Can't snap out of it

It's really hard to put into words how I'm feeling lately.  It's just the same old anxiety/mental illnes problems that I've been dealing with the last 2 or so years now.  The days just seem to go on forever.  It's crazy how long a freaking day is.  It's 4th of july and friends were all calling me to go out but I couldn't pull myself to go and do it.  I backed out for a couple of different reasons.

1 - I dont trust myself drinking on the lexapro and the xanax at night

2 - I feel like I've disconnected myself a bit from my friends and feel guilty for it, don't know how to address it if it comes up in conversations

3 - I really don't feel like doing much of anything besides sleeping

4 - I feel "out of it" and absolutely lost for the majority of the day.

For example I just kept thinking today was saturday and had to keep reminding myself a million times that its only wednesday and I only have off because of the holiday.  It sounds stupid and so ridiculous that that thought bothers me, but my inability to know what the hell day it is, what I'm doing, or what I want to do in a given day is absolutely driving me nuts lately.  I don't know how this all started, it just seems like the most simple things are an absolute train wreck at times for me.  Just going to the gym is such a huge step (something I havent been able to do lately).  I used to go to the gym all the time throughout high school and college.  Now when I think about going I talk myself out ofi t because I know I'll feel out of it, confused, and want to just come home and go lie back down in my bed.  That's where I've been spending all my time basically if I'm not at work.  I basically work (somehow I work pretty well actually) and then just come home and go to bed.  Everything else in my life, personal relationships, family relationships, friends, etc are all pretty rough right now.  It's not their fault it's definitely mine, I just don't know how to snap out of this and get out of my head.

Can't afford to go back to my doc quite yet, my insurance from my job switch didn't kick in yet.  I honsetly don't even know how much he actually helped anyway.  I did have an anxiety friend that I used to txt when I was in a bad way but we stopped talking.  It's been a little more rough going at the rough moments solo.  Really makes me feel like I'm psychotic and schizophrenic when I have my bad moments and don't want to be bothered.  I actually made the mistake of reading up the symptoms and convinced myself that I have all of them.  Social withdrawal?  Check.  Depressoin and Insomnia?  Check.  Emotionless?  Check.  Not quite having hallucinations but the depersonalization and derealization makes me feel like I'm on another planet sometimes so I think that's pretty close.

 

Trip not my friend...I have been thinking it's Monday ALL day!

As far as the spaced out feeling, everybody gets that from time to time, you will feel better again soon;)

S.C.

Hi Mike, I dont know much about you, but sorry to hear you are having a rough time. I can associate with some of what you are going through, I went through similar stuff for a while. I hope and I am sure that you realise deep down that you are not schizophrenic. As on some level you seem to know that just because you read the symptoms, now you are convincing yourself that you have it.. typical anxiety thought train.. I also know that those symptoms are associated with anxiety and some also with the meds you are on, so stop fooling yourself into believing.

I recently read up on CBT and found it so true that we (anxiety sufferers) have so many obsessive, repetitive thoughts about things that ..may be wrong / going wrong.. that we start to believe them to be fact. Really, just because you think and worry about them does not mean they are true or going to happen, try to ignore those thoughts and stick to the positive.

Social withdrawal wont help, it will only make you worse.. you need people around for support and to converse with to distract you from the negative thoughts. If you are worried about how friends will react to the truth about your avoidance, dont worry, tell them, and if they are real friends they will be there for you in every way. Dont stop to think about going to the gym, go straight from work without thinking about it first, or if you are going to think about it, visualise yourself doing a great work out and feeling great afterwards. You are fine at work, doing your routine, you dont stop in the morning to worry about it, you just go. If you had a serious mental illness you wouldnt be able to hold a job now would you!
I hope you can find a way to get back to how you were two years ago, it is possible, you are the same person!!
Get well soon

Thanks everyone for your encouraging posts. I really seem to beat myself up a LOT lately and get myself extremely down. That leads to the whole isolation, feeling bad for myself, feeling like it won't get better, and that's the vicious cycle I guess. Just to touch on a few things from your responses. Kitt you are definitely correct that I have to start getting myself out of my bed and start doing something to keep myself occupied. Whenever I'm able to do this I am typically much better off then I am just lying around and thinking about everything. It's just extremely hard to do so when I really get the depersonalization really bad, I just feel like hiding out because I feel so darn spacey and out of it that I start panicking.

Dakota thank you as well for the kind words as well. You're also right that I convince myself that I have every problem or disease that's out there. It's not something new either actually. In the past when I was in middle school I convinced myself i had an STD (never had sex at that point either lol). Drove myself completely nuts about it and convinced myself I had it because I had a rash on my hands that was one of the first "signs" of the disease. Meanwhile turns out the rash was from an overwashing of my hands with antibacterial soap and I was completely fine. Although there were always little flare ups about my health, there was only one more major one until my current worry about going psychotic. It was when I had terrible knee pain and went to the doctor and they told me that I tested positive for Lupus. I went into an absolute free fall depression for 3 weeks only to find out it was a false positive and I had something called fifth's disease which is similar to chicken pox in children, but in adults causes extreme knee pain. It lasted a month and was gone, all that worry and panicking for nothing. One last thing too, I am able to somewhat hold my job for now. I've changed jobs 4 times in the last 2 1/2 years since I started dealing with this anxiety disorder. It makes my patience wear extremely thin and causes me a lot of distress. It affects my work sometimes, especially when I get the depersonalization at work it makes it REALLY hard. I try to push through it though.

Fishbowl, didn't want to spell out the whole user name :). That's exactly what the doctors told me I had as well was GAD. That's still their current diagnosis as well. I'm sorry to hear you're going through it at such a young and fun age. It didn't hit me until I was about 24 or 25. I'm hoping that you're still able to go to college and continue with your education while dealing with this. I know this hurt my education process a lot, and I am just now able to get back on track and am going back to school and doing well. I've always been a hypochondriac too and I think that might be an early sign of some of us who has GAD? Not really quite sure honestly, but it's just my thought. I wish you the best in getting better as well, just know that in your bad times that it's never going to happen. You're not going to go psychotic. Trust in that and truly believe it and you will feel a little better when you're in your bad moments. Also try to be more open with your family about it, talking about it can help a lot. I don't do this a lot because I'm a guy and have that annoying "tough guy" mindset and hate talking about feeling vulnerable, scared, etc. Hopefully that comes easier for you then it does for me. But just talk to your parents or a close family member about it, it definitely helps. I personally don't like talking to friends about it because I feel like I get judged for it. So I stopped doing that, but that's just a personal choice on my part. Hope you feel better soon.