Posted 6/10/2014 8:22 PM (GMT 0)
Hello anxious 24. Just came across your recent post regarding your endoscopy procedure. By now, it is hopefully behind you, and I pray that the results were good and encouraging. I have only been on the Healing Well.com community for a couple of days, and am finding it to be very helpful, informative, and supportive. I hope you will find it so, as well.
I just recently came off a 1-yr. odyssey of depression with a smattering of delusional thinking and some anxiety. However, never saw a full-blown panic attack as I was always able to keep the symptoms under reasonable control by talking myself back to a place within me that I considered my "safe" place. From an academic standpoint, I always knew that the perceived threat(s) were fabricated by my own tortured and skewed perceptions. Generally, I avoided those interactions and events that would bring me to a point of severe anxiety. I stayed at home, slept most of the time, turned off my telephone so I wouldn't have to talk to anyone, lost interest in computer conversations, TV shows, etc. Would keep the door locked and if someone came knocking, I would not answer it....just kept really quiet so the would-be visitor would think that I wasn't home and just go away. (Remember the old Men at Work song, "Who Can It Be Now?") The only social situation that I would try to engage in was going to the grocery store, but that became an exercise in futility. I would become very nervous and nauseated, unsure of what to buy for my wife and I since I really had lost most of my appetite anyway. I felt the food prices were way too costly even though we were not in any kind of financial bind. So, I spent close to 3 hours walking around in that big, scary building, trying to fill up a grocery cart. Usually, I had to stop mid-way through the shopping to find a bathroom and cater to the diarrhea that was kicking me in the gut. I just left my cart outside the bathroom door until I was finished with all the groceries there for all the world to see. Eventually, it became almost impossible for me to accomplish this task, and my poor wife (who was still trying to hold down a full time job) had to assume the responsibility of sacrificing some of her weekend to get our groceries. I felt terrible about this, because she had a bad back and osteoarthritis in her knees. It was a big effort for her physically to get this done, but she did it anyhow without the least complaints. She was my rock, and I owe her so much for what she did to get me through to the other side of that dark place in my life. ( I believe the disorder in which you are afraid of large, open spaces with a lot of people is called agoraphobia.)
You have been caught up in the paradox of which came first the chicken or the egg. Your anxiety, invariably, caused your nausea and stomach irregularities. Although sometimes a legitimate physical ailment can cause rebound anxiety, more often it is the other way around. You were probably right to go and have the endoscopy procedure, but I would almost bet that it turned out negative for any physical problem unless you have carried it on so long that you have developed ulcers or gastric reflux disease. When I was having my mental symptoms with the depression, I encountered a few psychiatrists who were determined to put me through a never-ending series of rule out procedures like a full neurological assessment and various CT's of the head, neck, chest, abdomen, etc. As long as your insurance holds out, they will keep you running from one specialist to another and keep you on pins and needles worrying about all those things that you might have (but probably don't)
Hang in there, fix your hang ups and most of these physical accompanying symptoms will fade into oblivion. We are all pulling for you...............