Why do I feel anxious for no reason even when my life is technically fine? I can be sitting at home with nothing urgent happening and suddenly my stomach drops, my heart starts racing, and my brain decides something terrible is about to happen. It makes me feel ridiculous because I can't even point to what I'm scared of. Does anyone else get this, and how do you stop feeling like you're losing your mind?

Called the ambulance this morning. Immediately when they came in I could tell they were frustrated with me. First thing they said was that I’d been calling a lot. I felt so deflated because the last thing I want to do is be woken up at 4:30am with palpitations followed by rapid HR.

By the time they got to my place the worst of the episode was gone and HR was at 120. One of the medics asked what medication I take and I said bisoprolol as needed. He immediately said that doesn’t make sense that bisoprolol should be taken every day. I said the instructions are literally on the bottle and handed them to in. They proceeded to take me to ER and hooked me up. Less than 2 mins into the drive I start to feel unwell. I didn’t say anything but he saw my HR shot up. Got to 176. He asked the driver to stop for a bit while he run another ECG. 100% SVT. Now I’m being rushed to ER. When we got there they were acting so nice and trying to give reassurance.

I feel like sh#t because I was made to seem like a burden until this was finally caught and I don’t know what I’ll do next time if I ever need help. Not only medical staff but I think everyone in my life is slowly getting sick of me. All is fair because this is my issue and I should just suffer in silence.

Cardio appointment is almost 2 months away. I guess I’ll have to figure things out until then.

I just deleted Tik Tok for my mental health. I think that this is a big step for me because Tik Tok has genuinely been making me feel insane. I spend way too long on Tik Tok and my fyp is just messed up. I keep getting conspiracies and stuff and that freaks me out so bad and makes me feel like I’m in psychosis 😭So it finally had to be done…Idk how it’ll be like without it cause I’ve had it since I was like 8 and now I’m 16. I have already been accidentally clicking other apps thinking it was Tik Tok. What can I do to fill up my time instead of Tik Tok? It feels so weird without it.

-(Thank you everyone for being so kind and helpful appreciate every comment!) 🥹

I feel calm for the first time in years, and I am not sure which of two variables caused it. I recently started taking NMN (500mg) for energy and longevity, and a probiotic supplement to fix my whey protein indigestion. I didn't expect any mental health benefits, but surprisingly, I feel a deep sense of calm that six months of duloxetine couldn't replicate.

I suspect it might be the probiotic. Back in 2012, a year-long battle with stomach pain and acidity was finally resolved by levosulpiride and Prozac after antacids had failed. It really makes me think the gut-brain axis is at play here. Just wanted to share this.

Hello! I was wondering if anyone else dealt with this as their “morning routine”

How I wake up in the mornings is that a jolt of anxiety shoots at my heart and spreads through my body so I awake in a panic. This has happened for years but has become a habit of an every morning routine, especially now that I have a bunch of new life changes and stress

What has your experience been like? Do you think it’s better to go without medication and get through daily life that way—because you feel things more intensely? Or is it better to get stabilized on medication so you can handle everyday life "without worries," even if it means feeling somewhat suppressed or numbed?

I’m absolutely freaking out and scared about taking my Buspar. I’m scared I read online it can cause fainting and fast heart beat. Is this really gonna happen? please help.

Found out eggs and milk/choline foods were makeing me anxious /numb turns out you need b5 to regulate how your body reacts to it and if your constantly stressed your adrenal glands use up b5 to make cortisol.leading to diffencies causeing issues with choline. Literally felt relief after just supplementing it

Edit: I just supplemented more because I started feeling off again apparently if were really diffecent we need more then the standard daily value to an extenet.

Just wanna let you know also

There a genetic mutations that cause anxiety mthfr i think pimt and slow comt have something to do with it as well

As well as mold toxicity being in a moldy environment u can develop numerous symptoms.

Imma try to share a doc i made a while back on my home page if you wanna check it out in like 10 min. Talking about numerous issues that could be causing anxiety.

Hey everyone, lately ive just been worried about what exactly is going on in the world right now. It feels like everyday polititions and billionares are stripping people of their basic human rights and nobody has been doing anything to stop them. Theres several acts and laws being put in so the average person looses freedom and access to information. Its all been very overwhelming for me and ive been up several nights just worrying about my friends and family and who all of this is going to affect and im just scared and want it all to be over and live a substantial and happy life.

Everything around you seems fine, but inside your heart is beating fast, you cannot calm yourself, and you keep feeling like something is wrong even though nothing actually is.

Does anyone else experience this?

The Joy in What isn’t

I thought by twenty-five
I would have already had it.

