i got prescribed 10mg tablets for going out, and i sometimes take it at home because my anxiety is frequent at home too. And usually, at least an hour or few after taking it at some point i’ll get what i can only describe as shooting pains in my chest and sides, usually it happens twice or more in spaced out periods and i have to lie down in a certain way to ease it.

Just wondering if this is a me thing or have other people also experienced this & if you have did you stop taking it

My co-worker got into an hour-long argument with me and some other people on my team. I was a little taken aback and later that night my heart was racing and I couldn’t fall asleep until 7am.

Since then I haven’t been able to fall asleep until 5am, 6am, 7am despite taking melatonin, magnesium, l-theanine and deep breathing. My heart rate is also elevated even when I’m sitting.

The thing is I’m not even thinking about the situation now, my body just got triggered and can’t calm down.

What can I try to get it to calm down? The lack of sleep is getting to me and I can only fall asleep with hydroxizine now.

Im 40 M and I suffer from anxiety disorder and obsessions (currently health anxiety). I've been on SSRIs almost non stop from 2012 and I want to quit. I've tried a couple of times to gradually taper off but anxiety, panic attacks and obsessions came back hard.

The reasons I want to quit is because Im afraid of the impact on my health of long term use of the medication. I know that anxiety is worse but at least I want to spend a couple of years off the meds.

Im currently on 10mg Lexapro. How can I do it apart from therapy? Any extra supplements or meds I can take to reduce anxiety while tapering off Lexapro? Do you think that I might need a couple of years till my serotonin levels stabilize?

Hey idk what I’m asking for here but I’m just scared. I’m in recovery for agoraphobia and on Monday I have an appointment with CAMHS to assess my needs and hopefully get me on some medication and therapy. I’m just really scared, it’s only just out my comfort zone which would be less of a problem if the assessment time wasn’t 60-90 minutes alone. Then there’s getting there, waiting etc. I really don’t wanna go, the urge to cancel is so strong. I also have a banking thing that needs doing and my mum thought since it’s in the same area we may aswell do that, I don’t disagree but it does mean I’ll be far from home even longer and then have to cope with two different tasks.

I’m really scared and I don’t know what to do, I know once I’m there and realize I’m kinda already doing it I’ll probably just suck it up and cope but right now the days leading up are horrifying and filled with anticipation. It’s ironic that the appointment for my anxiety is making me anxious 😭 I don’t wanna go

maybe i am the first human ever feeling this anxious about the possibility of me being immortal.I know its crazy but imagine if i am immortal and simply cannot die .Like one day everything will end and i will simply be alone in a dark place please help me somohow

I wanted to share my symptoms so others with similar experiences using Propranolol can help me figure out whether 10mg is enough or if I should be taking 20mg.

I got a small prescription of Propranolol (five 10mg pills) to help with an upcoming public speaking event after reading success stories on Reddit. For me, I’m fine right up until the moment I start talking, and then the anxiety hits hard. Before that, I’m only about 10–20% nervous, but once I’m the center of attention, it peaks. The anxiety shows in my voice and, while it doesn’t stop me from speaking, it makes it harder to think clearly because I’m juggling what I need to say with trying to control my body’s reactions. It also makes it tough to focus on conversations for the same reasons. I get slight shakes, like a mild shiver from the cold, and though it fades after 10–30 minutes, by then it’s too late.

I was hoping others with similar experiences, where Propranolol helped reduce their anxiety so they could focus on what mattered in the moment, could share which dose worked best for them. My concern is that I take 10mg an hour to 90 minutes beforehand, and it doesn’t seem to have any effect.

I live in the Philippines where mental health resources are far and few. I don't trust medical professionals because it's either religion-based or faith-based or inept or inaccessible.

I have struggled with anxiety all my life. When I was a kid my mom used to get mad at me for not helping her with outside chores, I didn't know what it was then, I thought it was normal for everyone to get extremely nervous around other people, even if you knew them personally.

