New Member - Just diagnosed with panic disorder

Hi, I'm 21, female, and I smoke cigarettes and I occasionally drink. This past year has been a hell hole for me, I've been dealing with way too much stress ranging from a breakup from an intense 4 year relationship I was not happy with, to briefly dating someone who emotionally abused me, to dealing with home life and getting kicked out of the house and being forced to live with my new (healthy relationship) boyfriend and his parents where it's an incredibly negative situation because of the way his parents are (very negative and pessimistic, they obviously don't love each other and sleep in separate rooms, etc.), to dealing with being able to move back into my parent's house while I fix outside stuff that isn't mental/physical health related, to dealing with physical and emotional problems I've had the entire year in general.

I have a Mirena IUD as a birth control and have had it since March of 2012, and I've been having problems with it since the start and I'm now looking into getting a new OBGYN that I can trust and in general will be happier with their services. I was also on Abilify and Celexa for irritability and depression/anxiety, but went off those two because I wasn't happy with a side effect of the Celexa that affected my sex drive (which I realize now that it was a combination of that and also the person I was with when I stopped taking it).

I've also been dealing with inner ear trauma for the past month or two, so my anxiety has been high from that alone, and plus everything looking surreal to me vision wise. The cigarettes have made it worse and so has caffeine, but I've cut way down on the cigarette smoking (average 2-3 a day now vs maybe 7-10 a day a month or two ago) and have completely cut caffeine out of my diet as of yesterday. The vertigo and inner ear trauma has been diagnosed with...well I'm not sure I remember off the top of my head what it's called but basically I have a calcium deposit where my inner ear is and I've been told to start doing exercises to dislodge it so my symptoms for that go away.

I've also been having horrible panic attacks where I can sense that it's coming and when I have a full blown panic attack I feel like I'm having a heart attack, my body shakes and trembles, I get nauseous, I'm afraid I'm going to die, and thoughts are swirling and circling around in my head, I feel like I need to escape (if I'm not at home when I have these panic attacks I'm very persistent and want more than anything to go home, if I am home I want to crawl out of my skin and run away from myself). My panic attacks started as once a day and having increased to 3-5 times a day, but they're not always full blown panic attacks. On average in the past two weeks I think I've had maybe 4-5 full blown panic attacks and the rest are not full blown. I think I've also made a good connection with something too, I'm really afraid of vomiting and could never figure out why. I got sick a little less than a month ago and experienced all the symptoms I get with a panic attack and I realize that maybe, if it's not an actual panic attack, my brain thinks it's a panic attack and causes me to be afraid of it.

I've also been really afraid to go anywhere anymore, I'm afraid all the time I'm going to have a panic attack and leaving my house makes me really nervous. If I go to my boyfriend's house, I can't stay very long at all because I'm scared I'm going to have a panic attack and my anxiety there is too high anyway so really I can't stay long at all. I'm scared to go to public settings and I'm scared to even go hang out with friends because I'm afraid of having a panic attack. I feel safest when I'm laying down in my bed and it's the only place I feel like I can control myself. I think I've developed Agoraphobia in a very short amount of time.

Today I went to my doctor and talked to her about all of this, and she put me back on Celexa and gave me Clonopin to help with panic attacks in emergency situations while I wait for the Celexa to kick in, in about 4-6 weeks. I started to feel a panic attack setting in, and she had said since it's such a small dosage that I can take 2-3 total for one panic attack and I took two for this one. Then soon after, I fell asleep for maybe about 2-3 hours and woke up feeling really depressed and feeling this dread over me like I couldn't handle life anymore. I went outside to smoke a cigarette with my boyfriend and I ended up coming inside because I was upset and distraught. I felt like all news from my doctors appointment today had just hit me and I was feeling depressed enough where I was afraid to be by myself because I was afraid I was going to kill myself (I didn't have a plan, and obviously I feel better now and got past that stage) and I felt like it was the only option because I felt like I was just going to be this crazy person for the rest of my life and that I would lose everything I have, and I would lose everything I have planned for my future like going back to school and all these ideas I have for my future. I felt like dying was the best way I could handle it because I felt like I had just given up and didn't want to fight depression and anxiety that I've been fighting my entire life and on top of that I've now been dealing with panic attacks.

