I have Generalised Anxiety Disorder, I was diagnosed a year back but I've had since I was about 16. I just worry about the stupidest things. If my boyfriend is 5 minutes late for something I instantly think he has gotten into a car accident. I went to Bristol shopping today with my friend (I'm from South Wales) and the bus was an hour late (heavy traffic) and I was worrying like crazy. I was just thinking I wouldn't be able to get home. I'm on anti-depressants but they don't seem to be doing much anxiety-wise

Just wondering if anyone here is in the same boat. Just nice to know we're not alone in this.

I've had it since I was 16 when I was diagnosed, I guess it's a popular age to develop it. I'm 30 now and I just wanted to say that it won't always have a hold on you. Mine was bad BAD bad when I was your age. I ended up going home school because I got such bad agoraphobia and I was so afraid of dying I would hardly leave my bed. I did go on antidepressants, but if you're open to it I'd look at more natural remedies. Antidepressants, while helpful, can have unpleasant side effects when you're in that age range. Then again you don't even have to go on medicine.

Do you have panic attacks? Try this trick I learned. If you start feeling like you're having one, look back and forth like your eyes are watching a tennis match, but don't move your head. Can only focus on one thing at a time and usually, for me, it'll make the panic attack go away. If it doesn't.. try it again. The worst feeling about panic attacks is feeling like they won't stop, but they do. Your body can't keep up that rush of adrenaline so it'll taper off.

I went from having panic attacks daily and having to be on antidepressants.. to going on natural supplements like 5-HTP (daily) and taking a tart cherry when I feel really nervous to .. nothing. I only have panic attacks when I wake up from REM sleep and when I do. I deal.

You are not alone

You're certainly not alone, I have anxiety too and though I think not exactly like yours, I know how frustrating it is. My body and mind freaks out every time I'm doing something new, like going somewhere I've never been before, having to do a test I don't know exactly how it's going to be, and especially meeting new people, and people can tell since I have a body that can't hide emotions and get extremely blushed when embarrassed and veiny when mad for example, I'm always moving my legs when sitting and that bothers some people, and also I spend far too much time worrying about the most stupid things, it's exhausting.

A while ago I just figured I should accepted it as part of my life, it's tough, but it's there and it's not going away, so I decided I would do my best to not let it get in my way. When I see an opportunity to talk to someone I find interesting for example I just do it now, you can clearly tell I'm nervous and for the most part it's an awkward conversation because I can't really think of many things to say because I'm freaking out, but I've met some really cool people I certainly wouldn't have if I had overthought it and given up on it like I was always used to do.
I guess what I'm trying to say is yes, it's an obstacle, but no, it won't stop you from doing whatever you want to do, if you don't let it.

And I just realised you haven't even asked for advice but now I've already written all of that so yeah it's there in case you needed it.

Believe me, you certainly belong amongst a community of worriers. I was diagnosed with GAD and Social Anxiety Disorder when I had just turned 15. This summer will mark 2 years on medication and knowing my psychiatrist for both those as well as depression.
You'd be surprised how many people have anxiety disorders and don't even know it- It was some crazy x in y ratio I read somewhere a little while back

[Trigger Warning] My anxiety just makes me incredibly sick. Put me near my biggest trigger- which has been the boathouse where I row -and I'll suddenly have almost every physical symptom possible. Shaky hands, a churning stomach, a lack of words, chattering teeth, clenching my fists, pounding heart rate, a fear of impending doom...the list goes on.

Luckily I've been taking medication as well as going to regular therapy sessions, and it's definitely taken off the edge for my GAD and depression. Recently (as in the past month or two) I've made it my goal to do more exercise. It's really been helping, despite how much I loathe activity.
Unfortunately, my social anxiety still remains a huge part of my life. I'm working on managing it though. It's one step at a time towards recovery. :~)

I haven't had a full-blown panic attack for about a year luckily. It's just the constant thoughts for me I used to be really socially anxious too but I'm improving a lot there. I just kind of give up caring about what random people think of me. My sister is heavily pregnant at the moment and I'm also worrying something will go wrong with the baby even though her scans and everything have come back fine.