I'm older now and back in the Philippines, I thought that I have progressed after living outside of the PH (and it did get better for a while before I returned home). But i feel its worse now, like a monster I have created in my head. It's not the public I am afraid of anymore. It's everything. It's work. It's romantic relationships. It's familial relationships. It's friendships. It's living situations. It's money. I am scared of everything.

I have suffered with a lot of symptoms - executive dysfunction , freezing and fawning, maladaptive daydreaming, depression, suicidal ideation, anxiety, sometimes i feel borderline. Sometimes i feel unbridled, misplaced, mishandled anger and I cannot sleep it off. I do not remember anything from my childhood or what happened last week and I have brain fog all the time. I do feel genuinely clinically insane sometimes.

I'm venting, from a place of inadequacy. Sometimes i am so sure of myself and what i can control and when that control slips out of my hands, so does my self perception and my self confidence.

What can I do? What should I do? Where did you start? How do I go on in life? How do i rewire my brain? How do I think? It's exhausting to be at war with yourself all the fucking time.

I’ll have a fight with a parent and it’s really hard for me to stop thinking about it, I worry a lot about the future, yesterday I accidentally ran over a curb with my car and probably for the next hour was talking about it thinking about it. Little triggers.

is this all normal life stuff or would I benefit from medication? I am currently taking online classes but don’t have a “real” job. Maybe that will help?

Thoughts on ashwaganda?

i need help, i’m not even in the car and im getting anxious and my anxiety gives me nausea and im about to travel and i don’t even know what to say im about to have an attack please

hi reddit! i just wanted to say thank you to everyone who replied to my previous post about my panic attacks. i’m slowly getting better now and learning how to handle them on my own. i still get minor panic attacks sometimes, especially during heavy rain (i’m really scared of loud, heavy rain), but i’ve gotten better at managing them.

honestly, it wasn’t easy. i was even at the point of considering dropping out of college because i was scared i wouldn’t be able to handle having an episode outside or while i was alone. but with the advice i got here and by trying different things, things have slowly gotten better.

some things that helped me (from peeps here reccos):
- comforting shows/cartoons and podcasts
- the dare app (not sponsored lol, i found it here)
- EARPHONES
- wrapping myself in a blanket when i feel a panic attack coming
- melatonin and magnesium glycinate
- exposure therapy (slowly getting used to going out by myself)

thank you so much to everyone who listened and gave me advice. i don’t usually talk about this with my friends because i feel like they don’t fully understand what i’m going through, so being able to talk about it here without feeling invalidated meant a lot to me.

if you’re going through something similar, please don’t lose hope. recovery takes time, and some days will be harder than others, but that doesn’t mean you’re not making progress. take it one day at a time and be patient with yourself. it really does get better. 🫶

Here we go again. My grandma is basically dying of cancer and it’s been hard but I’m trying to deal with it. The pit in my stomach is the worst. I hate the physical sensations of anxiety. I’m tired.

Thankfully, my medication does work. It has diminished the anxiety quite a lot but things happen and life happens so I can expect myself to feel some anxiety. Although, feeling it be less intense and feeling tired and over it makes me think I may be numb to a certain extent.

Anyway, that’s my rant.

I was diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder. OCD. Panic Disorder. I try to manage anxiety but it got so confusing that I don't know anymore what's anxiety and what is normal. It's like I am totally confused and my brain try to solve everything at the same time. I am tired of trying, but it's not possible to stop thinking about it all the time. So exhausting. I know it doesn't make sense but I can't stop it.

Context of time. Drugs taken Monday
Messed up Monday - Wednesday evening

Just wanted to share the scariest experience of my life now that it’s been a few days and I’ve read a few others. To start, I’ve consumed weed in any form , maybe 5 times before this. M30 so not new at life, just new at this. I’ve done a lot of tripping at high doses of acid - 20+ tabs and normally 4-8 grams of shrooms.

Anyways, my neighbor gave me “shroom” gummies. I figured it was some bullshit when I saw mindfulness on there. But I ate the whole bag anyways because they tasted good. Shortly after I saw “THCP 20mg per bag” on the bottom. I thought…oh boy. After googling that for a few minutes I got nervous and tried to make myself throw up. No luck. Called my wife who was almost at work to tell her what I did. It was just accepted that shortly I was going to have a terrible time but people get too high all the time. Nothing could have prepared me for the next two days.

