I gave up caffeine to help w my anxiety/panic attacks, and it’s been great so far. However, I loooove the taste of coffee so I occasionally treat myself to a decaf latte or even like a quarter cup of coffee (like maybe 3oz just a couple sips). However, MY ANXIETY GOES THROUGH THE ROOF???? 😭😭😩 Is this me being a hypochondriac and it’s just placebo??? I’m barely drinking any caffeine.
Remember that caffeine won't kill you. I am SUPER sensitive to it too and I always drink it and it makes me feel horrible but I know I'm safe. It's how we respond to the sensations not the caffeine.
@Smiley35 Seriously! The way my breathing has been haunting me these past few hours…It really does give me the worst delirium. But chances are I’m reacting more so to the IDEA of panicking from caffeine than the caffiene itself 😂
I used to also avoid coffee, even though before I had my big flare up, I would drink it everyday! It did become a compulsion avoiding it, because I wanted to avoid the anxious feeling, so I began to drink it again, my therapist guided me through it! 😊
@AnonymityK THIS. This was a little mind-blowing, I think this is what’s happening. I’ve had a huge battle w somatic OCD since my panic attacks began and coffee became a trigger….Chances are my OCD is flaring up out of fear rather than from the caffeine….I’ll need to look into this more! Tysm!!!
@Chibee Glad it helped! I’m not sure if you have a therapist, but mine was really helpful in figuring out what was OCD and what was just my mind overanalyzing everything. It can be so hard to tell the difference between a real concern and a compulsion. If you do have a therapist, maybe reaching out to them could help bring some clarity! 😊
I can’t have caffeine due to my breathing issues and some of the decaf things I drink can still give me a bit of a reaction especially decaf coffee, it’s because they can’t completely remove the caffeine 100%, So if you make decaf super strong, you’re still getting some caffeine , and yes my OCD gets crazy with caffeine too :/
@Jesuslovesme777 I have breathing issues too!!!! It’s what triggers most of my panic attacks. Ughhhh you’re probably right—-I heard the caffeine content in decaf drinks was practically insignificant but it’s still probably enough to send me over my limit. 🥲 I may have to just go completely cold turkey
@Chibee What you can do is just have a little bit of that decaf coffee everyday and build your tolerance for it slowly and safely :)
@Jesuslovesme777 I will have to try this🥹thank you
Hey there! We actually have an article about this on our website that I think might be helpful to you: https://www.treatmyocd.com/blog/coffee-and-mental-health Let me know what you think!
@Deborah Ward Thank you so much!! 🥹 It was a valuable read—sounds like I’ll have to manage my intake and resulting symptoms and gauge where to go from there. Appreciate it!!
@Chibee - No problem! I know that caffeine definitely impacts my anxiety as well. Of course everyone is different, so figuring out what works for you can be a bit of a challenge. Let me know if you have any other questions I can help with!
I am trying to see if there are others like me. For the past 12 years, I’ve had crippling Anxiety that leads to intense panic attacks. I’ve been in and out of Ambulances and ER rooms and have called 911 several times. The panic is that intense. I can be just driving down the road and out of no where, BOOM! Hit by the anxiety bus. Most of the time it leads to me panicking, thinking I’m going to die or something is fatally wrong with me. The fear is so intense that I can only find a fraction of calmness by consistently checking my blood pressure, putting on a pulsometer and even checking my blood sugar until it passes. I’m not even a diabetic. I’m always having intrusive thoughts that doctors can’t even fix me. I’ve never met anyone else like me. I feel so scared sometimes that I’m going to loose my mind and that I’m going crazy and will end up in a straight jacket. Then I get another attack just thinking about that as well. Starting new medications freak me out too. If I experience ANY minor side effect, I immediately panic and freak out. I’m being so held back by this . This is a constant obsession that I can’t shake. It’s like I walk hand in hand with Anxiety and panic. Anyone else ever had these issues?
