The vast majority of my stint as an anxiety sufferer has been spent in utter confusion about what the hell was wrong with me. It took me years of searching, reading, asking, and probing before I got a clue.
Going to my primary doctor wasn’t always the best information session because the doctor’s reaction was to give me a drug and call it a day.
The therapist I’ve seen never really saw me look or act nervous so they figured I was fine. Therapist: “So you don’t want to hurt yourself or others?” Me: No. Therapist: “So you get nervous, have panic attacks and every now and then feel/think you might die?”. Me: “Yea”. Therapist: “You look fine, try to learn how to relax”. Me: “o.k. thanks”.
So after a lot of that I went on my own little journey of anxiety enlightenment. What I found was a lot of information that was helpful sometimes and not so helpful during other times.
Despite this I have learned that knowing is basically a good thing. Knowing how to change a flat tire, learning how to write, learning anything useful is good. You see if fear were a person than confusion would be his best pal and when they get together they can create havoc in your life.
The point is understanding your condition is critical if you want to feel better. If you understand fear, confusion, anxiety and even the workings of your body this can shed light on something that you have been convinced would kill you someday, or at least make you nuts. By shining a light on it – it loses it’s ability to cripple you mentally.
What do you want to know about anxiety/ anxiety disorder(s)? What are you confused about? Ask.
If I don’t know I will find out. If I can’t find out I will involve others. If I can’t do that then we can work together. Don’t be that kid from 7th grade who didn’t understand and refused to raise their hand to get help. We both know that generally those kids didn’t fair as well as those eager to shoot their hands up.
By getting your question answered you will be helping someone else with the exact same question, or maybe providing a different perspective to someone with partial information.
We can’t all know everything, so getting a second opinion can only enhance our knowledge of things and ourselves. Knowing ‘what you have’ can be the start of something which may help you feel better. A start to dealing with anxiety just a bit more effectively.
Ask.
Note: Please note that I will share your question in follow up post but I will not share names or any other information that would identify anyone – because that would suck.
Very important points here. I agree that the one of the major things that has helped me has been my understanding of all this- without it, I would be far more confused/scared.
As someone who has spent about 3 years researching the crap out of this, I’ve come across a lot of info.
However one thing that is not often written about and that I currently suffer from is “treatment resistant anxiety”. If anyone can shed some light on this I’d be more than grateful.
I have heard that lack of sleep from Anxiety causes cancer. Is that true? It was on your site.
Can haveing anxiety and getting less sleep cause cancer. Your site said so
Hi Michael,
As far I know there is no connection between anxiety and cancer. If you saw this on my site please send me a link to that page because that is utterly false.
The question I asked about anxiety and cancer was what I saw on the sleep site of anxiet guru
I saw it Micheal. What I said was not sleeping enough, or sleeping too much, can lead to higher incidents of disease, cancer among them. But that does not mean that anxiety itself is the cause of cancer. Speak with your doctor for more details on how to achieve better sleep patterns and why it’s important.
Does lack of sleep do this by reducing your immune system. I assume the immune system is weaker which causes illness
Paul thanks for the replies. Will check about the sleeping. I don’t have sleep problems all the time but do have problems in spurts.
Can you have anxiety even though you don’t feel anxious?