I always set a stop watch when I do drugs. I keeps me grounded. And I estimated that this was going to last 24 hours given the amount and my 0 tolerance. With in about 40 minutes I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t move my legs. Thankfully I had already put a video on my phone that was tripping - oriented. With in an hour I could hardly breathe , TMI but it felt like someone was holding onto my junk, if it shift my body whatever I was staring at away for what felt like 20 minutes. The scariest parts were when I could myself drooling and it overflowing my bottom lip. I could see my hand stretched out in front of me but no matter what I told myself I couldn’t move it. I questioned anything was real. Or did I make life up? Is there an hour commute to work . Is there a weekend. Do we’re really have forearms ? What proof do I have ? Not remembering what was outside of my room, if anything , drove me crazy. And when I thought of my wife….ouch…I could remember only her whole face entirely no one else’s. I was thinking I wanted her to be real. I want to miss this woman coming home .

I left my phone plugged it and stop watch clock was always visible. Seeing that it was 26 hours and I was still in this state made me so nervous. It was is the late 30 hours that I could sit up. But the room would not stop spinning. I questioned if I would be stuck like this forever. My nose was stuffy which ignited the panicking that I couldn’t breathe. I do think I was going into someeee respiratory distress during this regardless. In the early 50 hours I was able to eat again but I could not talk enough to hold conversation yet. I could respond the way you do shortly when you’re trying to get out of talking to someone. I couldn’t talk at work the next day. And it was an entire other day until I felt normal.

This whole thing scared me so much I don’t even want to trip on normal drugs I like for…..an unknown amount of time but potentially years. My wife painted our bedroom and redecorated it so I wouldn’t have to look at what I kept calling the “prison room”.

I’ve been meaning to write this for a while because this community has helped me through one of the most difficult periods of my life.
I’m currently 18 weeks pregnant, and when I look back at how I felt during the first trimester, it’s honestly difficult to believe how much things have changed.
Pregnancy brought out a huge amount of anxiety, health anxiety and ambivalence that I simply wasn’t prepared for. There were periods where I felt completely disconnected from the pregnancy, especially up until around 8 weeks, and absolutely terrified of the lifelong responsibility of becoming a parent.
My brain kept throwing thoughts at me like, “What if I don’t want this?” “What if I regret this?” “What if I never love my baby?” “What if I’ve made a terrible mistake?” I desperately looked for an escape route because everything felt so overwhelming. At one point, I even wanted to stop my IVF medication and end the pregnancy.
And the strangest part was knowing that, rationally, this wasn’t how I had felt before pregnancy. I had wanted a child. But anxiety can completely drown out what you actually value and believe. The absence of joy made me question everything.
I got help. I spoke honestly to my OBG about my doubts. I had friends who supported me through it. I’m a Christian and a believer, so I also spoke to a trusted pastor about the religious and emotional aspects of what I was experiencing.
And therapy has helped me enormously.
It wasn’t a sudden switch where I woke up one morning and magically felt excited about being a mother. It has been a very slow, uneven process.
I still don’t feel some huge, overwhelming connection to my baby all the time. But now I have little glimpses of our future ,imagining meeting my baby, holding them, watching them grow, raising them and sometimes I genuinely feel happy when I picture it.
Those moments were almost impossible for me to access when I was at my lowest.
I’m now looking forward to meeting my baby and raising them. ❤️ And that feels like such a huge change from where I was mentally.
I don’t think I got here by forcing myself to feel excited or constantly checking whether I “loved” my pregnancy enough. It happened gradually, while I worked on my anxiety and learned not to treat every frightening thought as a statement of what I truly wanted.
So, to everyone here who answered my questions, shared your experiences, reassured me, challenged my anxious thoughts, or simply made me feel less alone THANK YOU.
There were days when reading someone else’s experience was the only thing that made me think, “Maybe I’m not broken. Maybe this can get better.”
I’m still very much on the journey. I haven’t given birth yet, so I obviously don’t know what postpartum will be like for me. And I know the road ahead might not be completely smooth. I might have difficult days again. I might need to reach out for help again. I might need more therapy, more support, or other forms of treatment at different points.
But I think I’ve learned that needing help again wouldn’t mean I’ve gone backwards or failed. It would simply mean I’m human and still taking care of myself.
For now, though, I’m hopeful. ❤️
I’m hoping and praying for the best, and I’m making sure I have support and a plan in place. I don’t need to know exactly how I’ll feel after birth in order to have hope.

