Stress and Anxiety

[Leesifer]

I am going through a particularly stressful time at the moment and I can't believe the symptoms I have:

Palpitations
Lightheadedness
Headaches
Aches and Pains just everywhere
Numbness in my hands and feet
Muscle tension all across my neck
Vertigo (and I'm only 4' 10")

I will be having an MRI scan next week but the Consultant I saw yesterday tried to assure me that there's nothing drastically wrong - just stress and anxiety. The MRI is for my own peace of mind. Just being told it's stress actually doesn't help.

I really had no idea how much stress could affect body and mind until now!

[Legs]

Leesifer :hug:

The best treatment for stress is to remove the source of it. You need to make some changes in your life!

[TomJoe]

I really had no idea how much stress could affect body and mind until now!

You better believe it. Towards the end of my graduate career, it felt like I had a couple of people sitting on my chest, all the time. From the moment I woke up, to the moment I went to sleep ... my chest felt restricted.

The day I graduated, that feeling went away, and hasn't returned since.

[Leesifer]

I know, Legs. Unfortunately, this particular stress isn't going to go away anytime soon.

I intend to get back to the gym, daily if I can. Once I have the MRI confirmed that there's nothing physically wrong with me, I hope that'll help.

[Legs]

That will help a lot - but in the meantime :hug: again

[Leesifer]

I really had no idea how much stress could affect body and mind until now!

You better believe it. Towards the end of my graduate career, it felt like I had a couple of people sitting on my chest, all the time. From the moment I woke up, to the moment I went to sleep ... my chest felt restricted.

The day I graduated, that feeling went away, and hasn't returned since.

Glad to hear it, TomJoe.

Thing is, I'm not an "ill" person. I don't get ill, so I find it doubly hard because stress/anxiety is such a wishy-washy answer - yet I feel so shit sometimes. I've had panic attacks which I absolutely hate because it's so not me.

[Leesifer]

That will help a lot - but in the meantime :hug: again

Thanks Legs. :glomp2:

[fragment]

Sorry to hear it Lees. :cheerup:

I get stress pretty bad at times. Last year I even had a stress-induced panic attack in the office. I had palpitations and pain down my left arm, and I got my colleagues to call an ambulance in case I was having a heart attack! They did an ECG on me right there in the office, I've got the print-out from it somewhere. I was pretty embarrassed about the false alarm drama afterwards. So yeah, stress can do pretty weird things to mind and body. It's good you're getting the MRI just in case, but all those do sound like stress symptoms to me (disclaimer: I am not a doctor etc etc...).

Hope you can get a chance to relax and put this behind you soon.

[Leesifer]

Sorry to hear it Lees. :cheerup:

I get stress pretty bad at times. Last year I even had a stress-induced panic attack in the office. I had palpitations and pain down my left arm, and I got my colleagues to call an ambulance in case I was having a heart attack! They did an ECG on me right there in the office, I've got the print-out from it somewhere. I was pretty embarrassed about the false alarm drama afterwards. So yeah, stress can do pretty weird things to mind and body. It's good you're getting the MRI just in case, but all those do sound like stress symptoms to me (disclaimer: I am not a doctor etc etc...).

Hope you can get a chance to relax and put this behind you soon.

Thanks fragment. Been there myself. ECG showed nothing. Ooh, I am also going to be fitted with a 48 hour heart monitor because of the palpitations - but again the Consultant said it's mainly for my own peace of mind. Which is great. I do need to put my mind at rest.

[TomJoe]

...

[livius drusus]

Stress is a total fucking bitch. I know what you mean about feeling like it's a bit of a cop-out, but that's just your stiff upper lip talking.

Good luck with your MRI. I've had several and I hated every minute of them. I'm not claustrophobic at all, but lying immobile in a coffin while the Hulk beats on it 100 times a minute was a bit much even for me.

Take care of you. :badday:

[Leesifer]

Stress is a total fucking bitch. I know what you mean about feeling like it's a bit of a cop-out, but that's just your stiff upper lip talking.

Good luck with your MRI. I've had several and I hated every minute of them. I'm not claustrophobic at all, but lying immobile in a coffin while the Hulk beats on it 100 times a minute was a bit much even for me.

Take care of you. :badday:


Thanks liv and thanks all other respondants.

Thing is liv, our GPs and Consultants quite often have the stiff upper lip too!

I hate not being in control of myself. The main part of me knows that it's stress - in fact this forum has done a hell of a lot to help me, if I get distracted enough I forget how shit I'm feeling.

[JoeP]

:hugs: Lees. Remember, stress is nature's way of telling to choke the life out of some arsehole who badly needs it. Or something like that.

[xyza]

Did they try giving you smarties, that's the Doctors solution for everything.

