question

I was diagnosed back in 1992/93. I went to pdoc with intense anxiety and he said I had GAD.
janet

I was diagnosed many years ago with what my therapist called "anxious depression"  I also suffered with panic attacks at times (still do) for many years but was never officially "diagnosed."  Although I believe I suffered with anxiety since the age of 7, I think it was brought out most severely when I suffered from post-partum depression after the birth of my son in l972 but was never diagnosed as such.....in those days it was just referred to as "the baby blues."  Well I can tell you all that it was MUCH more than baby blues....it got so severe that I couldn't leave the house, thought I heard voices, was afraid I was going to do damage to myself, etc., etc.  All I can say is thank God my mother was alive then and helped me through those terrible days - I really think it took upwards of two years before I felt better.  Then I was fine for quite a few years until starting to have anxiety again at the age of 35 - it's been off and on since then, some periods worse than others but none as bad as those two post-partum years. 

I'm not sure I've been "officially diagnosed" with panic disorder. I had lots of stomach problems for a long time and eventually broke down and took myself to a hospital. There, I saw an Internist in the "Center for Diagnostic Medicine". He ran tons and tons of blood work on my and referred me to one of the hospital's gastroenterologists. He ran a bunch of tests on me and found nothing. On my last visit he mentioned "atypical panic attacks" and ordered a couple more stomach tests to rule things out. Those were somewhat invasive so I canceled them and went back to the first doctor. I told him that it took me about a week to get a grip on the anxiety/panic thing and then I actually started feeling better. He agreed that that's probably what it was, and in spite of skipping the last two tests said I'd had a very comprehensive GI workup. Agreed that it was probably anxiety/panic and discharged me with no medical help. He said my stomach would feel better as my anxiety got better, and my anxiety would get better as my stomach got better. That made little sense to me but I didn't care much since I wasn't feeling bad at the time.

Eventually I started suffering the attacks again, though. They actually never stopped...just decreased in intensity, frequency, and duration...but they still happened. After some time they got as bad as they ever were and I decided I needed medicine to deal with it. No relaxation methods were working. So I went to my family doctor here in town and he mentioned three possibilities: IBS, Abdominal Migraines, and Anxiety/Panic. Since the other two docs agreed on panic, he decided to treat me for that first and gave me Clonazepam.

Afraid of pills, it literally took weeks before I was able to try the meds. When I did, though, I made an immediate turn around and have been doing better ever since. I'm still not perfect, but I'm much better than I've been in a very long time.

So that pretty much confirmed the diagnosis. I have GERD and Anxiety. Each condition is aggravated by the other, just like the internist at the hospital said. When the anxiety improved, the GERD got a lot better, too.

So that's that, pretty much. I've never seen a psychiatrist for this.