Hi everyone,
I'm 33 years old and have suffered with anxiety most of my life. I can remember my first sleep away from home when I was in 6th grade and spending the entire night before throwing up in the bathroom and begging my parents to let me stay home from the overnight school camping trip. Throughout my life I've always had "bouts" that would come out of nowhere and totally disrupt my life. My whole body would get tingly and a wave of nausea would come over me-my stomach would start doing flips and then the mind racing set in (for me, the worst part) "What if this feeling never goes away? What if I never get better? What if I end up in a mental hospital? What if it gets so bad that I contemplate taking my own life?" The what ifs taunted me for days until slowly the episode would dissipate. Then for a week or so I felt like I had an anxiety attack "hangover" Not totally panicked but just left feeling depleted. For the years I was on birth control I recall the "attacks" being very few and far between. In the year I was off birth control and my husband and I were trying to conceive all of my time and energy was spent working or thinking about fertility. Again, attacks few and far between. Then...I gave birth to our little guy. I haven't been the same since. I suffered from some post partum depression and never got help. Then as the months went on and the attacks crept back in ten fold I started noticing they would occur in the days before my period and the week of. Then slowly dissipate leaving me feeling pretty good the rest of the month. Every month-it's clockwork. It's been two years of this battle and I feel like I've lost out on so much enjoyable time with my new little family. I'm plagued by anxiety and fears that it will never go away and I will never get better. I want to expand our family and give my son a sibling but I'm so petrified of getting worse. I want to feel human again I miss my old life of feeling good MOST of the time with just a couple episodes a YEAR. Now if I go a day and feel good I consider myself lucky. Just looking for some support, someone who can relate, any success stories. Something...