Serious anxiety issues that are effecting my everyday life and mostly my social life.?

Question

I'm 21 and the anxiety issues started from when i was a little kid. I have severe anxiety under many situations for no reason. the smallest things will create anxiety in my life. any type of social event or sometimes even walking into work can trigger mild to severe heart pounding panic attacks. I dont understand this. I can not fall asleep until the day breaks sometimes because my mind is running off about my problems. i have to limit my daily activities to prevent anxiety attacks from even occuring. i seen a phychiatrist and he prescribed me lexapro, i gave it a chance for a few months and the side effects made me stop taking it and it did not help in the slightest with the panic attacks. what can ease my anxiety so i can improve my quality of life.

Answer 1

Well the frist answer made a good point towards helping to treat some of you anxiety by allowing you to get more intouch with your abilities. Understand physically what you can do by jogging, weightligting, or a sport is a good way towards developing yourself a perception that well help with day-2-day anxiety, but it won't cure it. Thats your job buddy, and its unbelieveable hard in our society, because the classic treatment is to numb you out, and comfrom you, which makes the problem even harder, for one you don't feel it like other people, and the out right comfromity is actually your biggest problem, because comfroming to a society with as many social problems as ares is paramount to joining the cursades in hopes it well get you closer to god, or in others words, a very bad path to fellow. You really want to get past you social anxieties, you need to undersand the social struture in such away that allows you to overcome its shortcommings. Is not easy becasue its going to envolve you getting MENTAIL confident so that you can also handle you anxieties on that plane. Understand that unless you look outside the box of our social structure then your going to be DEPRESSED, theres nothing right with the way the culture we deal with is set up. I could go on and on about why, but it has nothing to do with conspiracies and everything to do with seeing how following the purpose of our society is going to leave you insecure, alone, and purposless. Until you wrap your head around the reason why, I can see how the whole thing would drive me crazy, if I was able to understand the WHY its that way. Realize that at some point you need to have a perception that allows you to "let go" of what doesn't matter, and "hold on" to what does, and I gaurette you that thas worth holding doesn't leave you with panic attacks or depression, just an understanding, a feeling, that you not powerless, nor purposeless. This has nothing to do with any one ideology or any one path, just understanding how they all go together and that EVERYONE is valued, important and powerful with in this reality. Anything less then seeing it that way, is depression, and mind-brecking. Lets just say that our society made us look away from the very thing that can save us, namly our emotions. Theres a book out there called "emotional intellegence" that takes a different look at things which is pretty mind opening, short of that is good old carl jungs "man and his symbols" which also does a good job of opening that mind, without be too preaching. Also stay away from posinous thinking, just as I'm ugly, stupid, lazy, good for nothing, what you say to yourself goes along way towards enfluencing the way you feel.

Answer 2

Howdy! Sorry about the shopping feelings. I have the same feelings because I am 6 feet tall, large and have hardly any hair because of chemo. So we are opposites. Do you feel better taking a friend? Ask the friend to see if people are looking at you. I've noticed that people sometimes know someone is looking at them, so they look back and it seems as if they have been looking all along. My tricks: I usually go to the same section of this one store. There is a door right to that section. The saleswomen are friendly and always say hello. I also have a coffee house where people are used to me. This is not much progress, I know but I don't really like to go anywhere anymore. Driving is tiring, so is walking and standing. Eventually I'll just stay in the house and do things on the internet. Seriously, there's drugs for anxiety which combined with therapy can help some people figure out what's going on and learn to overcome step by step. The problem is that if you don't work on it, it may get worse. You may end up housebound. Good luck!

Answer 3

My answer is kind of silly, to your very serious issue, and I feel your pain. But my question is have you ever seen the movie "what about bob" with Bill Murray. In this movie that almost everyone loves, Bill Murray struggles with this same issue, and learns to take baby steps. (Well I wont' spoil it)....

If the movie doesn't help, meditation has proven itself time and time again, try thinking of a word that calms you down... like even the word 'calm' for instance, focus on the word, if other thoughts come through your head, come back to the word.

If that doesn't help, or it does and additional piece of advice might help more. Try keeping an eye on your breathing(mentally), breath in through your nose, breath out though your mouth. And every breath you exhale, you say to yourself the number 'one'...
Breath-in through nose, breath out through mouth, while slowly saying '1' as you’re breathing out.

Also, taking up jogging helps clear the head, maybe reflect on life, or just listen to a radio station. (smooth and soothing music, highly recommended to calm you and lower your blood pressure)

Good luck, hope I've helped.

Answer 4

One of the best ways to cure this is to stop living only for your own happiness. Happiness often comes to others that do charity, do nice things for people, do service projects, etc. When you try and give others a little happiness and make their lives easier it often will make you happy as well, it will also help with confidence as well! Of course it is okay to do some things for yourself to make your life happier. One of the best things to do is actually search for happy news, happy pictures, look up fun activities you can do alone or with friends. Quit over thinking about negative things and exercise patience. A lot of the time when people are depressed it is because they are either trying to solve all their problems at once when they can't over thinking about them, focusing on negative things only or most of the time or all of these things at once.

Always remember that you are not alone, other people feel exactly like you do and a lot of the people that have thought this way in the past have found ways to get out of it. Even if you are not feeling good thought is important, good thoughts bring good things in life, everything is moved by thought in the end. Remember that it is okay to make mistakes and be different and express yourself because all of us feel the way you are feeling sometimes, it is normal and anyone that treats you bad for being human is stupid. Face your fears it feels nice, believe in yourself because you are worth it.

Another thing is always be grateful for what you have, wanting more than is necessary can bring a lot of misery, learn to work with what you have and grow off of that. You are still pretty young and have a lot to learn about life, don't try to fix all your problems at once, take them one at a time. Find at least one person you can confide in.

Listen to uplifting music, different kinds of music will have different kinds of effects on your mood. If you want to be positive everything about your life has to lean in that direction. I am talking about positive music, wall decorations, friends, etc. Every bit counts.