Overwhelming day to day anxiety, help.

[ss1500]

Hi,

First i'd just like to say that English is not my first language so I'm sorry for any grammar-/spelling mistakes.

I am a 23 year old male and just started seeing a therapist.

I need to post this to get some perspective and to clear my head. What I am typing may also be slightly exaggerated because I am feeling very anxious at the moment. If anyone has any thoughs, critique, guidance or advice about what I am going to write, it would help me very much.

Through my life I have nearly generally been an anxious person. I have always felt different from the people around me, not necessarily in a bad way at all times. I have had times in my life when I felt inferior to others, and other times when I was the coolest person alive. This self image has gradually turned to the worse over the years, and now I sit here trapped in my own thoughts destroying my everyday life by being anxious about my past, present and future. It has crossed my mind that I might have some sort of personality disorder, but I think it all comes down to anxiety. I know that I have a great life. I am attractive, have a beautiful girlfriend, have a part time job, studies, you name it. But still, there is something in the back of my mind always creeping around trying to push its way through. My inner fears and thoughts become so out of control, and on a weekly basis they push through causing me to react to the world around me in a very negative way. This is beginning to destroy my life and I am terrified that it will eventually ruin everything I have. This fear of losing what I have fuels the anxiety and it becomes a vicious circle that never ends.

This is a typical example of how my anxiety on a day to day basis starts:

My day can start off fine. I get up, say goodbye to my girlfriend and eat breakfast. I might go to the gym, watch some TV or play video games before I work in the afternoon. Sometimes during this time my mind crosses a thought, and I start obsessing over it. This could be something as simple as my girlfriend not answering her phone for a few hours, or realizing ive lost a pound when im trying to gain weight. So i start thinking, why is she not responding? Am I not fun to talk to? Is she upset with me? These thoughts evolve into something like.. does she not love me? Does she think im needy? Sometimes I act on these thoughts, sometimes I dont. I sit and think about these things for minutes to hours and I might send her a text implying that I demand a response. When I get the response, I often calm down and my anxiety fades. If I am not happy with the response, the anxiety keeps building until it ends in an arguement when she gets home. She has told me that I am emotionally needy because I expect her to react in certain ways to situations in our life, and when she doesn't, I become anxious which I show by getting grumpy, upset or angry.

She knows I am seeing a therapist and is accepting but confused about what I am going through. We are actually moving in together in 2 weeks, and I know 100% that she loves me and is willing to help me through this. Still, I get these thoughts.

These thought processes can go for anything in my life. Are my studies not right? Is my job not right? Where am I going with my life? Anxiety builds until i cant keep it in. Once I do, I might feel fine for a few days, and the cycle beings again. These cycles started off years ago, but they were rare and on a month to month basis. It is now out of control even though my life never has been better.

I have sort of figured out it all comes down to my self esteem. I am terrified of failing, being alone or losing what I have because I dont think I could get through life on my own. I am scared of losing my girlfriend because my self esteem isnt sufficient enough to build myself up. I end up saying and doing unrational things in desperation thinking it will be a temporary fix to whatever problem I feel is there. But deep inside I know that im tearing down my future possibilites piece by piece if I continue. I am scared it is too late.

There are days like today where I want to give up, not only to shield myself by to shield the people around me.

I am not seeing my therapist until 3 weeks, so I needed to get this out in the open to release some stress. Please share your thoughts.

[animal lover]

hi ss1500 i am very much like you, reading your post reminds me of how i acted in past relationships, i had a very bad childhood i have anxiety depression issues but i think knowing you are thinking these things for no good reason shows you have insight to your problem, and with help from a therapist and buiding up your self worth and learning we cant control other peoples lives, can take so much stress of of us.Your past relationship has left you with issues but im sure you and i can be the person we want to be we just have to reprogram ourselfs and i know it can be done,try not to be so rough on yourself and let me know,how your therapist meeting goes.

[abeja_reina_1989]

This sounds like me 100%. I can drive myself completely INSANE with all my negative thoughts. Here's something to try: when you catch yourself thinking a negative thought about yourself; stop for a moment and think something positive about yourself. In time, you are going to feel a lot better about yourself and calmer.

[anxiousshawn]

Your story sounds very familiar to my own. Sadly I fear that mine has evolved to a point where the anxiety I feel are now producing physical (psychosomatic?) symptoms. Today I feel numb. Not entirely numb; I can feel if I'm stuck with a pin or if I splash water on me, but the sensation feels dulled. It's a terrible feeling.

Like you, I start to obsess about certain things: like if I don't receive a phone call back that I'm expecting, or an email or a text message. I start getting down on myself, feeling like I'm some kind of loser than nobody wants to associate with. I've spent a good part of my life alone; when I was young, it was not uncomon for me to spend entire days alone by myself in my room doing things that I enjoyed (drawing, building models, working on the computer, etc). I had friends, but I mostly saw them at school and rarely invited anyone over. I never attended house parties because they didn't appeal to me, and was often content to sit at home by myself playing video games. These days I realize I spend almost all my time alone. I work for myself from home, so it's rare that I spend more than 2hrs a day outside of my house, and probably only 4hrs of actual interaction with another person (my wife), besides that, I'm pretty isolated, and it sucks because it wears on you after a while to the point where you start to have those strange panicky thoughts about unreturned phone calls or what someone else thinks of you.

I too am terrified of failure, but I've had plenty of it in recent years, which hasn't helped my confidence at all, and has made my anxiety much worse over time.

Luckily at least we can get some kind of interaction with other people, especially those who knows what it's like to be in our shoes, on this board. :)