Hello, I’m 27 years old and for about a year and a half now my life has drastically changed for the worst. I have what I believe to be a general/specific anxiety disorder. My anxiety is solely fueled by fear of dying of a heart attack and once I get that feeling, my entire day can be ruined. This all started after work one day while I was driving home. I felt some weird tension in my left arm and started to panic which led to the ER and they said i was fine just a panic attack.
Any flutter in the chest, tension in the arm, or thought about my heart will instantly put me into panic mode. I can’t go to family or friend events without having a panic attack or making up excuses to leave early. I’ve already left work once after crying in the bathroom for it to just go away. A doctor prescribed me klonopin and anti-depressants but I’ve refused to take the anti-depressants and only take the klonopin if it gets uncontrollably bad.
I don’t want to ramble but I guess what I’m getting at is will this go away with proper treatment that doesn’t involve drugs? This is all new to me and I’ve been generally mentally healthy my whole life until now. I have a new outlook on others with mental illness which I didn’t have before. I am not the same person I was a year and a half ago.
Wow, sounds like you’re going through some serious hardship right now. I can only imagine the fear and anxiety that must cause you. And I’m so sorry.
No, medication doesn’t have to be the only resolve. Sometimes it can help, but it’s not the only way to handle things.
For you, it seems like that maybe a therapist would really be beneficial. To help you work through these fears you are struggling with. They can help you learn how to process them and work yourself through them when they hit you the hardest. And help you really get down to bottom of where these feelings are coming from.
HeartSupport offers a free trial for BetterHelp that is for 7 days. It’s an online counseling where you can talk to a therapist periodically and even schedule to live chat with them via texting, audio or video call. Maybe this could be helpful to you? If you go into HeartSupports twitch page at twitch.tv/heartsupport , you will find a referral link to BetterHelp there. Just click on that and follow the instructions.
I truly hope that you can find something that will help you work through this. I can only imagine how hard it must be to live in that fear.
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