Right now my life is nothing but stress too, and if I ever thought I was stressed before I was so wrong. Two weekends ago I lost my temper with one house mate, and ended up with the contents of the kitchen in my bedroom, I'm talking microwave, pans, crocks, cutlery, the works. All I done to him though was throw dirty tea-towels at him. That's not the actions of a sane person :cuckoo:

Hope everything goes well with the MRI :allglomp:

[JoeP]

And they're giving me a wonderful potion
'Cos I cannot contain my emotion

[Leesifer]

:hugs: Lees. Remember, stress is nature's way of telling to choke the life out of some arsehole who badly needs it. Or something like that.

Did they try giving you smarties, that's the Doctors solution for everything.

Right now my life is nothing but stress too, and if I ever thought I was stressed before I was so wrong. Two weekends ago I lost my temper with one house mate, and ended up with the contents of the kitchen in my bedroom, I'm talking microwave, pans, crocks, cutlery, the works. All I done to him though was throw dirty tea-towels at him. That's not the actions of a sane person :cuckoo:

Hope everything goes well with the MRI :allglomp:


Thank you both. I truly hate feeling like this. So long as the scans show up negative that will go a long way to making me believe it's just stress!

(That previous sentence makes me cringe, to be honest - perhaps liv is right with the stiff upper lip syndrome)

[livius drusus]

/me is definitely right. :nod:

[JoeP]

Stop this "just stress" talk. You still suffer and you still deserve the lemsip, tea and sympathy, and stuff. I was going to say "days off work" but I'm less sure about that. Changing your work - whole job or things about it - is good and positive, but not being able to work is a symptom not a treatment. :waffle:

[Crumb]

Sorry to hear you are feeling bad Leesifer. :hug: Maybe some dancing produce could help?
:tomatod: :mango: :turnip: :rasp: :broccolo: :cucumber: :potato: :pepper: :carrot: :dpickle: :banana: :jalapeno:

[Leesifer]

You're right there, Joe. I love my job. My employers are being absolutely fantastic.

I expect I'd better give the details. I started a thread on Heathen Hangout - which I will now copy and paste to here:

My husband's ex-wife and children live in Melbourne. We decided to visit them January just gone. We flew out from Heathrow on New Years Eve landed in Melbourne on 1st January.

On our fourth day there Bill (hubby) collapsed. He was diagnosed initially with labyrinthitis (inner ear infection). So, we continued our holiday and flew up to the Gold Coast for a week, where he spent the whole time asleep in the apartment.

Once back in Melbourne, we had to have a Doctor's letter for him to fly home.

It turned out they had missed a shadow on his chest in an x-ray taken in Melbourne and a further CT scan showed a shadow on his brain.

We were sent to the Peter Mac hospital in Melbourne and he was diagnosed with lung cancer with a secondary in his brain.

Bill had successful brain surgery in The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne and is now undergoing chemotherapy back home. The last CT scan showed now tumours anywhere else and the lung tumour is shrinking.

The medical staff in Australia and here have been brilliant. We can only keep our fingers crossed that the treatment keeps working!.

Since we've been home, Bill has had chemo and radiotherapy to his lung, which is now in remission but he has another tumour on the brain which we hope can be sorted by a treatment called "gamma knife". If that is the case, and he can have the gamma knife then we can have some sort of normal life again.

(JoeP and fragment, as you know I'm still smoking which I feel totally ashamed of, but stupidly have been advised by Doctors here not to beat myself up about that, due to stress. Ha!)

[Leesifer]

Sorry to hear you are feeling bad Leesifer. :hug: Maybe some dancing produce could help?
:tomatod: :mango: :turnip: :rasp: :broccolo: :cucumber: :potato: :pepper: :carrot: :dpickle: :banana: :jalapeno:

Thanks you ol' Crumble.

[freemonkey]

Oh, Lees, I'm so sorry to hear of your troubles. You're right, your stress isn't going anywhere soon, the best you can probably do right now is try to learn skills to help you better deal with it. :hug:

Getting yourself back to the gym is a great start. Maybe you could take up yoga, or treat yourself to a massage, or just do something nice for yourself.

Have you talked to your docs (or husband's docs?) about stress management?

[Legs]

Maybe some dancing produce could help?
:tomatod: :mango: :turnip: :rasp: :broccolo: :cucumber: :potato: :pepper: :carrot: :dpickle: :banana: :jalapeno:


I don't know if that helped Leesifer.... but it sure made me smile

[viscousmemories]

I'm sorry, Lees. :hug:

[ms_ann_thrope]

I send you good thoughts and wishes and hope the MRI will be negative. I also send good thoughts and wishes for your husband.

