[BalishBun]

Anyone else experience a rise in their anxiety upon moving into a new house or apartment? I just moved into my new house and I am having a heck of a time sleeping at night, parcially because im kind of afraid of the dark sometimes, and because its a new place so every little sound I hear I get scared thinking someone is in the house, or someone is outside, etc. AHH I want to get off my Zoloft, but maybe I need time to get used to this new house yet.

[digdug]

I moved into a new apartment early this summer, in a city much larger than the one I was living in previously. Even worse is that my wife isn't able to join me just yet, so we only get to see each other periodically.

I knew this move would be hard, but it's much harder than I expected, so much so that I had to double my dose of clonozepam.

Be careful what you do with your meds right now. Moving is a stressful experience. Good luck.

[thelostone]

been in the new house since april 1, still having new house anxiety. course i am agoraphobic and i still don't feel "at home". it should ease as you get used to the differnt surroundings.

lost

[Schatje]

Yes! Change is hard when you have anxiety. I know plenty of people who have trouble like you are describing without the anxiety disorder though. My problem is that I have a very strong desire for things to be clean and I have to have everything in its place and when you move everything is messed up and rentals are never clean. Ugh! I hope things get easier for you.

[BalishBun]

All of you are right...

I feel at home but yet I dont at the same time. Its hard to explain, but I also think it has to do with the fact that this is the FIRST place of my own, so I am finally officially moving out of my parents house. When I worked at cedar point I lived in the dorms they had between june 2004 to nov 2004, but i didnt develop panic attacks and anxiety until october 2007, so dealing with moving out is a first with anxiety. Yuck! I get this feeling in my chest, and I want to take my inhaler but i have to tell myself that its not the asthma, its the anxiety. And what do you know, when I go back to my parents house that feeling is gone in a second. I really wish anxiety was something i could shake.

[digdug]

I hope you start to feel better soon. I wanted to share something that's happened to me lately that you might want to watch out for. Since I've become more habituated to my environment, I find that I'm experiencing something of a "rebound" anxiety.

I think when you move to a new place, even if it triggers anxiety, your brains still responds in a positive way to the novelty of this new experience, even if you don't feel that consciously because the anxiety is so overpowering. In my case, I was moving to a much larger, more interesting city, so even though I was having all kinds of problems there was still that intriguing aspect to the whole thing.

But as my moving anxiety subsided, the novelty of the move wore off, and in a strange way that caused my anxiety to creep back up again. The big new city I was in suddenly wasn't so interesting anymore (in fact I don't much like the place), and that mild positive affect I described earlier faded away.

Anyway, just want you to keep that in mind, in case you find your mood swings from good to bad again. It's just a tumultuous time, really.

[JimWriter]

This is a great post. 11 years ago when I moved into my current home with my wife, I experienced some serious panic attacks -- something which I really had not expected because I really felt that had been dealing with anxiety quite well. After a while and after saying my serenity prayer probably 50 to 70 times. I was able to relax and recognize that this was beginning of a stressful situation. After about an hour, I'll felt better.

[Sannah]

Hi Balish, I moved a few decades ago and so many things in my life changed. It was really hard to cope but I used that opportunity to really work on my anxiety and get rid of it. Why are we anxious? Because we are not secure. You must have grown up without security (in some form)? You can work on this and become secure and say goodbye to your anxiety.

[Sannah]

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