Thanks guys <3 This is just something not many people talk about

I've never been diagnosed with anything, though I'm pretty sure if I had to talk to a therapist, they would diagnose me as such. I don't really see any point in being diagnosed though.
I've always been very shy and over-thinking everything, but when I started to get friends who cared about me a lot and were really fun to be around, it started to go away for a while. I've still never taken a bus on my own in case it crashes or in case I have to sit next to a stranger or like a million other things that could possibly go wrong but didn't. But at least I bought my own things from the shops, walked places far away on my own, occasionally took trains on my own (Don't ask why I could take trains but not buses. I don't know) etc.

Then when I moved off to uni it kicked in really bad. I'm not sure if it was that my Mum died or the new environment, but now I get scared about everything. If my boyfriend is late home I immediately assume something terrible has happened (even though every time he comes home late it's always "sorry they needed extra staff for a bit" because he works in a café that's often short of staff on Saturdays). I don't tend to leave the house on my own unless I'm meeting up with someone or I'm going to class, for various reasons. Especially if I have to go somewhere I've never (or barely) been before, or if I have to talk to someone I don't know (e.g. cashiers - they're the worst because I get super paranoid that I don't have enough money. I took £16 with me yesterday when I was buying a smootie and a kfc wrap). I also get a lot of sleep paralysis and nightmares since moving to university. Some aren't that bad, but some are utterly terrifying.

I try my hardest to push myself through these situations though, I've made good acquaintances with most of my class (of 110) and when I worked I made friends with most of my colleagues even though I was only working there for 3 weeks. I guess it's more about what you priorities. I can push myself really hard to do things that I see as important, but not so important things like getting a bus up to university instead of walking (some of my classes are 'up a hill, up a hill, up another hill') I tend to avoid, which doesn't really help.

Not exactly the same, but I've got vaguely similar problems. I have relatively severe OCD and some kind of tic disorder (maybe Tourette's—definitely something similar; the diagnosis was vague). It's been better since I've been on SSRIs, but before… the physical symptoms aren't so similar to yours (though they're pretty annoying in their own way—gotta touch that doorframe in just the right spot if I'm gonna let myself go through it), but the psychological symptoms… ouch. I've had panic attacks before, I had mildly suicidal dysthymia when I was younger, and yes, I am constantly worrying about something. When I was younger, it was storms and space aliens. Every bump in the night was the aliens coming to steal me away. Every slightly grey cloud meant we were all going to die in an F5 tornado. When I got older… oh boy. Puberty sucked. Coming of age in a culture that simultaneously demonises and romanticises sexuality… Every time I had a remotely sexual thought, I panicked and thought I was an evil, terrible person. My mother, bless her heart, had an endless supply of patience for my irrational panicking. So, yeah. Puberty stunk. After that, I went through a phase where I worried that every mildly bad thing I'd ever done, no matter how insignificant, meant I was an evil criminal. And then, after that was (mostly) over, I got into college, where I had to take a philosophy class… yeah, not even gonna go there. The point is, I understand, and you have my sympathy.

Unfortunately, mental illness is still heavily stigmatized in almost all parts of the world- However, it's improved ten-fold since, at least, the 20th century.
Life with anxiety, depression, or any mental illness is viewed in such a different light by society. Granted, it's not a physical illness (although they all have a share of physical symptoms,) but rather a psychological one that can't easily be detected. Nonetheless, I can't give the excuse "I didn't finish my homework because last night I had a panic attack since I have an anxiety disorder." But if I said "I didn't finish my homework because last night I sprained my ankle," the teacher would wave it off and accept it the next day.
There have been plenty of days this school year where I hadn't done my work because I was having a bad day with my depressive thoughts. But if I told that to my teacher,
they'd give me some of that BS advice like "stop feeling sorry for yourself" or "just take a chill pill, you're fine" and a weary look.

The funny thing is that mental illness is so stigmatized and so taboo; yet 1 in 4 people will experience mental illness at some point in their life.

I think I also suffer from Generalized Anxiety Disorder, so I know what you're dealing with, @itsamariokart. Fortunately, I've never had a panic attack, but I get really nervous when I have to speak in front of a group.