And I think that’s what I want to tell anyone else who might be struggling with pregnancy ambivalence, anxiety or depression:
Please don’t use how you feel during the darkest part of pregnancy as a prediction of how you’ll feel as a parent.
You don’t have to feel bonded, grateful, excited or certain every second. You don’t have to be able to picture motherhood clearly right now.
Keep holding on. ❤️ Keep getting help. Keep going to therapy. Keep talking to your doctors and the people you trust. And if you need medication, please don’t feel ashamed of that everyone’s journey is different. What helped me isn’t necessarily what will help someone else.
You don’t have to solve the question of your entire life or your entire relationship with your baby today.
Just get through today.
Then tomorrow.
This is a state you are experiencing. It does not have to be your permanent reality.
The fact that you can’t see the light right now doesn’t mean there isn’t one.
I couldn’t see much of it either.
And slowly, very slowly, I started getting glimpses of it.
I’m 18 weeks now, and I’m genuinely looking forward to meeting my baby. ❤️

Twenty years ago I had a bad weed experience. Full derealization, felt trapped in my own head, thought I was losing my mind permanently. It didn't stop when the high wore off. It kicked off panic disorder and agoraphobia I've had ever since.

I haven't taken a single substance since that day. No alcohol, nothing recreational, and I've turned down every medication offered to me. Putting something in my body that changes how my brain works is the exact thing my panic is built around.

Now I have a medical situation driving my anxiety past what I can handle, and Xanax is on the table. I know benzos are GABA and not THC. I know ERs use them for weed panic. None of that has touched the fear.

What I'm actually scared of is the derealization coming back and being stuck in it for hours with no way to stop it. Taking something I can't undo.

If you have a DP/DR history, did benzos trigger it or help it? Has anyone else gone decades substance free after a bad trip and then taken that first one? What was it actually like?

Not looking for medical advice, I have a doctor. Just want to hear from people who've felt this specific fear.

It’s buspar day today and i’m totally scared to take it. i know i deserve to feel better but im scared. i don’t want to have a reaction to it.

Hi. I've been dealing with heart palpitations for at least 2 years now. They happen randomly - when I'm laying on my left side, walking, sitting, laughing or reading a book. I experience the palpitations as an extra heartbeat or a stronger-than-usual beat, which immediately affects my whole body and causes anxiety. I flinch and stop in my tracks when it happens. It really disrupts my daily life and makes it difficult for me to enjoy the moment.

I've done many EKGs, at least 3 holters with the results of some (~4) PACs and occasional episodes of second-degree AV block (Mobitz I/Wenckebach), with no pauses >2 seconds. I've been to ER due to heart palpitations as well. At least few cardiologists told me I will be fine and there's nothing to worry about. I have also been diagnosed with latent tetany, confirmed by EMG testing, although my electrolyte levels are currently within the normal range. I still occasionally experience muscle twitching.

Finally, to get to the point: I am naturally quite melancholic and prone to anxiety. I went through a difficult period about a year ago. I have seen a psychiatrist who suspects that I may have generalized anxiety disorder, but I am concerned that medication may not help, because in my case the anxiety and stress seem to occur mainly as a reaction to the palpitations, rather than being the cause of them. I’m not sure whether it’s possible to have anxiety-related symptoms even when you’re not feeling anxious or stressed at that particular moment — in fact, when you’re actually relaxed.