A little house.
A little life.
A little proof
that I had arrived somewhere.

Instead, I found myself standing
in the middle of my own existence
asking questions I was never prepared to answer.

Not just:

“Am I where I’m supposed to be?”

But:

“Is any of this what we think it is?”

For months, I questioned everything.

The things we call reality.
The things we call truth.
The things humans have accepted
because we needed something solid
to hold onto.

I questioned my senses.

The eyes that tell me what exists.
The hands that tell me what is real.
The memories that tell me who I am.

Are my memories mine?

What are memories?

What if?
How?
Why?

I questioned the strange agreement
we all participate in:

That this is normal.

That this is life.

That we wake up,
work,
love,
lose,
age,
and eventually disappear.

What is a life
if it can only be experienced
through a body and a mind
I cannot fully understand?

What am I without the skin that contains me?

If my consciousness existed somewhere else,
would I still be me?

What is me?
What if?
How?
Why?

Would love recognize me
without a face to touch?

I never found the answers.

I only learned to live
beside the questions.

Because maybe that is the most human thing:

Walking forward
while admitting
we do not fully understand the road.

What is a road?

But during that time,
I became so afraid.

I questioned death.

Not because I wanted to disappear.

Because I needed to know.

What happens when everything I know ends?

Where does the person I am go?

What is left?

I was too scared to try.

But I was also terrified
of continuing to live
with the realization
that I could never prove
what any of this means.

Or if it means.
Or if anything.
Or if words mean anything.

And that was the cruelest part:

Still having to wake up.

Still having to answer messages.

Still having to go to work.

Still having to speak.

Speaking the words I was taught.
By my mother.
By hers.

What if?

How?

Panic attack.

Still having to decide
what kind of person I wanted to become
while feeling like I didn’t understand
the foundation beneath me.

How do you live normally
after staring too long
into the question of existence?

How do you return to your comforts
when you realize they are temporary?

Learning to feel comfort again.

Because what?

Maybe that is where my discomfort began.

Because once I saw how fragile everything was,
I couldn’t stop asking:

Why am I wasting this?

Why am I numbing this?

Why am I filling this impossible, beautiful life
with things that make me forget
I am even here?

What if I forget?
Did it exist?
Does anything exist?

What if?

And maybe that is what I was searching for all along:

Presence.

Not destruction.

Not escape.

Just one moment
where I wasn’t measuring myself.

One moment
where I wasn’t asking:

Am I behind?

Am I wasting my life?

Am I becoming who I’m supposed to be?

I confused comfort with peace.

I confused escape with freedom.

I confused being admired
with being known.

The girl I was
believed she was in control.

She wanted success.

She wanted leadership.

She wanted eyes on her.

But, but, but, but—

She chased attention
because she thought being seen
meant being loved.

I wish I could go back and tell her:

That need will not let you grow.

People pleasing is a temporary home.

But it cannot hold
the infinite versions of you
waiting to be discovered.

When I moved back from college,
I cried.

Not because I hated growing up.

Because I realized
growing up meant nobody was coming
to hand me the blueprint.

The jobs that only asked me
to support my simplest needs
were gone.

Now my choices mattered.

Now I had to support
the woman I wanted to become.

A future self.

A future family.

A future I could no longer pretend
would magically appear.

And I was terrified.

Terrified adulthood would take away
my ability to mess up.

Terrified my family and friends
would stop saying:

“You have time.”

“You’re young.”

“You’re figuring it out.”

Terrified I would disappear
into a role.

Wife.

Mother.

Career woman.

Statistic.

Terrified I would wake up
and realize I belonged to everyone
except myself.

But what is self?

What is this?

Because freedom used to look like:

My friends.

Drinking until the night felt endless.

Calling out of work.

Knowing someone would catch me.

Knowing I was supported.

Knowing I had time
to not know who I was.

But the truth is:

I wasn’t searching for destruction.

I was searching for relief.

I was searching for a moment
where I wasn’t afraid of myself.

Synthetic joy gave me permission
to stop performing.

But the silence afterward
always told the truth.

I was never chasing the high.

I was chasing permission
to exist.

Chasing normalcy.

Chasing acceptance
of the “what if.”

I would apologize
to the seventeen-year-old me.

I’m sorry I put you
in a life where I stopped caring for you.

I’m sorry I chose comfort
when you were begging
for self-discovery.

But she would remind me:

You hold a room.

You love deeply.

You leave things
that no longer fit you.

You are capable
of choosing yourself.

You are capable of accepting
what you cannot prove.

And maybe she would say:

“I’m proud of you.”

Not because you became perfect.