I also hate it when people assume that when you mention your mental illness, you're just "asking for attention" when you really aren't. The way I see it, you're mentioning it because it's something you're dealing with on a daily basis, and by telling them, you're just letting them know what to do in certain situations, like what to do if you have a panic attack or if you forget to take your medicine or something.

@Graveyard Snowflake, I'd love to present a project or speak in front of people for you! If there's anything more contradictory in my life, it's that despite my social anxiety disorder, I LOVE speaking in front of audiences and presenting things.

I also have generalized anxiety disorder. I'm always worrying about myself or others dying in car crashes, getting illnesses, etc. It's better now that I'm on antidepressants (SSRIs). I tried going down on my antidepressant and it was really bad...I was freaking out about everything, thinking everyone was judging me (I already think that, but it was worse than usual). I've only had 2 panic attacks but they're not fun...both of mine lasted for quite a long time. I have OCD too but it's pretty much eliminated with my antidepressant. But I used to have "rituals" of touching things and such, and I'd have to wash my hands for a long time and wash dishes three times each.

I don't know much about generalized anxiety disorder specifically, but dealing with anxiety has been a common thing since I was 13 years old.

Lately, I have been having anxieties of being yelled at by my mother because she said I was a "walking disaster in the kitchen", which led to me not eating regularly and in effect, having blood sugar crashes interlaced with the anxiety of being told not to eat my parents' food.

Long story short, even though I'm 27, I am not friends with my mother.

The anxieties of living with my parents is reason enough to want to pass out at the table at dinner.

Thanks everybody <3 Sorry to hear about what's going on with you guys I've recently discovered that my anxiety is more than likely down to my Ehlers Danlos Syndrome:

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/ehlers...troduction.aspx

http://www.dynakids.org/Documents/hypermobility.pdf (page 10)

So, yes I am a medical disaster -____-

*hugs itsamariokart* Don't worry - at least you don't require surgery. Both me and my little sister had surgeries for two different things. It sucks.

I actually need surgery on my jaw soon I have an overbite and it also clicks a lot when I'm eating. I sometimes get pain in it too. I can't open my mouth all that wide.

I'm not dying or anything though so I should remain more positive <3

Sorry to hear about you and your sister

We're fine now - my sister needed surgeries for a craniofacial issue. Me? Chiari Malformation - here's some info on what that is. Fortunately, neither of us have any surgeries planned anytime soon.

I have never been diagnosed with anything, but I have ridiculous amounts of anxiety, stress, and depression. I have so much social anxiety, I would never be brave enough to even see a therapist or psychiatrist in the first place to get diagnosed.
I worry continuously, so much that it manifests itself with physical symptoms. In WebMD under symptoms of stress, I literally have every. single. one. of those symptoms. Then I worry about what if they're not all psychosomatic and I really have something? Then I need to start a nightmare of seeing many doctors, specialists, and tests, and surgeries, all of which is so very paralyzingly terrifying to me because I have an extremely intense medical-anything phobia. So I pretty much worry all the time, constantly. I get panic attacks too. I don't sleep well and wake up with my heart pounding and sweaty quite a bit.
My social anxiety is so bad, my hands get freezing cold and my heart races if I just have to make a phone call, or if my phone rings. I hate the phone, I think I am phone-phobic. I wish everyone just texts. I have to get my truck inspected, and I am freaking out about just having to do that. Pretty much any routine thing that most people aren't bothered about, I get completely worked up about because there is some social interaction with a stranger, no matter how minimal.
I also do worry about car accidents and I badly feel the need to buy a safer car, but the safest cars are really expensive so I worry about that too. Not so much the money part, but the car buying part, the part where I have to talk to strangers and try to get a good deal.
I am also too scared to fly, because I worry about the plane blowing up and turning me into a pile of small body parts strewn over a field somewhere.

I'm pretty much always a basketcase of constant fear, worrying, and phobias. The only thing that I'm completely comfortable to do is troll forums. Somehow I have no social anxiety on forums, ramble on and on, and even get into TMI all the time.

