After too long waiting, I finally got to talk to someone in mental health yesterday about the anxiety. The appointment was specifically to discuss medication, but we also talked about the anxiety itself.
Guess what? Apparently it's not uncommon for people to be out of it for the rest of the day after an appointment like that. Or that's what my mom said, after I spent the rest of the day being out of it. Even trying to hit the reset button on my day by taking a nap in the afternoon (which is funny since I told the mental health guy that I don't really take naps, which is usually true) didn't help.
On the up side I feel like I understand the anxiety a bit better, though I'm not sure how.
Another up side, I finally learned that ADHD medications can make things worse for people also suffering from anxiety. This actually explains a lot, and the more I think about it the more pissed I am. I've been on so many ADHD meds that I've lost track of them all, many of them didn't help much, and some of them hurt me. Generally if they were harmful by making me depressed or zombie-like I could fix that by just coming off of them. But when I'm stressed can I still get the chest pains that Strattera started years ago, which can still be scary despite the EKGs showing that my heart is fine.
I might have been spared a lot of pain if, while treating the ADHD, people had checked out whether I could also have an anxiety disorder.
Learning to deal with the anxiety is still an ongoing process. I'll probably continue to write about it simply to keep myself from trying to hide it again, since I've seen that hiding it can do more harm than good. And I had a reminder yesterday of how bad I am about hiding it (as well as how good I got at hiding it), when I mentioned to my family that I'd been having anxiety while taking the bus with my brother...and that surprised him. Yes, I actually successfully hid that I was having to tell myself to calm down from my brother when he was sitting right next to me.
So...it's an ongoing process.
3 comments:
Glad to hear you got in to see a health professional. Anxiety is no fun. Wishing you all the best, Sarita!
Could it be that you have internalized my coping strategies for navigating the Portland freeways despite my fear of heights and my daily trek past the wooden scorpion at work despite my fear of scorpions? I think I forgot to teach you that not everything must be hidden.
Debra -- It took a while since I had to make the appointment a ways out, but I'm also glad that I got to talk to someone.
Mom -- I didn't know you still had a problem with bridges. But if I'm going to point to something that made me think I had to keep things to myself, it's more likely being told that I complain too much.
Post a Comment