I know I´ve made quite some progress, and this setback - well, is not actually a setback. My anxiety and my nausea were my body´s and psyche´s way of telling me that my current situation and the way I´m abusing myself is not acceptable. The thing is: I see no hope that this situation and the way I´m treating myself will improve. Nor will the way others treat me.

What is my situation, then? Well, I´m trying and trying and trying to accomplish stuff. I´m re-working the essay I wrote in September so I can submit it to a journal. I have to write two more essays for college and prepare my master thesis. I have to work on a translation for my dad. I ought to look for a second side job. I ought to look for a flat of my own because my mum wants to sell our place. I ought to get some work experience so I don´t end up unemployed after college. I ought to have started the day before I was born. Oh, but of course I ought not be so perfectionist, too. I ought to take care of myself. I ought to take time to sort out my feelings so I don´t get sick again. Whatever I do, there is something else I ought to be doing right now. I can never get it right, it´s never enough. And if I rightly complain that I´m bombarded with a hail of double-binds? Then I ought to make up my mind what is more important to me. My life is my responsibility. It is pathetic to complain. It is pathetic to demand support from friends and family. It is pathetic to feel inadequate. It is pathetic to let others discourage you.

It is an incredible relief to just fail. It is such a relief to see that I cannot accomplish all the things I´m supposed to accomplish; that nobody could do it with the lack of emotional support I am receiving. My family constantly sends out mixed messages: My sister tells me that I absolutely need to start looking for a place of my own RIGHT NOW, admonishing me not to waste time because it is sooo hard to find a flat, after all the landlord needs to accept you - and at the same time she expects me to show initiative instead of hiding under my blanket. She does her best to discourage me, makes me feel like it could be difficult for me to be accepted by a landlord (well, what IS so wrong with me, then!?), and then she expects me to go out into the world radiating self-confidence?! It´s similar with my father: Whatever possible career path I mention he points out how everything is going downhill, how no job is safe - and at the same time I´m supposed to make a decision that´s safe and that makes me happy. He tells me there are hardly any dream jobs, if at all, and at the same time he tells me that I will never be happy if I don´t have a job I love because you spend the most part of your day at your job. So what shall I conclude? That I will never be happy, but that I should be successful anyway? My family demands a CRAZY amount of self-discipline and motivation from me. An inhuman amount, actually. Nobody can do it. I fail.

What makes me most angry and most hopeless about all this is that my failure isn´t accepted as a fact. When I planned to accomplish all the stuff on my to-do-list and then don´t do it - I have failed. When I decide that my anxiety should not stop me from going to my class and I run back home nonetheless - I fail. It is okay to fail. I can only do so much. But everybody around me tries to make it look like I didn´t fail. They make me feel like I simply didn´t WANT to accomplish the task at hand. In a soothing, re-assuring tone they will say something to the effect of: "Nooo, you´re not a failure. The task is not to hard for you. You simply have to sit down and really try." They believe they are re-assuring me! In fact, they are insinuating that I just couldn´t be arsed to really TRY!!! When I don´t accomplish something, I am just too phlegmatic. When I accomplish something, I could have accomplished even more. And that makes me feel like a much greater failure.

I have internalized this to an extent that I have no clue what my own wishes and priorities are. I know I ought to get out of the toxic environment that is my family, but by being so toxic they have taken away from me all the tools I´d need to break free. When I started writing this post I felt at least free. I was sure of myself. I knew I couldn´t do what my and everybody else´s perfectionism demanded from me. I knew that - on behalf of everybody else - I was exploiting myself. Now I think that if I missed class I should at least get stuff from my to-do list done. I can even HEAR my mother´s voice suggesting this! In that "nice", but slightly reproachful tone, as if it hadn´t been quite alright that I had "ditched"(!) class (once again, as if I had just been too lazy to go there), but that she was not going to say anything about it (her tone says everything) as long as I at least use the additional time to do the stuff I had planned to do today (and possibly even more). So - if I need a time-out, I ought to pay for that by working even MORE? How lunatic is that!? And yet this is precisely how I feel. Like I have to make up for the fact that I´ve had a crisis (oh, no, sorry, of course not. If I really had a CRISIS, it would be understood that I don´t have to work. But this is just me being too lazy to go to my class - if I am "honest", right?).