^ GnatGoSplat just explained pretty much everything I have ever felt in my life ever. Especially the phone part. I'm 20 and I've never answered a phone call from someone who isn't a friend, and even then I'm pretty hesitant. The only time I talked on the phone was when I had my pre-op questions on the phone, and that was only after my partner tried to convince them that he could answer the questions for me. They probably should've let him, I got so scared that I just answered how I thought they would want me to answer to every question (I know, really dumb, I even know WHY they ask all these questions, I've had teaching with Doctors. I just get super terrified) and now I'm scared I'm going to die during my operation. At work a few weeks ago, I had to buzz one of the Doctors, and he called back on the phone and I was like "erm... do I... do I answer it? Do you want to answer it?" to the receptionist and she looked at me as if I was an idiot.

I remember when I was a young kid, I thought it was really funny that my dad would always dial the phone to make a call and then immediately hand it to my mom before anyone picked up. He did this to her all the time, and it was like a family joke. The truth that I didn't understand, unfortunately, is that behind the laughter, my dad was experiencing anxiety due to PTSD and bipolar disorder. It was much less funny when I got older and needed to make calls for myself, then discovered that I struggle with anxiety as well.

I'm thankful to be fairly stable and have my anxiety under control right now, but I've had panic attacks in the past and believed I was having a heart attack. The most frustrating thing I struggle with is occasional hypochondria -- feeling like I'm having a heart attack or that something is wrong with my body. I'm an intelligent and rational person, damn it -- I can rationalize the situation to myself all I want and scold myself with logic and probabilities, but the thoughts are still there. Sometimes the anxiety creates very realistic physical sensations that feed back into the problem and reinforce the anxious thinking. Argh! So annoying. I'm not delusional, I'm not making things up, and I don't actually believe that my heart is failing or that I have cancer, it's just a thought that happens and then gets stuck in my head, repeating over and over in the background.

The worst part is knowing that, however unlikely, it's a real possibility that something could be physically wrong someday. How would I tell? What if I brush away symptoms of a heart attack because I think it's just anxiety, but it turns out to be a cardiac emergency? It's like my body is crying wolf.

I'm definitely glad I don't have anxiety as bad as what some of you guys are experiencing. My bipolar disorder is definitely worse than the anxiety. Social anxiety sucks so bad though and I'm glad I don't have to deal with it a whole lot. I just got my car inspected today actually and I was stressed about it! I was like, what if I do the wrong thing?? What if I look like an idiot? But it wasn't paralyzing or anything. The worst anxiety I have is with any intimate interactions like kissing. I'm so terrified of rejection and 'messing up' that I have to take pills before I do anything or I'll have a panic attack (or quickly run away/break up with the other person, which has happened before).

That is exactly me, except I've let it worry me to the point that I actually forced myself to overcome a huge phobia and see a doctor and undergo tests. Those were very emotionally very, very dark times, which to date, had ended well. But I worry that someday I'll go through all that and the news will be really bad. In fact, I was convinced I had skin cancer last week (thanks to a PSA on TV and then Googling the symptoms) and had a really tough struggle just making the Dr appt (took 6hrs to get the courage). I definitely need to avoid Googling symptoms because that makes me think I'm dying and have nothing but doom and gloom in my future. Also need to avoid watching the news, because they often have stories of people near my age or younger that have cancer or something awful and I worry if it can happen to them, maybe it can happen to me, and maybe it already has because cancer is often asymptomatic.

Any car I like, I spend a huge amount of time Googling car crash photos of that make/model and fatality statistics. If I read about a car accident fatality nearby, I check the highway patrol website to see what kind of cars the deceased and survivors were in, and whether they wore seatbelts. I'll also never own a compact car. I am that paranoid about car wrecks. I've been wanting a new (to me) car for over a decade now though, just can't really bring myself to want to talk to car dealers to negotiate. I even have too many crappy old cars because I have been too scared to talk to people on Craigslist. I've been brave enough to put the ad up, but when they call and leave a msg or they email me and leave their # and "call me", I chicken out at that point.