I'm feeling very distressed and I don't know how to handle this anymore, and I don't know anyone else who has panic disorder and basically I guess I joined this to get help from people who are also experiencing it and see what your coping strategies are for it and how you've managed to cope and overcome certain aspects of it and manage to get your life back to the way it was before you were diagnosed with panic disorder. I just feel really upset about everything and I really hate the person I have become and I fear that, eventually, my boyfriend won't want to tolerate it anymore. Right now he seems to be very supportive and has been there through everything, he's learned his own way of how to help me through my panic attacks but I can't have him sleep at my house every night because he has a child that is at his house Monday through Friday and I'm too anxious to sleep anywhere but my bed and I'm TERRIFIED to be alone at night or in general because I don't know how to handle my panic attacks if they happen when I'm alone.

This is all way too scary for me and I don't know how to handle anything.

Hi Scaredy Cat,

Thank you for responding and thank you for the information. I'll check out the resource guide as soon as possible. I will definitely consider going back to my therapist too, but I've also been seeing her since I was about 13 and I feel like I may have "outgrown" her ways of therapy so I might need to find a new therapist. That's an annoying process because it takes a lot for me to trust someone in a therapeutic position and to be able to just start talking about everything I've been feeling. I feel like I need to kind of have a "connection" with a therapist before I can really open up and also someone who has an idea of what they're doing.

I'm glad I found this website though, I knew there are people out there who have it, I just didn't know anyone personally who I could talk to about the panic disorder. It's a new thing and it really scares me, not the anxiety type of scared, but the I don't know how to cope with it kind of scared. Right now I've kind of been trying to take it one day at a time, trying not to make plans too far in advance because I never know what tomorrow will be like.

I do look forward to meeting others on this site too and helping them as best as I can and giving and receiving feedback too. Thank you

Honestly, I'm not sure I knew what a panic attack felt like (a real one) until after I put the Mirena in. I get like that when I vomit, but I don't feel this impending doom that I'm going to die, it's just how I react when I vomit.

I keep forgetting to call my OBGYN, I need to call tomorrow and beg for them to take it out when I go in next. I want it out no doubt, and I hope I don't actually have Panic Disorder, I hope it's because of the Mirena. I've had anxiety and depression my entire life, but anxiety didn't give me panic attacks like this. It just took all of the energy in the world that I had to raise my hand in a classroom setting to ask a simple question such as, "Can you repeat what you just said? I didn't hear you." I would sweat and shake and heart palpitations and I'd get hot and cold if I ever had to do that, but once I did it, the feelings went away. And it would stay away until I had to put myself in another position where I had to ask a question. I think people in school thought I was stupid because of it, but I don't think they realized that I had social anxiety.

I'm way over it now, I can do stuff like that now fine. The only piece of it left is answering the door for strangers, for example like Halloween night when parents would come up to the door for trick-or-treating.

I have never experienced this panic before, I have never been this afraid to leave my house where I can't even spend the night at my boyfriend's house because all I want to do is sleep in my bed because that's the only place I feel safe in.

I've been in partial programs (not inpatient, too lazy to explain what partial means for those who don't know) three times and I almost feel like I need to go back to get the intensive therapy I need to re-learn the skills I learned in the past and how to get past all of this. I want to move forward in my life but now I feel like this stupid diagnoses and all of these fears are holding me back and I've been so depressed and I scare myself on a regular basis.

Very interesting reading about Mirena causing some anxiety in others. I currently have the Mirena and my cycle is all over the board and my hormones are as well. Could be playing into my anxiety?? Hmmm... interesting. Well please do update once you get your Mirena out and see how you feel and/or if there is a decrease in your anxiety.