It´s weird how obvious it is to me right now that my anxiety is not the enemy. It is a normal reaction to a crazy-making situation. I also realize that part of the reason why I don´t want to see a doctor is that I don´t want help functioning better. I function way too well anyway - for others, not for myself.

Anyway, thanks for listening. I had to get this out of my system.
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Re: Feeling sick

Postby jasmin » Tue Jan 24, 2012 11:52 am

If you get anxiety attacks and need some encouragement and reassurance that you can't get from your family, then you could function better. You have to do something for yourself, to get yourself out of this situation at some point.
Yah, they sound very invalidating.
What kind of job would you like?
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Re: Feeling sick

Postby Inferior_Force » Fri Jan 27, 2012 2:25 am

The thing about functioning: If I try to become "functioning", it´s not because I feel deprived of options and activities I used to enjoy before my anxiety caused me to become more and more avoidant. I don´t want to function so I am in charge of my life. I´ve never been in charge of my life. I´ve always been emotionally dependent on someone else - and accordingly, I behave like a doormat. I adapt and even assimilate to others´ hobbies, attitudes and wishes before I even notice it. And when I feel like I´m treated unfairly, I feel unable to say anything. My experience is that when I say anything, there will be drama, I´ll feel like I overreacted, and eventually it´s ME who apologizes. So I suppress my anger and hurt. But of course I also have to hide that I suppress them. If the other person senses something is wrong with me, I´m being passive-aggressive and there will be an uncomfortable tension until I submit or apologize through some kind of appeasing action which will hopefully be accepted. So - where do all those feelings go? Into anxiety. And what if I get nausea/anxiety attacks? They upset the people around me. So in order not to be disapproved of, I need to suppress these attacks as well, or at least get them under control so far that they don´t interfere with anything others want. And so the only purpose of fighting anxiety seems to be that me being healthy is convenient for others. So in a way my attempts at battling anxiety are part of my submissive behavior - which caused my anxiety in the first place! So, oddly enough, this Monday failure felt like rebellion. Like self-care, in a way. "If I´m anxious, I´m anxious, period. First accept that, and accept that I might feel the need to act on my anxiety; then we can still try to get rid of it."

This, though, if nothing else, has made it clear to me that just getting CBT to deal with anxiety attacks will never do. Without the social/emotional context, it would only serve to turn me into a more convenient doormat. I also understand much better why I tend to rebel so much against advice, particularly by therapists, or against attempts at changing my behavior (like stopping me from self-harming). To me, this means: "Behave! Be good! Deal with your feelings in a way that doesn´t interfere with your ability to be helpful to others." Wow. I even understand in what way I was testing my last therapist when I insisted that he has no business disapproving of my cutting (I actually was hardly cutting anymore by that time, which makes it even more absurd). I wanted to know if he was one of those people who only want me to behave in a way that suits them, or if it is my feelings that matter to him. (He failed miserably. And I stayed nonetheless. That´s me.)

What kind of job - well, I have no idea. That´s part of the problem. I just don´t know what I want. Most of the time, I feel like I want nothing. I dread having to work all day, which makes me feel like I´m just lazy. Picking a career is also something I´m fairly anxious about. My mind is constantly occupied with various career choices. It is exhausting.
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Re: Feeling sick

Postby jasmin » Fri Jan 27, 2012 5:03 pm

Is all this new self realization? It sounds like you're onto something and you're probably right. But the point of getting rid of anxiety is so that you can function for yourself and have your own life, not so that you can please others. You could just choose a path and more or less ignore your family.
I've heard about people using self injury or even eating disorders to control their own lives when they have no other means. I guess this is your other kind of self injury?
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Re: Feeling sick