I'm too scared to ride a train now too, thanks to the recent news (that crash in France and the one a few weeks ago).

I never use the drive-thru at fast food places, because for some reason that causes me a ton of social anxiety, much worse than speaking to someone at the counter. I've also never answered the phone or answered the door when I don't know who it is. Not even when I was a kid. I'm always blown away when I see little kids so extroverted, they'll pick up the phone and effortlessly talk to a stranger. So bizarre! Sometimes even if I know who it is, and even if it's family, I let it go to voicemail and call them back when I feel like I'm more mentally prepared to have a phone conversation.

I was anxious for 2-years when my best friend from high school asked me to be in his wedding. Literally worried about it every day. He asked me to be his Best Man, but there is a speech involved, and I really didn't want to do it. I know it was kind of assholey to turn it down, but I said no and negotiated down to Groomsman, yet I was still pretty freaked about it the entire time leading up to it. It felt like the anticipation of it stole 2-yrs of my life from me.

Also frequently worry about getting my driver's license renewed, because I worry I won't pass the vision test and then I'll have to go see an eye doctor and get contacts or glasses. Not really worried about that part, but worried about having to get an eye exam. It's in a year and a half. This needs done every 6-years and it's been a cloud over the past 4-1/2 yrs since the last one. I was pretty damn worried at the last one, and the one before too, but I managed to pass it.

I feel like I go through life anxious about everything and followed by clouds of worry, doom and gloom all the time, sometimes I wonder how I can function at all. Ugh, that ended up way longer than I intended. I ramble when I'm anxious.

Sounds exhausting, @GnatGoSplat. I think I understand a little of how you feel, though thankfully it's not as bad for me right now. There was a time a few years ago when I was scared enough to undergo tests just as you describe, believing that I had something really wrong with me (appendix, gall bladder, stomach, something). I lost a lot of weight because I was scared to eat. I have henceforth banned myself from googling symptoms and don't allow myself to get on WebMD or other sites like that; it just ramps me up. Anxiety turns an ordinary sore throat from the common cold into "OMG my lymph nodes are swollen and this isn't going away and I must have cancer!" This seriously cost me a lot of money in medical bills until I understood that anxiety was the root cause.

Now, at least, I've found some specific physical signs that anxiety is coming over me, and I use them to catch myself. There are a few specific muscles that clench and start to ache when I'm anxious, and I check for these at times when I'm having trouble figuring out anxiety vs illness. For example, when I'm starting to feel nausea and think it's a stomach bug, I take some deep breaths and mentally put my attention in those muscles. Sometimes that helps. It's still tough because feeling sick makes me anxious and being anxious makes me feel sick.

My brother, who is a psychiatric RN, has told me that cognitive behavioral therapy would be just the thing for me. I also get too stressed out by appointments to seek that out, but some of the techniques can be learned about through books and articles. If you haven't looked into that, maybe check it out. It doesn't make the anxiety completely go away, but using certain strategies has definitely helped me to understand my anxiety better and cope more functionally. I now have a job that involves calling many people, and I do surprisingly ok with it. I'm not even using medications anymore, though those really helped me while I did all that learning.

You're definitely right about not Googling symptoms and staying off WebMD and sites like that. My wife gets upset with me when I do that, and I try not to, and I know I shouldn't! I do realize most of the time I'm just suffering anxiety so I try mental calming techniques as well. I also tell myself that when my mind is fully occupied working on a project or doing an activity, and then I realize whatever symptoms I'd been experiencing were gone during that time, then they must just be caused by anxiety because symptoms of a real illness don't go away just from being busy. It often helps a lot to occupy my mind with a project or playing a game that requires a lot of mental attention.

I really appreciate you sharing your story! I often feel like a weirdo that nobody understands, so it's nice to know there are a few people out there that get it.

Your trick of working on a project is great! And thank you, too. It really is nice to feel understood. We can be weird together.

Ouch. I've had two jaw surgeries myself; they're lousy. Good luck, and I hope you recover quickly.

Word of advice: don't do what I did. That is, when choosing a movie to watch over your first post-op meal, don't choose Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. Not a good idea.