Stress Center Peer Support

This weekend I was just thinking about my anxiety and how miserable it makes me. I have been dizzy to the point where i am afraid I will fall over, I have been terrified that something is wrong with my heart because I have had back pain ( I am 19 years old) and I just am afraid of passing out and dying! Well this morning at work I am minding my own and working and out of no where my boss looks at me and asks "Are you alright?" Thats it! I am panicking now cuz I am thinking that maybe I am not alright and he must have noticed something to ask that!! Please help me! I am scared and am tired of worrying like this!

I could have written this!! I know exactly how you feel as I have been going through the same thing. I'll be talking to my friends and if they look at me funny, I know, for sure, that they are noticing that something is wrong with my eyes. My biggest fears are the falling over, fainting, dying thing as well. I have the dizziness ALL the time and I hate it. I hope we can get through this!!

There is something you can do if you are willing to do it. Sit for twenty to 45 minutes a day and write out your fears and worries ON PAPER. Do not try to fix anything. Just write and write and write until the time is up. Go ahead and set your timer. When you start to worry and it's not time to do this exercise, yet, remind yourself that it is OK to worry but it will have to wait until (you name the time). Do this everyday for as long as it takes to calm you down.....and you will calm down. You are desensitizing. You will not create what you fear by doing this. You will get bored with it.

Another way is to write your worst case scenerio. Read it everyday for 45 minutes. You will know when you can stop this exercise because you will start to fall asleep during your reading.

You can also become the watcher of your thoughts. Just let them come and go. Stop talking back to them. Just watch them. It takes practice but you can overcome this.

You can also use phrases such as: Whatever! or So what! to what you hear in your head. Stop trying to make it all better. Feel the anxiety and use your breath work while you are doing these exercises.

Oh boy!.... It has been several years since I have been where you are now, but I could have written this at one time. I wish I had a nickel for every time someone has said to me, "Is there something wrong", or "Are you O.K.?" I would get VERY upset when that would happen, because I felt people could see that something was wrong with me, and I was pretending and hiding it from myself, and I thought from everyone else, too. But obviously, I wasn't hiding anything. In retrospect, I think that my depression and anxiety were evident on my face, and in my demeanor. And (some) people picked up on it, no matter how hard I tried to hide it. Anyway, I think that that is what is happening with you and your boss....maybe it was just a sad expression on your face. Now to the other part.....I am almost certain, just as everyone else has responded, that there is nothing wrong with you, aside from the A&D. I have been dizzy, lightheaded, and have had heart palpitations, and it is all due to the A&D. Now that I am well into recovering, I have had none of those symptoms in a long while. The mind and the body are intimately connected, and stress can masquerade in an amazing variety of symptoms. Stick with the program, do the work in each "lesson", and I can guarantee you that things will get better. It may be a bumpy road for a while, you may take a step backward now and then, but we all do. It is well worth the journey. As the program often stresses, it is only anxiety! If you don't continue to give it so much power, it will eventually start to loosen its hold on you. You are the one giving it power....you are the only one who can change that, with the help of this program, and all of us.

LEARN TO BE YOUR OWN SAFE PLACE!It will all be ok and you are fine.