On a positive note, at least your symptoms aren't making the doctors think that you need to have a camera shoved up your bum through about 25 feet of your intestines just to have a bit of a lookaround. :stunned:

[Sweetie]

I know what you're going through very well, welcome to the last six months of my life. Thank god things have improved 'cause for awhile there I realized why people die from stress and anxiety. I didn't crack, but I was showing frissures. I don't know if having the kids helped or hindered me in the end. I told a friend something like that stress was such a silent poison and it just hits you all at once.

Anyhoo, it gets better if you do the right things. Find something you enjoy, relax, and yes, I would say get some exercise.

Ask your doctor about vitamin B.

Peace,
Rebecca

[godfry n. glad]

Yeah... Stress.

I'm glad to hear your husband is in remission. You all know my story, and I found that a regular massage does wonders for my back pain, which is my only noticable symptom. I can tell it's stress, 'cause it's in my neck and shoulders.

Good luck with the MRI.

And if it's any consolation, Ms_Ann, I'm due in for an exploratory soon, myself.

[Leesifer]

Thanks again, everyone.

Good luck for your exploratory, godfry. I certainly don't envy that!

[HelenM]

Hi Leesifer,

I'm sorry to hear what you and your husband are going through. :(

If you can manage your thoughts at all it might help bring down your stress level somewhat. I know it’s sometimes necessary to think about stressful things but a lot of the thoughts we have about them tend to fall into the category of ‘useless worrying’. Useless worrying increases our stress level without helping us resolve anything. If you can catch yourself doing that and choose to think about something else it might be helpful.

In my own life I find that I have levels of being stressed, like rungs of a ladder. When I’m on a high one I can’t just jump back down; but I can do things that take me down a rung or two, as it were. When I drive somewhere, or in other downtime, I do my best to relax and let go of stressful thoughts.

I find that fun distraction can really help too – it’s almost like it gives my brain the break it needs. Being with fun friends or watching a funny movie. Maybe even posting to fun people on the Internet…

I know that it can be hard to impossible to change what we’re thinking about. But to the extent you can, it might help with the stress.

Helen

[Fencesitter]

Leesifer,

I'm sorry to hear about your stress. I hope that your husband gets better soon.

Please remember to take very special good care of yourself during this difficult time.

Fence (the daftie) :wave:

[JoeP]

Now I get the angle, Lees; family not work. Escaping's not even an option. I'm sorry again ... more :hug:

Don't stress about the stress - that's an order. You must try really hard not to worry about things. :wink:

[Sweetie]

Anybody else have anymore tips on how to deal with stress, what one can expect to go through, etc? I find that this happens to alot of people, that if other people know exactly what to expect, they might know better how to deal, if they know what else others are going through they can identify.

I actually wanted to share some of my discoveries, things that worked in my life, for that end.

I wanted to say that stress can be good or bad. Perhaps it's not a question of whether it is or is not, it's a question of how much we are able to cope with anything, and why at some times we can cope better than others.

I find too that stress is a vicious circle. On the one hand, we need stress and conflict to fuel the drive to survive, I think, and the will to live. On the other hand, it can reduce the will to live and the drive to survive.

I found that I dealt with more stress in the past in large doses and coped better than I've been able to deal with technically less stress within the last few months. It's not a question of degree, it's a question, as always of physical health and mental state, I think. There's also the idea of consistency. You can handle one thing or another several times, but repetitively, it wears you down.

I know a woman with five kids and a whole bunch of shit in her life, ex-husband, new husband, kids with ADD, etc., etc. She coped, she managed, she got by until one day, she literally was going crazy. Her seratocin levels were so low that she had her death planned and she was going to do it. The only thing that prevented that is that she let her husband know in one way or the other, and he stopped her. She was hospitalized for months.

So, in that sense, she let it get so bad without taking other measures that she just collapsed. I personally think that had she been taking better precautions throughout and took better care of herself, things would not have gotten that bad. When things get that bad, recovery takes way longer, etc. Granted, I think she was prone to some mental problems to begin with, but just not like that.

[Sweetie]

So, little things that I think can help along the way.

1) Be aware of your physical health. Sometimes you could have muscular issues which cause mental stress.

My muscles for instance, because I was using the wrong muscles for regular activities, my muscles would fatigue really fast. They would cord and knot up all the time.

So, massage helped though I had an underlying problem which is being corrected by physiotherapy.

Hot baths with epsom salts.

A recognition of the muscles you are purposefully tensing. For instance, I would clench my jaw a few years ago, when I went to sleep and through most of the night. I was stressed, I clenched my jaw which caused my muscles to hurt which caused headaches and migraines which caused me to be more stressed. I had to consciously stop clenching my jaw. Time and attention, and I have successfully done that.

Breathing, however, I think is the biggest one. We clench our stomaches, our diaphrams, all those muscles and we're fatiguing them. We only recognize that that's sometimes the problem after we stop.

