Hi,
I'm 20 and I live in the UK. I'm a university student in Wales, studying English Literrature and Creative Writing. I'm here because I was diagnosed with Panic Disorder a week ago. I also have chronic psychotic depression which has been relatively stable for the past year.
I've had panic attacks since I was 7 and I was diagnosed with depression when I was 14. I was treated with medication and nearly 2 years of CBT. When I was 18 I had another bad episode of depression and had counseling for over a year. MY GP has just refered me for more counseling, to see if I can get my anxiety back under control without meds before I go back to uni in 8 weeks. This is the first time I have experinced anxiety with depression with it. I thought I had it under control until I went on holiday and it became blantantly obvious to myself and everyone around me that I didn't! I started experiencing panic attacks for the first time in 2 years about 6 months ago and they have just been getting worse.
At the moment I feel on edge all the time. My mind is racing and I find very difficult to sit down and do nothing. I'm constantly making lists of things I need to do, and I always feel as if I'm running out of time. I'm finding it very difficult to fall asleep and I wake up very early.
I also have rheumatoid arthritis, which is the main reason I'm not overly keen to start meds for this. I'm already taking a huge amount of scary medication to keep my RA under control and I don't particularly want to add to the cocktail. Despite this I will be going back to my GP in 3 weeks if there has been no improvement with the counseling. He was very honest with me and said he felt I probably would need to go onto something.
Thank you for reading this.