TW health anxiety symptoms, etc

hi! i’m lyndsey. i’m 22, and im struggling. about 4 years ago, i had my first panic attack - not an anxiety attack, a true, severe panic attack and it was on a plane. it made me physically sick (i get extremely nauseous) which then lead me to have health anxiety/ health ocd, agoraphobia. after struggling - at the time - i started medication, zoloft to be exact at 50mg. i have done great for the last 4 years. rarely any anxiety at all, no thoughts of health concerns, panic attacks quit. i thought i beat it. i lived my life and enjoyed it so much i even moved to a new city, alone! new york!!!!!! then, weirdly, i had a panic attack about 3 months ago now. i’m not sure why it happened, where it stemmed from. but since, i have completely gone in a spiral. back to googling, i’ve went to the ER twice now just this month. i’ve been housebound *mostly bed bound because im so full of fear. and the physical symptoms don’t help the health anxiety / ocd at all. obviously. my zoloft is not helping anymore, my doctor tried to put me up to 75mg, still not a budge. i’m now taking 50mg hydroxyzine, every 6 hours as needed. i take it twice a day mostly because i have a panic attack almost every morning and every night. i can’t sleep. i have the worst insomnia. i try tea, i try to meditate, nothing is really helping. any tips???? anyone else have severe physical symptoms? *headache for days / weeks (head pressure, head pains) *neck pain (like my head is too heavy) *dizziness / vertigo *fatigue *not wanting to eat *jaw pain *arm tingles, leg numbness *nausea *shaking, trembling, buzzing in body? *hot then cold then hot then cold (body temp not regulating) *heavy chest *etc.

emily_m13

Date posted: Yesterday

hi lyndsey! i’m so sorry to hear about what you’re going through, it really seems like a lot. i used to get panic attacks a lot and i know how scary and draining it is to experience them. sometimes they come up randomly without any good reason. you don’t need to figure out why they come up. i think trying to figure out why it happened could possibly me making you more anxious because there’s no definitive way to know. your brain will always want more and more certainty even though there’s is none. have you tried exposure therapy before? it sounds like you’re doing great things to manage general anxiety but what has really worked for me is facing the things i’m afraid of even when i don’t feel like it. you don’t have to like what you’re afraid of but you can prove to yourself that you can handle it. if you’re struggling to go outside maybe you can go get the mail or sit on your porch for a few minutes and let the anxiety rise and fall. then eventually you can progress to activities that would have once been too scary but now you can handle!

Raven_

Date posted: 18h

I would definitely relay this all to your med provider but it sounds like you would benefit more from propranolol than hydroxyzine. It can help a lot with the physical symptoms. Definitely see what you can do to prioritize good sleep. Sleep deprivation is only going to make all these things exponentially worse. Propranolol is pretty well tolerated medication and has a lot less negative risks than stepping all the way up to benzodiazepines. Everyone’s mileage is different but for anything other than very mild anxiety I’ve never found hydroxyzine to be very helpful. I only ever use it for sleep now

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TW *health anxiety symptoms, etc*

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TW health anxiety symptoms, etc