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Womens advice please? Anxiety and possible tokophobia
I'm Lia, and I'm going through a lot lately, and I'm not really sure what is the best thing to do.
Since I was 15 I've had panic attacks, usually just once or twice every year or two, they were pretty rare. However, I am now 22 and the attacks are becoming more frequent. I can't handle stress like I used to.
I went my first three years of college doing wonderfully with my grades, but this is my last year- I moved to another state and I'm finishing my electives online at my old school, and I'm bombing almost everything. I can't take the stress of doing these assignments, I feel like I can't focus or think, and I used to be hyper-focused and finish everything quickly. I also used to be a writer, I loved writing more than anything but lately my anxiety is so bad I can't even focus on that. Right now I rent a crappy townhouse, we are moving in a month to our own home. The dogs in the neighborhood bark all night long and the walls are paper thin, so I get no sleep. The road outside is torn up because they started construction on this summer and then abandoned the project before it was finished, leaving it essentially a minefield. The front door always "steals" our housekey and it won't come out no matter what I do. The other day it all got to be too much and I had another panic attack. My fourth in the past six months.
This may just sound like a bunch of complaining, but the thing is, I try to just keep calm mostly and not take life too seriously. Lately, it's getting difficult to do that. Later that evening I had a function to go to, so I pulled myself together and I was fine. I had to buy balloons for the function on the other side of town, and traffic was just awful. There was no way I was going to make it in time. The real trigger, however, was when one of the overfilled balloons popped. I have kind of a shellshock-effect when things like this happen, I was a wreck my sophomore year when my college was shooting off blanks to scare the birds off. (Inhumane if you ask me.) This first one scared the heck out of me, but I was able to pull myself together. Then it unexpectedly happened again. Panic attack number 5. I was lucky my husband was driving and not me.
All I could do the whole drive was cry, even though I tried so hard not to. I was able to pull myself together when we got there, half an hour late, which was horrible cause I am the new leader of this group and trying to make a good first impression and I had planned the event. The evening went very well in the end, and I left that night feeling a lot better. But part of me still has anxiety about my anxiety. Wrap your mind around that? :P
I have always thought people shouldn't take antidepressants and anxiety medications because they should work on fixing their problems instead of medicating them. However, the past few months it's gotten so out of hand I don't know what to do.
I also have a bad fear of car accidents. I was in a very bad wreck when I was 10 and ended up in the hospital for a while. I recovered but I was terrified to be in a car for almost a year. That fear drastically reduced, but it was still there sometimes. I am fine when I'm driving because I have control, and my solution since I've been driving has been to just drive everywhere instead of having other people drive me. With a few select people I'm okay unless there is a close call, but with my husband, who is a few years older than me but hasn't been driving as long as I have (he's in the military and never needed a car til we got married) he has a LOT of close calls. I can't stand it when I get scared and he tells me to "chill out". It makes me so angry. While I admit a lot of the time there are legitimately near accidents, I often freak out even when there's not a close call. I try to keep my mouth shut about it, and even the slightest whimper or bracing myself or drawing in breath gets him mad at me. I've told him countless times about my anxiety and my traumatic experience and that I can't always be expected to be rational about it but I am trying my hardest, and to be patient with me. But this seems to be the one thing we really fight about.
I'm at my wit's end and I'm about to just go ahead and drug myself so I can live a normal life. The thing is, I've seen two people who have been on anxiety meds (one of them for no valid reason actually) who became totally imbalanced and insane, overdosed on their meds, and their anxiety just seemed to get worse. I'm really scared that will happen to me. Meds just seem to make things worse sometimes, so how do I know if I DO see a doctor about my problems that they will make it better and not worse? Has anyone ever had anxiety meds actually work for them?
There's also the matter of children. I've been married a year and I'm wanting to have children in a few years. If I go on meds, I know it's going to harm a baby. But if I go off meds before trying to get pregnant, is it going to make me go crazy? People sometimes get dependent on these things.
If I can even have a baby. I'm one of those people who doesn't go into anything without a lot of knowledge and a plan. I wish I'd been one of those girls who just got pregnant and had a kid without researching what stuff happens in childbirth, but unfortunately I've done a ton of research and I found out about the required blood tests, tearing, stitches, episiotomies, induction, forceps, and being poked and prodded by all the needles. I am horrified by needles, and doctors in general. My first pap smear to get birth control was a horrible experience- it wasn't just about being naked and a doctor looking at me, I didn't mind that. I didn't expect it to hurt, people get it done all the time, but it ended up being incredibly painful and had to go back three times to get the test done, my female doctor treated me horribly and basically said I was a wimp and it's all mental and told me I was probably sexually abused as a child (I was not, I had two faithful, loving parents who would never do anything to hurt me and I was not around other adults alone.) The pain was so horrible, I can't even imagine having a baby. Some women with tokophobia say pregnancy and childbirth disgusts them. Not me, I'm excited about being pregnant and having a baby someday. I'm just terrified of being poked and prodded and cut down there and having stitches. I thought maybe I'd go with a C Section but those take weeks to recover and the pain is supposed to be much worse, though I think if it's between my stomach and my female parts getting cut and stitched, I'd rather go for the stomach. Either way, I'm terrified and I don't know how I can get past my next pap (cause the heartless gyns make you do it to get birth control, they don't care if it hurts- you belong to them) let alone a pregnancy and delivery.
I hate this. I miss being carefree and happy go lucky like I was when I was a teenager or when I was a kid. I had panic attacks as a teen but very rarely, and once I had one my anxiety was gone for months or a year. It was only when I was getting yelled at really bad for something. Most of the time I felt like life was good, and I didn't have much to worry about. I don't feel that way anymore. I love my husband and my two dogs, but I feel like this anxiety is ruining my life. Since I moved here I can't find a job cause I chose to go to college for video production and there's no jobs here, and I've applied to every other job I can find. I feel like I'm getting closer to finding one, but even if I found a job could I handle the anxiety of other coworkers, deadlines, mean bosses, etc. the way I used to be able to handle them? (I had several good job experiences but a few bad or stressful ones.)
I feel like I'm at my wit's end. Should I see a psychiatrist? Should I go on meds so I can get my life back? I don't know what to do...
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