Hands up if you have serious anxiety/depression/panic disorders in life. [View All]

[Locut0s]

Sorry for the long post. I've posted this in anxiety/depression forums and that's really where it belongs but I was also interested to see how many DUers have had anxiety/depression problems in their lives. If you don't feel like it don't feel like you have to read the rest, just post about your own problems.

I've been battling anxiety and depression for at least 10 of my 22 years and maybe more. For me the focal point has always been a mixture of social phobia and a diffuse anxiety related to school. I've always had trouble getting myself to go to school, when I was young I simply complained a lot about hating school but in hindsight that was most likely also anxiety. It's interesting that I have so much problem with school as I'm actually a very good student when things do not overwhelm me. A large part of the problem probably stems from the fact that I'm a perfectionist. If you looked at my grades in school during the early years you would have seen a strange pattern, lot's of A's and A+'s intermixed with lots of 0's where I simply gave up on some assignment and didn't hand it in. In grade 10 my problem came to a head and I dropped out of high school. A year latter I was back at a different school and what followed was probably 2 of the best years I've had. For the most part I was happy, had friends and didn't worry overly much. The result was that I graduated High School with very good marks and managed to get into a good university. I hope it doesn't sound like I'm trying to brag here, I'm not I'm just trying to set the stage.

From there everything went downhill. Since then I've managed to drop out of university a total of 4 times, thankfully one year I was able to get erased from my record, but my GPA has been shot to hell anyways. This year things didn't look to bad, I'd managed to finish one semester and am just at the tail end of another semester, then a week ago disaster struck. Out of the blue I started getting really bad Panic attacks. Now I've known diffuse anxiety and depression for most of my life but have never suffered panic attacks until a week ago. Since then I've had one or two almost every day. It got so bad that I went to the emergency room twice but thankfully managed to calm myself down enough that I didn't actually ever need their services. I've been feeling like I'm having a heart attack for the past week and in fact went to the local clinic several times to rule out anything physical. All the blood work and the EKG I had done came back negative and the doctors say my heart sounds perfectly normal and I have normal blood pressure. I was not, and am still not completely convinced, that there is not something physically wrong with me but I know for sure that I am also suffering from serious panic attacks no mater what, if anything, is bringing them on. Currently I'm on a beta blocker for the heart palpitations, feels like my heart is going to stop at any minute. Today I went to the doctor and he prescribed Paxil and some Adivan for the immediate symptoms of panic. I've taken Paxil before with some positive effect. I just hope to God that I can manage with this through the next few week, the final exams, and not waste yet ANOTHER year. If that happens I really don't know what the hell I'd do.

After reading posts on other forums I'm starting to wonder if I am suffering from PVC (premature ventricular contraction) as one of the things that often start one of these panic attacks is the feeling that my heart has stopped and I can't get any air. Then I suddenly need to gasp for breath for a second, after that I'm a mess for the next 1-2 hours. The 2 doctors I went to listened to my heart and as I said also gave me an EKG all of which were normal. If I had something seriously wrong you would think that it would have shown up. But if it was PVC it would only show up now and again. Anyways I'm hopping these are panic attacks as that I can at least learn to handle. I'm going to start the Paxil tomorrow and will take an adivan tonight to get to sleep.