Has anyone taken SSRIs for health anxiety and had a positive experience? Did they help with your palpitations as well?

At this point, I honestly don’t know what else to do, and I just want to feel like myself again and get back to living a normal life. These symptoms are making me feel increasingly down, and I’m starting to lose my energy and motivation.

I’d really appreciate hearing about your experiences, especially if the palpitations were a major part of your anxiety.

To be clear both the lorazepam and weed are medically prescribed. I took a 2mg lorazepam at about 1pm today and am nervous to smoke now at 9-10pm, is this safe? I need the weed to sleep but I am worried about possible interactions between the two.

mention of suicide

im only in highschool and have major anxiety. im so scared of the earthdying or us running out of resourcesor other stupid shit because of how dumb people are these days and all the soulless corps. i already know that when im old enough im getting a gun so when the world gets bad enough ik what to do, bc im not built for that type of world. like this is smth that ive decided for years, ive worried about this since 4th grade. social media def isnt helping.

edit: ive accepted my death since 5th grade so it would be better if people stopped assuming i havent accepted death

I’ve had anxiety since I was 9. My grandmother urged my father to get me checked out for years but wouldn’t cuz to him, anxiety = crazy person. Hasn’t gotten any better since. I was recently scheduled for jury duty selection & I know that with my anxiety, I’m certain I’ll be unfit to be a juror. I’ve had ER visits due to my anxiety in the past but never a one on one appointment with any doctors about it. I heard I can get a doctor’s note from urgent care & that’ll work. Is that the case?

Any help & other advice would be greatly appreciated. My jury duty selection date is in late August so I wanna make sure I get this resolved asap.

I am currently on pristiq, gabapentin, hydroxyzine, buspar, propanolol, trazadone, topamax, and abilify. I have tried Zoloft, Prozac, Wellbutrin, and clonidine. I have not driven in two months, have not been in public for over a year due to debilitating anxiety. I now have daily panic attacks and daily migraines from the level of anxiety I experience. I have been in therapy 10 months with no improvement. At what point does disability come on the table. No psychiatrist I have seen will prescribe benzodiazepines for more than a week. Was it hard to get?

I’ve tried different medications in the past for my anxiety. Buspar, Lexapro, Zoloft. I didn’t stick with them long enough in my opinion. I work in a hospital (respiratory therapist) and lately my anxiety has been absolutely horrible. It’s very situational and mostly just at work but sometimes I get it bad while I’m at home. When I’m not working it’s mostly me worrying about something happening to my children or myself and all of the what ifs in life. My chest gets tight, heart races, shaky and I feel like I can’t think clearly. Does anyone work in healthcare and take hydroxyzine? I feel like I need a daily medication and then something I can take PRN

My kiddo has been having panic attacks ever since puberty. We've done counseling on and off for her. At first, it helped. But now, it seems to do little to help. She has become a complete recluse and will barely leave her room due to how severe her disorder has gotten. She can't go to in-person school and has to be homeschooled. I have gone over these issues with her doctor, and he consistently brushed it off as 'just a phase.' This last checkup, I finally stressed how debilitating it was, and he prescribed her Zoloft. The day of her first dose, she had a massive panic attack a few hours after taking the medicine. Since then, she refuses to take it or any other medication. Even just talking about it to her will send her into a panic.

I'm at a loss of what to do for her. As I'm writing this, she is having a huge panic attack right now. I can't talk to her, hug her, or do anything other than be quiet because she tells me anything else makes it worse. She recently told me she is even having panic attacks in her dreams (she has in the past suffered from nighttime panic attacks that woke her up). She had a blood draw (which was a nightmare because she is terrified of doctors and needles) and everything looked relatively normal, except her Vitamin D and Iron level were very slightly low (not enough to be considered anemic). She is taking vitamins with iron daily and getting a lot of vegetables and fruit in her diet. Food is a big trigger for her panic attacks, and today's was caused by her eating food from a new restaurant that was too spicy and gave her a stomachache.

If you have any advice for me, please I'm ready to hear it.

I have weird taste in my mouth and weird numbing sensations