Anxiety after extremely traumatic incident

Hi everyone. I'm 25 years old, female and otherwise healthy other than suffering from anxiety, which first began about a year ago. As far as I'm aware, my anxiety started after the extremely traumatic incident of getting stuck in an elevator and free-falling several stories. I thought it would go away once I got over the incident, but it has grown a thousand times worse and recently finally got so bad that I had to seek professional help. I tried a little bit of therapy, but the cognitive exercises didn't help much, so I'm now taking Wellbutrin. It's my first week on the meds (150 mg) and although I'm loving the loss of appetite (makes my diet easy!), I'm not loving the increased anxiety, heart racing and jaw clenching. I'm new here, so I would really appreciate any feedback, comments, advice, and/or support. Thanks.

Thanks for the welcome! My therapist discussed the possibility of GAD, PTSD and agoraphobio, so I assume part of what we were doing was to treat PTSD and that's what wasn't helping. I am planning on going back - my physician said a combination of meds and therapy might really help, although the initial side effects of these meds are making me want to throw the bottle off a bridge!

I'm probably the last person to be giving advice but I figured I'd just chime in and share some stuff I have learned from this site and from my therapist over the last year. Funny that we're the exact same age and anxiety hit us at the exact same time. When I turned 24 it really hit the fan and got really bad. I had to withdraw from school and I couldn't even do much of anything. Although at times now I still get the really bad panic attacks, I'm seeing slight improvements. It's just so hard to remind myself to actually focus on those improvements instead of seeing all the negatives.

But anyway, one recurring theme I always notice is exposure. Exposure to things you are fearful of and scare you is (from what I have heard), the fastest way to recovery. I've read this in books, heard it from my therapist, and even here on the healing well site. I have been trying to do this in moderation and I'm back at the point where I'm able to go out and socialize with my friends (as weak as that sounds, I couldn't even do this for awhile). And yea I'm stil pretty darn nervous when I do it, but I know that in the end it's just what the doctor ordered. That's the hardest part I've found about this anxiety so far, the key is to get back in a regular routine of getting back and doing what you normally used to do. Or maybe even into a new routine, but something where your mind is active and busy, and not dwelling so much on how you feel instead of rather what you're doing. Hope that helps, I wish I could just take my own advice though at times. Kind of feel like a hypocrit haha

Good luck :)

FYI, I think that's how many of us start out. If I think back, I can think of a few events that made my brain start going, and it just snowballed and began getting worse and encompassing many more stimuli.

Hi holalola and welcome. It's actually not uncommon for an anxiety or traumatic event like the one you had to "generalize". In other words your initial trauma may have happened in an elevator, but that doesn't mean that going forward your anxiety will necessarily be limited only to elevators. You might be anxious in other closed spaces (such as cars or rooms, especially those without windows), with heights, buildings that look or even smell like the one where the elevator incident occurred, etc.

CBT is a cognitive (mind and thought-based) treatment approach and usually is quite helpful for people with anxiety. But if your anxiety is caused by PTSD you might also benefit by exploring the past further and how the anxiety has expanded with time, which may or may not require a therapist with a different background.

As far as exposure... there are two distinctly different approaches that some people use. One is called "flooding" and involves throwing yourself into the worst-case scenario, your greatest fear. It's about intentionally overwhelming yourself so that you can then look back and say "hey look at that... I survived my greatest fear. If I can stand up to that then I don't need to be afraid of anything!". This approach is not commonly used and I would not recommend it. The other is a more progressive approach called "systematic desensitization". It's a fancy term that simply means ever so slowly exposing yourself to progressively more difficult stressors. For instance, if I was afraid to drive because I recently had a car accident I might "expose" myself to my fear in the following way:
1. Look at pictures of cars
2. Look at pictures of cars and imagine myself sitting in one.
3. Walking along side a car
4. Sitting in a car that's turned off
5. Sitting in a car that's turned on
6. Have someone else drive you up and down the driveway once or twice, etc...

The idea is to take very small progressive steps and take time after each to acknowledge your progress. Don't move to the next step until you're comfortable with the previous one. This is something that you can do alone, but if you have a therapist you can certainly use this idea in conjunction with him/her.

Finally as far as the Wellbutrin I was on it briefly. I had a ton of negative side effects with it including increased anxiety. My new doctor told me that it can increase your anxiety level and that it's not really helpful for anxiety. It's better as an antidepressant. But if you do stick with it the negative symptoms often weaken or go away within a few weeks. I wish you well!

hello mate...im Mark.37...i have parkinsons....just wanted to say eeellloooo.....so..........eeeeeellllooooo...haha.

Hello Mark,
Welcome to HealingWell. We are a Forum Board and not a chat board so people pop in and out all day long as well as in the evening.

Also you tagged onto another member's thread which keeps people from seeing your post.

You may start a thread of your own if you would like and that will give other members a chance to get to know you.

Take care.

Kitt