Vent

Hi there. Just need to vent. Having another bout of bad anxiety. It has intermittently gotten worse over the past few months so I’m now at the point of seeking help. I’ve had symptoms of shortness of breath, nausea, dizziness, heart racing, thoughts racing, chest tightness, difficulty sleeping, difficulty concentrating that affect my activities of daily living and it’s really been sucking the life out of me. It feels like I’m merely surviving each day rather than living each day and I often feel like I can hardly ever just be and exist in the moment. I’ve been living in so much fear and worry and feel like I can’t seem to stop. I feel like I’m losing control of myself. It makes me feel hopeless and less excited about life and rising each morning. Some days I don’t want to live my life. Not in a sense that I want to nor intend to end or hurt myself, just that I don’t want to keep living this way/know it’s not sustainable and of course would rather live without this level of anxiety so I can actually live my life. I’ve had panic attacks while driving. I’ve had episodes of feeling like I’m about to pass out during meetings. I’ve had nights where I swear I didn’t sleep at all. I’ve had times where I feel like I’ll stop breathing if I’m not focused on breathing.

And all this doesn’t seem to have a good reason behind it in terms of why it starts. I’m just going about my every day life doing something that is routine and then bam it strikes, even if I’m in a seemingly relaxed, comfortable, or familiar environment. I like to think I’m a fairly literal, logical person and it drives me nuts that this keeps pestering no matter how much I try to tell myself that it’s in my head, that this will pass, that worrying will get me nowhere. No matter how much I try to calm and ease myself such as singing, listening to music, deep breathing, repeating mantras, affirmations, or thinking about something else that is positive, I just can’t shake it off of me. All these techniques that used to work are now not working near as well as they used to. Why won’t this go away? Why is it so persistent? It’s a nuisance and frustrating, like why are you here? What provoked you?

I don’t know why this is happening now and where all this is coming from. All I know is I just want it to end and be gone so I can go on with my life in peace. Or is that too much to ask? I know everyone lives with some amount of anxiety in their life but this is just at a level I’ve never felt before and it’s honestly getting irritating. Planning to start therapy and looking at low cost virtual/messaging/chat therapy options right now. Just frustrated right now that I can’t fully understand this and wanting it to go away. End of vent. Thanks for listening. Feels good to get some of this out of me and blow off some steam.