Does anyone else experience this?
Hey,
So, I don't know where else to post this, I'm hoping someone out there at least hears me and maybe can help or share. But I'm wondering if anyone else experiences anything similar to this....
Doing work on behaviour, triggers, and responses to stress, I came across the stress curve (time along the horizontal, stress up the vertical). Basically you start level, go up to 1, then curve more up to 2 and then 3. The top of the curve is 4, and down the other side, below where you started is 5. So it represents stages of stress, until you reach 4 which is the crisis point where everything just explodes, and 5 is the depressive dip that seems to come after such an 'episode'. I can recognise and manage that curve fairly well, however....
Sometimes, I go from 0 to 4 in a split second. Literally. And predicting those occurrences is pretty much impossible, dealing with them frustratingly difficult. Does anyone else experience those spikes, and if you do, how do you cope with them?
Thanks,
TW
@TheWanderer27
I noticed this awhile back in myself. When it first started I want sure of the cause. It wasn't my normal climb into extreme anxiety...it was a sudden spike. I would be fine and then all of the sudden just wasn't. The more it happened the worse the anxiety was until one night I landed in the er. I was shaking so bad and stuttering which I had never done before...I was afraid it was some kind of seizures rather than anxiety. The doctor assured me it was psychological and associated with DID. Once he told me that it just completely stopped and I went home. I started paying attention to when it would happen... Where was I? Who was around? I realized that there was a certain person who was triggering this response. The reaction wouldn't always start when I saw them but it wasn't very long afterwards that it would happen. I stopped going around this person altogether and it stopped. I guess they were a trigger for me.
Your situation may be totally different, I just thought I would share my experience with it. It really scared me because it was not my normal reaction. I had never felt that extreme of anxiety before and I have anxiety problems daily.
@TeenyTinyAppy
Thanks for your reply. I guess journalling where I am, what's happening around me, and who's around me when the spikes happen might help to narrow down the issue. But for me the important thing is now, I'm not alone. Just you telling me you've experienced the same is a massive help to me, so thank you for sharing. 
@TheWanderer27 Hi there, Wanderer. I think the brain can be trained, and the more it's trained to use certain pathways, the easier and faster it will get at using those pathways. If you are stressed often, your body will get faster and faster at getting to the "collapse" point. One reason is because of "practise" and another reason is if it hasn't recovered from the last stress, then it is especially sensitive to the next one, just like being hurt physically. I think also perhaps certain triggers would be more associated to jumping higher faster than all triggers.
What I used to manage this is I have a 0-10 scale of what stress looks like on me. Start with 0 (no stress) and 10 (worst case scenario). What behaviours are there, how do you feel. So for an example a ten for me is spiralling depression, not eating, in bed all day, sometimes numb and apathetic. Then you fill in 5. What does half way look like? For me I'm starting to show up late to things, leaving the house gets harder, hygiene starting to take a dip, doing JUST ENOUGH of everything to get by, sad but maybe haven't admitted it yet, starting to feel overwhelmed etc. Then what's 8? What's 3? And then fill out the rest.
Often you don't REALLY go from 1-4 in a split second. Often there are warning signs or you were already stressed and it got worse. Course this could just not be resonating with you at all, too and that's ok. What are your thoughts on this?
I experience this too occasionally