I hate my anxiety attacks - 16 to 26 and it's hardly let up

I can just barely contain it on a medium dose of Klonopin. I’ve tried everything. Something else that helps me is Kratom from a specific vendor called Gold Maeng Da.

Since age 16 I’ve shaken and sweat under my armpits and had nervous expressions almost constantly. The Klonopin reduces the shaking to almost null and slows the sweating, and occasionally I can be somewhat normal. If I socialize a TON like every single day meeting new people, I’ll have periods of time where I’ll calm down. I feel most confident after I walk up to and approach attractive women and flirt because that is my biggest fear and I know most people won’t do it out of fear, so it makes me feel accomplished I can do something like have a conversation with a random pretty girl I meet on the street and it’s something not everyone can do. It quickly fades though and I almost never actually get dates because I’m so nervous and a lot of the times I bail partway through the conversation.

I have a sleeping problem, I have moderate sleep apnea. This is because of the size of my tongue and uvula in comparison to my neck size causing me to suffocate. Even the machine doesn’t work that well. I need surgery for it and I’m trying to get it as soon as possible before my insurance ends with my current job next year and I lose benefits.

My new job is a lot harder, I’m doing call center support at a fortune 500 company. It’s a lot different from before when I was shipping out packages. I’m putting time in outside of work to study though.

I just want to be happy. I feel ashamed that I can’t confidently talk to a girl. I just want to fall in love and find inner peace and love myself. I want to go away to a meditation retreat with Thicht Nhat Han https://plumvillage.org/ but you’re not allowed to attend if you have debt. I have about 70 grand in college debt. I wanted to go somewhere where I could meditate for 8 hours a day and work just enough to have food to eat, a place to sleep, and a place to bathe.

I’ve done a lot of research and I’m pretty set that the only thing that’s going to cure me is to study at least half as many hours as the average monk. They’ve done brain scans of monks that meditate over 10k hours and they’re able to shut off their fight or flight responses and trigger a release of endorphins in their minds. If I meditated 8 hours a day that would give me 3000 hours in a year and would probably make me a completely differnet person. But at this point, it just feels so soul-crushing to see the way women look at me.

I can’t even flirt with them anymore, I’m back to a bad place in my anxiety. I see them make eye contact with the guys around me and avoid eye contact with me when making small talk even at work because I have a scared puppy look on my face and no girl thinks being a scared coward is sexy. I know I’m fairly smart, I know I’m good looking. I know what my weaknesses are. I know what I want out of life. But I feel so defeated by this anxiety. Even if I worked at and saved up at this job for a year and penny pinched i’d end up with like half of my college debt. I don’t want to not have sex until I’m 30 years old or continue to suffer for many years. I want it to be over. Please help. I’ve tried therapy, I’ve tried dozens of medications.

Therapists usually suck, I just want a kind female that can be nice to me that’s slightly pretty to make me feel comfortable and accepted that will let me vent and occasionally give other perspectives, I’ve tried going through the “work” of therapy for many years and it only makes things worse. The one time I had an attractive therapist that was asian and very kind I felt calm. Weird note about me, I don’t know why but with some asian girls I feel this kind of calmness in my heart when talking to them and sometimes my heart flutters. I don’t know why, it’s just wired in me.

TL;DR I’m overwhelmed. I should be happy, I have a lot most people don’t have. Tried years of meds and therapy. Anxiety is uncontrollable. I want to find a way to live and meditate for a full year 8 hours a day and work minimally, even if it would mean risking going to another country and living with an expired passport if it was somewhere poor no one might check me like India.

4 Likes

That was quite the read. I wonder if the perception you think others have of you is either a delusion or a self-fulfilling prophecy type of thing. You sound like a well put together person and an asset to the lives of some. Anxiety is a real thing (even if it’s not real, ya know?) and you can’t tell someone to “just get over,” that. Sounds like you’ve got a clear occupational passion, some sexual frustration and some anxiety all mixed together.