Postby marinated » Tue Mar 20, 2012 6:47 pm

I found this, it matches my symptoms alot, although I do not vomit nearly as frequently, although when i do vomit it is very intense and I do not feel any relief (less nauseas) after having vomited.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC518984/

Edit:
On the other hand
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclic_vomiting_syndrome
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Re: Feeling sick

Postby marinated » Wed Mar 21, 2012 1:36 am

Inferior_Force wrote:@marinated
Being superstitious of dates and places is something I know so well! I am very, very prone to magical thinking. Not just with regards to vomiting, but also break-ups, fights... I recently read somewhere that anxiety disorders often result in or develop towards OCD, maybe this is related.

Did you ever work with any special techniques in therapy to help deal with the after-effects of your trauma? I don´t know how extensively the two of you talked this through, but maybe talking alone cannot resolve the impact it has/had on you.

It´s a good thing you´re going out again. I managed to not have any chewing gum for about two weeks now, even though I frequently felt sick. The amazing result is that all of a sudden I often forget to take any gum with me when I leave the house, at least if I only leave for a short time. A while ago it was always the first thing on my mind when I was packing my bag. I do hope that I develop some confidence this way. When I feel sick now, I try this: I search for things I can say about myself, so I get in touch with my feelings and bodily sensations, like: "I´m freezing. No surprise, it´s quite cold at the moment. I´m actually shaking, which is why my body is cramping. This is very uncomfortable. I feel pressure on my stomach..." If the situation allows for it, I might even whisper it instead of just thinking it. I think I need to feel like I´m in control of something, but nausea is not a good choice (not that I had signed up for it...). Being able to reliably control my fear might make me feel a lot more secure. Right now my progress is still very unstable. I think I still (half-consciously) believe that if I manage to control the fear, I will never feel sick again. Never having to vomit again is still the goal my unconscious mind wants to achieve, and as long as this is the case, I am always at peril. One incident and the fear is out of control again. I don´t say this to be negative, it´s more like I´m preparing myself mentally for what is likely going to happen if I have to vomit. That way, maybe, I can avert a backlash.

Oh, another thing: I think I know the feeling of complete isolation or being locked in myself, not while throwing up (which thankfully hasn´t happened since that one incident that triggered the phobia again), but when feeling sick. It happens almost automatically, that´s why it is so important for me to get into touch with myself again. Getting in touch with my environment is almost impossible anyway. There was one time when I felt sick but I didn´t feel like I was locked in some other world, and I knew that if I had to throw up my SO would be there and take care of me. All of a sudden, feeling sick wasn´t so scary after all.


OCD sufferers tend to have alot of magic thinking and being very superstitious yea.

Hm, its mostly the therapist drawing graphs showing that it always gets better again, and in many ways that's true enough. I feel like though to me a therapist listens, i can cry to them, and they actually understand what I'm talking about whereas my close peers don't fully understand. To me that's a relief. It's a relief that someone knows how it is. I haven't tried chewing gum before, until recently going out was a big scare to me, I have routines and rituals (which is very OCD-like), although it's not OCD in the sense that I only do them when I'm panicking. I've never managed to get in touch with my inner self, I mean, I talk to my self inside my head but it doesn't help, i've found counting to help a tiny bit, but not any remarkably much. I think alot about throwing up, it's very intrusive, and I have I believe post traumatic stress disorder, I'll get flashbacks of previous vomit episodes and my entire body will just freeze before panicking completely. I don't feel sick to my stomach so much, I'm concentrated around throat area and gag reflex.

I can relate to the part of feeling in control. When I feel in control I don't feel sick at all either. I have had many set backs, they are hard at the time, but I know I have to keep strong, if I keep strong it won't be such a big setback, and I can usually move on pretty quickly.

I'm a bit confused though, are you scared of throwing up or just find it more uncomfortable due to it inherently being messy and perhaps embarrassing if infront of others?
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