Stress Center Peer Support

Sorry guys if this post gets long, I'll try to keep it simple. I am in week 3 of the program. I think it is too soon to tell how it's going to work out for me since up till this point it's been pretty general knowelge about anxiety and panic. General to me anyway since I've had this for about 20 years. Anyway, I was doing pretty good for about 2 weeks and then all the the sudden in the past couple of days I took a turn for the worse. Last night I was feeling kind of anxious and stressed and I was really behind on some things at home due to the fact that I had a ton of extra work responsibilities last week. So instead if going over to my sisters to visit with everyone, I chose to stay home. Well that set off a chain reaction and my mom and my sister got upset with me saying I'm trying to distance myself from them. Which isn't true at all. I was stressed and anxious, and yes I do feel uncomfortable around them at times because I feel like they're constantly monitoring my state of anxiety, but I'm definately not trying to distance myself from them! So having them get so upset with me instantly increased my anxiety ten fold I had panic attacks obsessive worrying and didn't sleep last night. Then I made my husband go in to work for me this morning which I have NEVER done so now I'm also beating myself up with guilt about that. Somebody please give me some advice! Thank you.

I've found that when you deal with your emotions differently than someone, they often times don't understand. I had the same thing happen with my mom. She felt like I was "pushing her out of my life," even though I just felt like I wanted to be by myself sometimes. I deal with difficult times alone and she deals with them by talking about it with other people. I would recommend telling them exactly what's on your mind and that all you really need is their support no matter what your coping mechanisms are.

Hang in there. Every day can't be fabulous.

I agree missgsr. While I like to socialize most of the time; when it comes to my anxiety, I'm pretty private and I like to deal with it on my own. It just made me feel like crap because I felt like I was being honest with myself and doing something I needed to do and it just completely blew up in my face.