Pretty much copied from my introduction thread.
I was seven years old when I started having trouble with compulsions, if this was OCD or just some developmental problem I do not know.
There were rituals I had to complete every night before going to be: lock and unlock the front door, oben and close a cupboard of drawers, touch a little figure at the base, stand at the window for a few seconds, and so on. Else something terrible would happen.
Also, I could not eat with my hands due to a twisted logic: soap is not healthy. You're not supposed to eat soap. And if you wash your hands with soap, a little bit stays on your hands in the folds and "finger prints". That means, if you wash your hands with soap, and then eat something, the soap gets onto the food and you therefore cannot eat it. The solution to the problem would simply be to stop using soap. However, if someone washes their hands with soap, and then turns off the faucet, a little bit of soap gets onto the faucet, so then when you wash your hands without soap, and turn the faucet on or off, you get that soap onto your hands anyways.
When I ate a sandwhich, I ate around my fingers, or tried not to use them at all, which was rather difficult. My constant unlocking and locking of doors annoyed my parents, for I could not go to sleep until after the rituals were completed uninterrupeted. That ment that if someone came in the door after I'd locked and unlocked it, I had to do it all over again.
I don't quite know how long I lived like that, but I eventually couldn't take it anymore and told my mother. This helped me greatly in overcoming the compulsions, although some occasional twinges remained.
I was often irrationally fearful, and when I was nine years old, the fear began to increase. Then came the Beslan school crisis. After reading about that, I became incredibally nervous in school, until one day, I couldn't go at all. I started having panic attack whenever I got near the school grounds. My mom took me to a psychologist. The first questions she asked were if I liked the teachers, had trouble in school, etc, but none of those things applied to me - I was simply afraid of terrorists storming the school, taking us all hostage and killing us. I was given homiopathic medicines, but none of them worked, and so I was perscribed prozac.
After a time, I was able to run up to the school and touch the door, and about three months after the anxieties began to get out of hand, I was able to attend school, albeit often panicing and suffering from general nervousness. My therapy continued as I was still experiencing anxieties, also involving airplane flights, which became a big problem with a planned trip to Hawaii.
I have flown on airplanes countless times, been on many trans-atlantic flight, and after 9/11, I continued to fly. But in early 2005, I could not get those memories out of my head, and was terribly afraid of a highjacking. In the end, I did not manage to board the flight, and my dad stayed home with me.
My therapist decided she could not take me any further, for she specialized with family problems, etc, and not with Generalized Anxiety Disorders, which are rare among children.
It was at this time that we decided to move back to Germany. Which ment a flight across the US and the Atlantic Ocean. I was very afraid, but no longer of a highjacking. I was simply afraid. That was an improvement, and with help of some strong medication, I managed the flight.
Back in Germany, I began to slowly wean off the prozac, afterall, I was quite well again at the time, and by December, I was experiencing panic attacks and anxieties again. I was afraid but did not know why. Once again, I could not go to school. I was afraid of driving in a car and couldn't even leave the town. We found a children's doctor in town who also worked with psychology, and I went to a therapist at the small clinic. She got me over the worst of it, but again, I was being treated by someone who knew only how to work with the "normal" childrens' problems, and so, more than a year later, I quit the therapy. I was taking prozac again and only had smaller fears left, like that of the mountains and claustrophobia.
We decided to try the University Clinic in downtown. This took some time. First I had to fill out a bunch of forms, take an IQ test, answer a horde of questions, before they finally decided upon a therapist for me. During that time I made quite some great progress by myself, I became more relaxed and socially compitent, even managing a flight to New York. My anxiety lessened, with the exception of a period of Somniphobia that lasted a few weeks. The therapy helped me with a flight to Fuerteventura, but not much more because by then, I knew most of those therapies by heart; what I wanted to know now was not how to deal with the disorder, but why I had it. Why did I have a Seratonin deficiency?
The local doctor still prescribed the Prozac, and in the end of 2008, he suggested I stop taking it, afterall it only had a placebo effect and Generalized Anxiety Disorders did not happen at my age. I did not like his reasoning, but I had made so much progress in the last few months, and so I did something incredibly stupid and took his advice.
My dosis until then had been 20mg. I went down to 15, then ten. Three weeks later, we were driving home from my uncle's 50th Birthday party. It was another half hour to home and I couldn't breath. I was inhaling and exhaling, but no air reached my lungs, not unless I managed to take a deep, yawning breath. I was terrified. I couldn't breath, I was sufficating, I would die. My mother and sister tried to calm me, and I held out until home. The fact that I was still alive told me that I had been breathing the whole time, that this was an irrational fear, that I had suffered a setback, but I was afraid nonetheless. That night, I took my 20mg of prozac. I slept badly.
