Lived Experience Forum

[emu12345]

Hello everyone, I am needing help or some helpful strategies to deal with severe anxiety disorder. I am 22 years old and I have PTSD, Server anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder. I am very highly medicated. The thing that I struggle to deal with the most is the feeling that nothing is real and I'm not real which sends me into a panic episode. I have a partner that lives a few hours away from me and when I'm not with him I self destruct and go back into bad eating habits or not eating at all and sleep all day and will be up all night, and stay in bed all day, I find it difficult to drive my car anywhere because of the dissociation and panic and 9 times out of 10 I do not drive when I'm home because of this feeling. i depend on him a lot and I need some helpful tips on how to be self independent. I have a psychiatrist, GP and I am seeing a new psychologist in June. When I tell people about my dissociation they do not understand and tell me to push through it when it is easier said then done, there are no triggers to my dislocation or panic I am feeling it 24/7, and the feelings I am having are so draining and when I do panic I breathe through it but when I cannot control it, it feels like I'm dying. I also would like to know if it is normal to have shaky hands because of medication, and I tend to forget a lot of things.

Thank-you to whom reads this

[Academica]

Hi there @emu12345 ,

We wanted to take this opportunity to welcome you to the forums.

Good on you for reaching out and talking about your experiences with dissociation and coping with your mental health. We hope that you find the support and connection you deserve here in the forums. This can be a great place to share stories and ideas, as well as to connect with other members to create a community.

Feel free to Introduce yourself here if you haven’t already!

We look forward to seeing you around on the forums!

[DogMan79]

Fasting practices including refraining from food and sleep are deliberately employed in Shamanistic cultures to induce dissociative states as a spiritual practice

So things like the relationship with food that you mention will contribute negatively

[NatureLover]

Hi and welcome, @emu12345 , it's good to have you here 🙂

I'm sorry for how you feel - it sounds like a nightmare 😣

I hope your new psychologist can help in June. 

I do have shaky hands because of one of my psych meds.

You can type anything into the Search bar above to find threads on that topic. Also, a handy forum tip to tag someone is to type @ and then click on their name in the drop-down box - that way they'll get a notification that you've replied to them.

[bliffitygibbet]

Hi Jasmine. This sounds like an extremely distressing way to live. It's good that you have some supports in place, but that can only go so far when you're experiencing such frequent dissociation and other effects.

Perhaps you need to speak to your medical care team about your medications, if you haven't already let them know how you're feeling. They can be tricky to balance and it's not easy to find the right mix and dose. It can also take a while to experience any benefits from your medication. If your meds might be causing some of what you're experiencing, you might need adjustments or to try something new.

Combining non-medication treatments with meds is generally good as well. There should be other services in your community that can help you work through your trauma, and feel more connected. 

I hope being here with people who understand helps. I live with PTSD myself, and it feels like living a nightmare sometimes. It's a comfort to know I'm not alone - I hope you can feel that comfort from others here, too.

[Asgard]

Hi @emu12345 

Welcome to the forums where you will meet people who are going through similar experiences as yourself and the ways they utlise to combst it.  Just wondering if you use any grounding techniques that will make you more aware of reality, like waliking around barefoot, feeling things through your toes or even sucking an ice cube, the coolness, the coareness and the taste.  Something that I do is writing, it frees my mind, I get to write stuff that I did today, ups and downs and inbetween, sometimes I have a good old laugh at what I'v written down, things I thought important which sooo weren't.  All the best .......Asgard

[Glisten]

@emu12345  Welcome to the forum 👋🏼 I’m very grateful that you shared your truth. Some of us struggle to express and explain what we are experiencing.

You are articulate. Keep talking it’s important.

G

[emu12345]

To everyone that has taken time to read, support and reply to my first post I appreciate you all from the bottom of my heart.

I have read each reply and thought I would explain my situation a little more, I can't really go into depth with it because my trauma stems from when I was a child right up until adulthood and it would take me hours and hours to type.

I honestly don't know where to start, but I have educated myself over the few years about mental health which unfortunately a lot of people don't do. When I got diagnosed with severe anxiety disorder it honestly shattered my heart because I have to live with this for the rest of my life. I always tell myself and people around me that everything happens for a reason and sometimes the reason is the most horrible reason, but it still happens and there is nothing that you can do to change that. I have been researching more and more about dissociation and derealisation and seem to not get far, I feel this all day everyday, its draining, embarrassing and just life sucking. If anyone else feels like this please let me know, I would like to see how people deal when feeling this way, and how it affects you. When I tell people what it feels like is, It's like one side of my brain knows what I'm doing, where I am, and that I am alive and okay. And the other side of my brain is scared, doesn't know where I am, doesn't know what I'm doing, feeling like I'm not real, that nothing is real and to get back home because I start to hyperventilate. 

I can say though that I haven't gone back to step one, when I was first going through this I could not calm myself down and it got to the point where the ambulance were called twice in one week. That was around 3/4 years ago now. I know my breathing tactics and grounding, and while I'm out if I get that anxious I know I need to stay there and breathe through it so I don't get scared to go back to that place in the future. A big thing as well that I struggle with even when with friends, partner or my family members is places like the supermarket, bunnings, Kmart or big places because I feel like I'm stuck and I cannot move and go into that panic, I'm just wondering if anyone has any answers to why I feel like that. I have also tried to get as much medical help as I can and I am finally getting people to listen to me and my trauma and my story after a lifetime of being pushed to the side. I am highly medicated and have been since I was a teenager, I have been on all sorts of medications. These medications that I'm on now seem to work but I do shake a lot in my hands and legs when I lay down and the side affects of them all cause drowsiness.

If anyone has anymore questions feel free to ask

Thankyou again for anyone whom reads this 

Dont forget that you are loved ❤️

[Just]

Hi, I have CPTSD, I will try to help. Please take anything that sounds right for you and try to ignore anything that doesn't seem to fit with your experience s. I have big memory gaps. I have just learnt to go with the flow now. I sometimes think of the ocean and a slow wave picking me up and letting me roll over the top calming me down. Can U think of something similar?

[Just]

See I forgot already I'm suppose to @ then your name to loop you in. Sorry.I Will try again