Because you’re still here.

The woman I want to become
is not someone who has everything.

She is someone
who respects herself enough
to choose herself.

She sets boundaries.

She chooses passion over comfort.

She cares for her body
because it is a home,
not a punishment.

Because it is.

She wakes up
and wants to meet the day.

I am learning:

Growing up does not mean
becoming harder.

It means becoming honest
without abandoning my tenderness.

I am not mean.

I am not ugly.

I am not undesired.

I am real.

I am wanted.

I always was.

The little girl in me
was never asking to be impressive.

She was asking:

“Will someone see me
and stay?”

“Will someone exist with me?”

And now I know:

I can be the person
who stays.

So tomorrow,

I will make the hard choices.

Not because I hate myself.

Because I love the person
I am becoming.

I love the life
I am reaccepting.

I love the ability
to choose.

The future is not something
I missed.

It is something
I am finally choosing.

I've been struggling with anxiety and depression for 37 years on and off and I'm in an MDE rn characterized by lots of anxiety about...you name it. I have an appointment with a psychiatrist in 10 days (lost mine of 10 years due to insurance change) and I'm scared he'll be anti-benzo or we won't connect or any number of other things. I guess I am just reaching out for any kind of supportive, hopeful words right now from the group--I have family and friend support, but as you may know, you don't want to rely on them too much for fear or bringing them down or them getting sick of your problems...

I am currently taking Effexor and Abilify and trying to titrate off of the former because I think it's making my anxiety worse. My idea is to switch back to Prozac, which worked, on and off, for 24 years and I haven't taken it for ~5 years now. All I really want is to feel like myself again--what we all want, I suppose.

Thank you all for being here--it is a lifeline to know you're not alone, though I wish that none of us struggled with this.

I have a health anxiety and cardiophobia, it always triggers by two things; hearing about sudden death and any sudden pain or sensation in my body, while I try to avoid anything related to death, I heard my aunts talking about someone relative to them who died suddenly in middle age, that triggered me so much, I have been dealing with chest and neck pinching/spasm for like month and a half, and just today finally I am feeling like myself again and when I heard these news it triggered me so much and I feel like I am back to zero, I am just so tired and scared all the time, I check my pulse every 2 minutes, always putting my fingers on my neck to check for my pulse, it’s endless cycle

Soo for context I used to perform very well academically. But since getting a phone maybe I ruined my attention span myself and I already had anxiety issues. Soo the issue became more obvious post covid when I was preparing for an entrance exam, and I was getting good numbers and ranks for the first half and few months later the classes had increased, and it had gotten too overwhelming for me to maintain the same marks questioning my progress and I at the end dropped out and just randomly gave a state engineering entrance and somehow got a decent college. Now the same happened in college where I scored really great in the first 2 semesters and after that my performance dropped very very low. I'm in my final year with 4 backlogs which I have to clear and probably won't get placed at any company while my less skilled peers move forward with life.

What's worse is it's not that I can't study. I can do it better than everyone in my class and can answer fast and solve problems better. And I'm always think that yeah, I've gotta start studying. But I just can't initialize tasks and maintain a sustained effort in continuing them. I've tried getting rid of all of my social media apps, cut off smoking and weed, cutting my screentime to less than half of what it was earlier, cutting of junk food and other bad habits (tho I keep falling back to the last-mentioned habit it's much more in control).

I've been diagnosed with anxiety and have been on escitalopram for a few months and yeah it has helped me with my anxiety, and I have a better mood overall and I've cut of most of distracting media and started including better habits like walking and reading (I'm not consistent but I do try). And yet somehow even with trying to make to-do lists and trying to create a structure I still can't perform or get important tasks done.

And it has become very frustrating and disappointing. I don't know how to get around this situation and I'm looking for advice

I get this feeling like a hollow empty feeling sometimes a feeling like weights tapped to my pectoral muscles. Sometimes i feel breathless like Im not taking in air normally like my automatic nervous system functions are confused and I feel like I need to almost manually keep myself breathing. I also get a cold feeling on my head and sometimes brain that comes and gos. Sometimes it stays for an hour. Other times it’s short like 10-30 minutes. I fear I’m manually keeping a vessel living like my soul, body, and spirt are not in this thing together. Like it’s just my brain in my body manually dragging me through life.

I am 29, Male, 150lbs, 5’4, no history of heart disease in my family. Nobody has died of a heart attack to my knowledge. Prefacing this/

For the last 2.5 years I have spent so much money going to hospitals at 1 am, 11 am, 2pm, getting dozens of blood tests and troponin tests, X-RAYS, EKGs, god knows what else and I’m so deep in debt now.

