Kevroeques

[elbee]

Wow, that's quite the update. One thing is for sure, when I'm in pain or discomfort it sucks and I just want it to stop. So I try as hard as I can to figure out what's wrong (or what's right) to try and "control" it. This a natural response no doubt, right? AND I know that at least sometimes my struggling seems to make it worse. It's like if the primary issues weren't bad enough, I pile on more by struggling. Does this make sense? There have been a few times where I feel like I've found the right balance of trying to understand what I can do to take care of myself without getting swept away into deeper waters.

 

These challenges we are all facing can be so awful. I'm sorry you're suffering Kev.

[Kevroeques]

Like I said, I use my updates to vent.  I tend to write a lot in order to get the steam out

 

As for what you said, I completely agree.  Most of us are natural problem solvers.  If we cut ourselves, we clean and dress the wound.  If we bump our heads, we rub it to make it feel better.  If we're uncomfortable, we shift until we feel good. If we have an apparent physical illness, we seek help from professionals who can help us identify what's wrong and treat it.  What do we do when medical professionals can't identify what we're going through, or can't see it?  What do we do when they lump us into groups of "disorders" based on our symptoms rather than try to identify the cause of these symptoms?  What do we do when they don't believe us, or think we're overreacting?  Worse yet, what do we do when they medicate us based on broad symptoms, miss the mark, and the meds do nothing or make us worse?

 

Many doctors are trained to pretend we're overreacting, that it's all in our heads.  That doesn't make our problems go away, or have any less of an impact on out lives.  That leaves it up to us to get to the root of the problem.  The problem is, when we can't find it, we can become obsessed.  I, like most people with any problems similar to ours, tend to fall into this trap too often.

 

Part of the problem is that my life has been so disabled for so long (roughly a full year, not counting the prior 2 years where I had sporadic panic attacks that were controllable and barely impacted my life) that I wouldn't really enjoy it any more if I wasn't constantly brainstorming, researching and visiting specialists with new questions and points of view.  It gives me more hope to feel like I'm working toward a solution then to just fall back and do nothing.

 

That seems like a dangerous thought, but I have had small successes.  Just so much has fallen apart in these past few months that I'm accruing new messes while I'm cleaning the old ones.  I've somehow eradicated my panic attacks in these past few weeks.  It may be the tons of magnesium glycinate I've been taking, or the vitamin D the doctor told me I needed.  It may be the DLPA I decided to try or the vitamin C superdoses I took for a few weeks alternating days after I read about how important it is for adrenal health.  It may be the few days I experimented with inositol (which I plan on continuing), or the fact that I quit smoking cold turkey a 2 months ago (even though I've just recently started to notice withdrawal, which sounds more like a stressor to me).  I have no clue- but I feel I've done it without the help of the medical industry, who has largely done nothing for me besides rule out major issues like cardiac health and such.  Any credit toward the eradication of my panic attacks goes to me in my effort to research and experiment with different vitamins and supplements, or to God for the miracle I've been praying for months for.  Now my problem lies in quite a bit of residual fatigue with brain fog/derealization/depersonalization/drunk-brain or whatever you want to call it with the resultant drunk vision, which I'm hoping are due to whatever my digestive/gut issues are (I'm seeing a gastroenterologist in September).  If I can fix this, I know I can restart my life without missing a beat, regardless of how disabled and hopeless I feel every day lately- the depression and anxiety are conditional and would melt away in a day.

 

To keep yourself from obsessing in an unhealthy manner, you must be able to accept your symptoms to a certain degree.  You have to know that if you are completely unwilling to experience them, they will be there, and they will get you full force.  It's impossible to WANT harsh feelings, but acceptance comes in part from knowing this but still cognitively inviting them, observing them, and allowing yourself to feel them in detail.  It's hard to describe, but if you can master it, it helps.  It won't take them away and won't make tasks any easier, but it will help you deal with them when you are at ease and COULD otherwise relax.  This is a problem I had for a while- every free moment was spent laboring over the thought of how I felt.  I stopped watching movies or even playing videogames for a few weeks- every waking moment would be spent online researching my symptoms, what could cause them, who else had them, how they may have helped themselves, etc.  After I learned to accept them a bit, I felt much better and a little more hopeful.  The problem is that doctors will NOT look into your symptoms.  They will see you are in perfect physical health, and they will not look deeper- especially if you have been labeled as anxious- because that would take detailed work that is concentrated on you as an individual instead of as a machine made of meat.  Your daily panic attacks may hurt more than a heart attack, your mental stress from anxiety may be more intense than the flu- but a doctor can't see this physically so they won't do anything.  They'll throw pills at you because it's the only thing the manual says to do.

 

I've read of some people healing suddenly.  I've only had panic attacks since 2013, and (knock on wood) they're gone.  When they were at their worst, I started getting fatigue, which I still have, and depersonalization/drunk brain, which I still have.  I hope I fit into the category of people who somehow get thrown out of balance suddenly fairly late in life, and just as suddenly become rebalanced at some point.