The next day, all day, I felt like I was suffocating. I was terrified, constantly. The night was terrible. I could not sleep. Not being able to breath isn't something you can run away from, like airplanes or cars. I didn't eat much, swallowing was difficult. During the day, I stared at the TV, trying to get my mind away from my terror and the nights, they were nightmares. I was so terrified. Once, while in bed with my mother, who slept with me during this time, I grew very very scared. I wanted to call an ambulance because I was suffacting and knew at the same time that it was foolish, for I was not in danger. I started to hyperventilate badly and when my mom tried to hold me, thrashed around. The attack lasted only a minute or two, but the terror continued, day and night. I missed a school trip to Dachau, something I'd been looking forward to for over a year, and the whole time, I was so terrified. I feared for my life for nearly a full week.
We went to my doctor (normal doctor, not the idiot children's psychologist), who suggested a local psychiatrist. He put me back on the prozac, with a dosis of 40mg (20 mg, it turned out, had been borderline, as this was what was perscribed to me when I was ten years old). Also, I now had to take 0.5mg of Tafil every morning and evening, a very strong calming drug. It was with this that I managed to go back to school, although the drug made me very tired, I fell asleep in class several times. After one week my psychiatrist put me on a lighter medication, I became more scared again, albight not as badly as before, and began to fear the medication itself: I was afraid of side effects.
I continued to take it anyways, and near the end of February, a friend of my mother's suggested we try Kinesiology. I would've taken it for complete crap if it weren't for the fact that that friend was an intelligent, rational person, as was another friend who suggested the same thing.
It worked very well, though not overnight. The fear of suffocation we got under control, and various other fears too, over time, for a Generalized Anxiety Disorder likes to "jump" from subject to subject.
During summer vacation, we took a vacation in Washington State and Oregon. The flight from Frankfurt to Washington DC went rather well, with just a small panic attack during turbulances. When we arrived in DC, I was very tired and worn, having gotten little sleep on the flight, and still under the Tafil. We stayed in DC for four hours, most of which were spent at migration, before catching our connecting flight.
I was nervous, the airplane was small. I was afraid of a crash (lately that had been my fear rather than a highjacking). I sat down, tried not to think of it. I asked a passing stewardess how long the flight would be. The fact that it would be five hourse rather than the four I had reckoned with did not calm me. Then they prepared to close the doors.
I jumped to my feet and raced down the isle, mowing down a stewardess and two passengers who stood in my way, screaming hysterically the whole time.
I didn't take that flight, instead, we stayed in DC overnight and flew to Oregon the next morning. I think the problem was that I simply didn't have enough energy left to fight at that time.
The flight back home passed well, and I am much more relaxed. I can ride trains, I could be in a locked bathroom, I could live my life freely.
Then, almost exactly one year after my last setback, a classmate of mine accidently rammed a cucumber into my stomache (we were fencing with them). I had a panic attack. I thought I was dieing of inner injuries - the hypochondriac phase had begun. For almost a full week, I hardly ate or slept. I was even afraid of the Xanax that could have helped me so.
But I got better. I was put on the waiting list for the clinic, so I could have a stationary therapy. Eventually I wondered, did I really need this therapy? I was feeling so much better, afterall.
I needed the therapy. I need the therapy. A fear of a head injury formed. And then on Monday - yesterday - we decided to visit my grandparents in their village a two hour drive from me. I had some nervous moments, but all in all, I was alright. We had just started on the ride home, when a single glance out the window triggered it - fear rose up inside me. But it was different from all the fears before, because it was so extreme, so real, it felt like it would never end. It's the kind of fear you feel when you know you're about to die and you know there is nothing you can do. I asked my mom to stop the car - I knew a panic attack was brewing. I stood on the parking space and terror filled me, and I could not talk anymore, my words came out incoherent, and I wanted to yell, to scream, I wanted it to go away...
And I screamed. I screamed and screamed and screamed until I couldn't scream anymore. People came running by. All I could say was "make it stop, make it stop, make it stop.". Then I screamed again, then I cried for it to go away. Someone had called an ambulance. I managed to calm down some. I still couldn't take the Xanax, it made me so nervous.
It was very difficult for me to remain calm on the ride home, and I did not go to bed until around 4 am, and only slept for two or three hours.
The fear keeps choosing more and more difficult subjects. First, it was things I could run from. Then, things I couldn't run from, but where I could find someone to help me - if I were really hurt, a doctor could help me. But now it was a fear of a disaster befalling the entire Earth, and even more difficult to fight.
I took Xanax in the mornings and evenings for one week, then a lower dosage for another week. I slept a lot, and when I stopped taking it, my head was in a vice of fear, this morning I took one fourth mg this morning and I feel great, just tired.
The clinic called a few days ago. There's a spot opening next week. I really hope they can help me. This fear is very frustrting and I'm missing school and quite frankly after all these years I've had enough of it. I am kinda apprehensive about it, not being with my friends except during visiting times, and my family, and my parakeets.
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Topic: Personal Stories of Anxiety Disorder (Read 56670 times)
January 17, 2011, 01:15:57 AM