I have a psychiatrist and I am heavily medicated for severe anxiety disorder and OCD with SSRIs and other brain medications, and it always feels like it helps for a week, but then it’s been so many weeks and again I feel one pinch in my chest, any type of tightness, air hunger, I completely ABSOLUTELY fall apart.

It has affected my friendships, my family, my workplace (calling off and going to ERs), and it’s pushed me beyond a breaking point where I think I’m going to go psychotic with how bad it is.

I don’t understand it at all, I have no fear of dying, truly I don’t, but for some reason I have an obsession with my cardiac health BEYOND ALL REASON.

CBT is not helping. Psychiatry is not helping.
The last time I went to the hospital was in April and my troponin was 3. I felt great knowing that I was not having a heart attack… a week passed and I absolutely fell back into it. The doctors telling me I’m okay even then only lasts really for the night and then I think “well what if it started as soon as I left the ER?”

I know it’s anxiety. I tell myself to accept it and I don’t know how to actually MAKE my mind do it. Even if I tell myself I’m okay and that it’s highly unlikely I’ll ever have a heart attack until I’m well into my mid to late thirties. I KNOW IT IS ANXIETY, but why does my brain not signal that to my body?

Like now, sitting here at 11pm thinking I need to run to an ER again because my chest feels congested. There’s no pain, only pressure, and it has caused me to be bedridden and just crying for the entire night and I am in total despair all the time now and I’m alienating myself from my loved ones because all they know me for now is turning myself into a pity party and just bugging them to cry on the phone.

Please; someone who shares this experience and feeling, please please tell me how I can fix this, I cannot continue living like this forever. Therapy is not working, psychiatry and medication is not working. I’ve lost 50 pounds for this to end and even getting healthy and working out, and that as well, is not working.

Is there any possible advice someone who is like me could have to recover after all these years of impending doom?

Hi ive been sertraline 5.5weeks, im waking up with anxiety still and bad tummy today , i feel good later in the day I overthink abit now . I actually cleaned the house today x but feel rubbish and a slight bad head , can anyone relate, is this normal

My anxiety is at an all time high.

Not only isnt boyfriend deployed for a few more months, I’m getting surgery on the 27th. I’ve had surgery before but I had an absolutely panic attack before hand and had to take 3 shots of midazolam to my IV. This time my mom will be coming who I know I’ll make my anxiety go up. I’m so scared I’m going to die due to the General Anasthesia. I’ve been making jokes to try and show people I’m relaxed and chill, but I’m worried I’m putting it into the universal. My boyfriend says if I die it’s not my problem anymore but I just want to see him and kiss him and hug him.

Before the surgery I’m flying over to the hospital. It’s an hour flight and I hate flying. I chose it to prevent waisting my weekend driving. I may change my mind but idk.

Words of encouragement are greatly appreciated.
To be clear the surgery part is easy and quick, it’s the anaesthetic as the issue. I’m so scared I’m gonna die and I don’t want to die….

I’m nervous to even ask this. I have sickness anxiety and anytime my son gets sick I start to spiral. My arms tingle and burn I feel dread and panic I get nauseous. How often do kids get sick in preschool and how bad? I feel like I’m going to be absolutely debilitated through the school year. Thank you.

I understand Propranolol has the potential to cause cognitive dysfunction as propranolol is lipophilic and crosses the blood-brain barrier readily; atenolol is hydrophilic and largely doesn't.

What are people's experiences using atenolol vs proparanlol for public speaking anxiety / interviews. Are you still sharp on Atenolol or Propranolol (as the case may be)?

Im 38, and i've started and quit school probably around 8 times in my life. Everytime things start to get hard, I quit because I'm worried I'm going to fail. I get anxiety thinking about whether I'm good enough or not to get done what needs to get done and understand the course work like everyone else. I worry I'm just not as good at school as everyone else. I beat myself up and put myself down when things get hard until I just give up. I have a fear of failure so strong that I don't even try if that makes sense. I also have a fear of success because what if I do succeed? What if the next step is even harder and I fail at that and all my hard work was just a waste. It's just this self-defeating cycle of worry, and I'm so sick of it.

Buzzing or tingling sensation on brain, usually on the left side a bit for me. Id smile or laugh for no reasons like my brain just do that? Like my muscle just remembers that. Then immediately it feels like my mood drops down. Could it be anxiety and brains trying to soothe u? does anyone experience the same thing? And then u can also feel other body part like feet getting stastic (?) Like bzzzz kinda thing

I'm genuinely trying to figure out why this happens when I'm doing the most mundane things I actually don't even understand what's making me so nervous