THURSDY,
I find your post very interesting as I can relate to it 100%. Back in December I was having what you would call the "text book case anxiety attack". I had the racing heart beat, sweating, numbness in my arms and so on. Day after day the physical symptoms of this anxiety would disipate until eventually all I was dealing with was the mental aspect of the panick attacks such as, fear of dying, fear of losing control and the biggest and scariest one, fear of going crazy. I still struggle with this nearly everyday, however, I currently take meds for this and the fear has become less intense for me but by no means has it gone away. The reason why I find your post so interesting is because I told my pdoc at my last visit that I thought I had schizophrenia because I was having more mental symptoms then the physical ones. My pdoc told me that I have ****severe**** anxiety and in my case I have developed a phobia of "going crazy". She assured me that this was an actual phobia as I was reluctant to beleive what she was telling me. Like I said I was sure I had more then the depression, anxiety and OCD that I was diagnosed with. I have read the signs and symptoms of schizophrenia and I do not have any of the symptoms. Sometimes I try to convince myself that I do but I dont. I do have paranoid feeling from time to time and those usually come from my fear of going insane. My pdoc actually wants to add a very low dosage of an anti-psychotic med that it supposed to help tremendously with anxiety in addition to the effexor xr i currently take. I don't mean to babble on but I wanted you to know that I know exactly how you feel because I have been there and until now, I thought I was alone. Please feel free to send me a pm if you would like to chat. I would be really interested in chatting with you. Please take care of yourself. My warmest thoughts for peace of mind are with you.