Recognize that we carry our emotions usually in our backs. I carry my tension mostly in my neck and shoulders.

2) vitamins and eating right. My chiropractor said that Calcium is nature's tranquilizer, and that it would help with knotting and tensing muscles. Vitamin B helps the body cope with stress. I took vitamin C. However, one of these was upsetting my stomach and I don't take these vitamins anymore, I try to get this stuff from the foods I eat. Just to say, ask your doctor about these vitamins, if the could help.

Get some sun.

3) Don't be afraid to ask for help. Take help if you need it, because sometimes you really do need it, even if it puts someone else out. You put them out less taking a break than if you are utimately unable to do anything for a period of time.

4) There are medications that can help. I was on the verge of going to the doctor with the admittance that I couldn't cope or get through this alone without the help of some medication designed for the purpose of helping people through stuff like that.

I personally don't prefer that route because some medications are worse than the disease, some create a dependence, etc. I tried what I could to manage on my own. I think I've succeeded, but one drop more and I would have had to go and I would've gone.

5) Fun. Find people who can bring an element of lightness and fun to your life.

6) Distraction. Recognize that a certain amount of stagnation leads to conscious thinking. Sometimes when we are busy and distracted we let our subconscious take over, and we find that after we have, we are fine.

[Leesifer]

Agreed with all the above, Sweetie.

I am now having physiotherapy for knots in my shoulders and necks, which are the probably cause of my lightheadedness.

I also clench my jaw when I'm asleep, again causing my strange headaches.

Of course, that makes a viscious circle because these cause more stress because it makes you feel you have something very seriously wrong.

[Leesifer]

Now I get the angle, Lees; family not work. Escaping's not even an option. I'm sorry again ... more :hug:

Don't stress about the stress - that's an order. You must try really hard not to worry about things. :wink:

Thanks Joe.

.. and

:yessir:

[HelenM]

Hi Sweetie,

It's interesting to me to read your list of what has helped you - it's a great list. Many of the same things work for me too.

I'd add that sleep - even though it can be hard to sleep when you're stressed - is important too. Serotonin, which helps us feel calm and peaceful, is made while we sleep, so lack of sleep causes our levels of it to be low.

I think distraction works because it 'unsticks' our [conscious] brains and gives them a rest. I read something about how the brains of obsessive-compulsive people work which says they are like cars that can get stuck in gear. Distraction 'unsticks' them. Thankfully I'm not obsessive-compulsive, but I can obsess nevertheless, and the concept of my brain getting 'stuck' in obsess-mode sometimes makes sense to me.

Helen

[Sweetie]

My son is going through a "I'm difficult, nothing is good enough for me, I don't like this, I don't like that" phase.

:sadcheer:

My girls, they never done this to me. I only have to deal with backtalk and crap when they're thirteen to fifty, but my son is just never satisfied! Nothing is good enough. I used to be good enough for him, but now nothing is!

Leesifer, can this become a bitch and moan thread? :yup:

[Sweetie]

Of course, that makes a viscious circle because these cause more stress because it makes you feel you have something very seriously wrong.

Bah, don't believe it, you know it's not true. The only thing you have wrong is that you're stressed and the only thing that's going to cure it is time and lightness. You know how they say that it hurts in order to heal? That things get worse before they get better? Sometimes I find that when I coped and just managed through really stressful situations, sometimes there will be backlash. I felt less stressed then because I was just getting by, my body was on survival mode and then, when it returns back to normal, even the process of healing is tiring. One day if you do the right things, you'll wake up and you'll realize that you're so much better.

In the army they take stress management, at least I heard. At work they make sure that everybody knows they have access to free therapy, people who will help people manage stress and other life difficulties. Ever heard of post-traumatic stress, etc?

There's nothing bad wrong, it's just........stress. It happens to everybody at one time or another. If you're looking around thinking others don't have to go through this, it's just you, don't believe it.

Look around at all the people who drink too much, who find other things to fill holes in their lives? Some of it is just because they can, some people are bored, others do it to distract because they can't really deal with their lives.

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." - Thoreau

Some things in life are really hard, it's stressful. What doesn't kill ya only makes you stronger. I do believe this.

To me though, I've never had to go through this without hope. If I had no hope, I think I might've sunk into a real depression, but for me, hope springs eternal. I don't know why I guess, perhaps it's just something I truly believe, that there's always hope, always a silver lining.

[Sweetie]

We live in a world of escapism. Our whole Western lives is bound up in escaping from our lives. It's insane though to a point, it's almost as if sometimes we have to escape the escapism. Many people these days don't even know what real life is and aren't reared to cope with it.

The point? People build up these ways to escape for a reason, because life really is hard, life really is stressful, we all have so much stress.