Ugh. So I’ve been having some stomach issues for about two or three months now. I started seeing a naturopathic doctor who ran some tests and put me on a restrictive diet. The stool test she gave me revealed that I have high levels of a pathogen called Aeromonas caviae. I was kind of relieved to find this out since it finally gave me some answers to my issue. That was about 3 weeks ago. Last Friday I got my food sensitivity results back which revealed that I have some mild problem with gluten, dairy, egg whites, and other random foods. They were all low-level igG sensitivities though. Again, I was kind of relieved to receive the results at first because it helped me better understand what might be going on with my stomach. I was good for about a day. I even had one of the foods that I’m “mildly sensitive” to and had no issues. I remember eating with my husband after getting the results and telling him that I was happy and that these results were “tolerable.” That was until I visited my mom on Saturday night. I decided to tell my mom about my food sensitivity results and she just had a reaction that kind of set me off for some reason. I’m not even entirely sure why it set me off because her reaction wasn’t overly dramatic or anything. She was more just shocked and made the comment “well what can you eat then?!” I immediately got super anxious after this. I started thinking maybe I wasn’t taking the results seriously enough and that I should be more concerned. I started doing research about food allergies and it’s all been downhill since then. That night I could hardly sleep. I kept waking up every couple of hours because I was just super anxious. The next day I cooked and ate a breakfast meal that I had the day before and was perfectly fine with. Except this time I noticed that the back of my hand started burning and itching a bit. I put some creme on and took a nap and by the time I woke up I felt better. Then again later in the evening my husband and I meal prepped for the week and ate dinner. After eating I noticed the same thing was happening but on the back of my foot. It went away after a while but I started going down the rabbit hole of “what ifs.” I started wondering if maybe I was having a mild allergic reaction to the food I ate. The next morning I ate the same breakfast and brought my meal prepped lunch. I was fine all day until I started driving home and had the itching again. I got home and was super worried. My ears and throat got a little itchy. I was going to eat dinner but I was too afraid that I was having an allergic reaction to my breakfast or lunch. Yesterday I ate the same breakfast with no issues and brought my lunch. While I was eating my lunch I noticed that my mouth was burning a bit. I did have jalapeños and a salsa in my food but the burning felt different than usual. I started to get super hot and my face was burning and getting a little flushed. I spiraled for much of the rest of the work day thinking I had an allergic reaction/I have a food allergy that I’m unaware of. I ate a snack when I got home and again, it felt like my mouth was burning a bit. Now I cant stop focusing on how my mouth feels and if it’s burning or not. I ate the same breakfast this morning and it felt like it was burning a bit but I cant tell what’s real and what’s psychosomatic.
For the past three years I've smoked marijuana nearly everyday. It helped with my anxiety and quieting my brain and helped me sleep. Recently, it began to make me feel more anxious, i would wake up nauseous and even threw up a couple of times which really triggered some health anxiety. I decided to quit because of this and i'm almost 2 weeks out from the last time I smoked. My body is slowly recovering but my brain just doesn't seem to quit it. I went to my GP a couple of weeks ago for a routine checkup and everything came back normal in my blood work and exam, yet that hasn't stopped me from completely obsessing over my health and feeling like (in my mind, not my body) i'm seriously ill- which is giving me extreme anxiety. Because of my reoccurring stomach issues my GP referred me to a GI who I had an appointment with yesterday. He was very unimpressed by everything I said and seemed like everything is pointing to IBS-which is not serious and something my mother also deals with. He ordered some extra tests to make sure I wasn't dealing with inflammation and he said he was very confident that my internal vital organs were a completely fine. I'm still waiting on those test results and his confidence should I have made me feel better but i'm still freaking out. Everybody in my life is tired of hearing about it and I just don't know what to do anymore. I feel like i'm pushing people away. I feel good and like myself when I'm distracted and doing something fun, but mornings and nights and when i'm doing something mundane it's the worst. I feel like I can feel all of these pains and sensations but I have no idea if it's real. I've even started asking Chatgpt for constant reassurance and constantly googling my symptoms. I'm in a horrible loop. I should mention that on top of quitting weed, I also just graduated college, moved back home and my boyfriend and I started the longest period of long distance we've ever had to do so i'm just not feeling like myself at all. My psychiatrist just put me on Zoloft (my vomiting and intense anxiety coincided with when i began taking Prozac again so she wanted me to try something else) I'm only on day 3 of the meds but nausea and insomnia are the two side effects im dealing with right now which is just making my anxiety so much worse before the meds have even kicked in. Does anyone have advice on how to break this cycle of constant checking-i feel like taking a deep breath has even turned into a compulsion.
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