I’m a 41 year old professional. I’ve done okay in life but I’ve never been very materialistic so I’ve never gotten caught up in any of that drama. My personal life has been average (up & down) but nothing awful. I’m healthy and fit and always had a positive outlook on life, despite some clear obvious evils in the world. But the past 2 years, from out of the blue, I think I have started to go insane.
I went to my G.P. 18 months ago in a terrible state after having some frightening thoughts and she gave me pills and told me not to worry ‘everyone’s feeling the pressure lately’. 2 months later I contacted a really good London psychiatrist and paid heftily for 6 sessions and I took 2 tests. I was told that I was absolutely fine and that I was just experiencing stress.Â
Is this stress? Or insanity? Or what? : Â I’ve been pretty in tune with my own instinct all my life, it got me through everything and helped me a lot. In the past 2 years it’s been preventing me from doing most of my normal stuff and it’s felt stronger and a LOT more often. The past 7/8 months I can get up as normal then when it’s near time to leave the house I start sweating and my instinct is saying that today is not a good day to go out. It’s so strong that I PHYSICALLY cannot go out. Once I give in to the fact that I’m not going out, I instantly start to feel better. This is happening nearly every time I want to go out and I have become a recluse. But, occasionally, like 2 days ago I had this overwhelming urge to go out and go for a long walk into the village, which I did completely without any nerves or fear and I was really happy. On the way too, I met a really old man (who was struggling with his bicycle) and we got chatting and he turned out to be so lovely and say lovely things to me that really brightened my day too. I know it sounds mad but I think my instinct told me to go out because it knew that something sweet would happen to me that day (or is this my insanity?).
Other things that have happened are I suddenly can no longer stomach meat. I’ve eaten meat all my life. I also never watch TV, I don’t even think to put it on anymore and I used to watch it quite often. I have made myself watch it sometimes to take my mind off things, but this new insane mind CANNOT stop thinking about other things other than the TV and even the volume on it and the screen annoy my eyes and ears, like I’m hyper sensitive to sound and vision. YET, I have urges to dance to my favourite music regularly and I have the volume loud with no annoyance???
Whatever is going on it is not normal and I am unable to go about my normal life and I’m now at the point that if this doesn’t change really soon, I will kill myself. I researched ways to do it (this is SO not like me, even typing these words is upsetting me, I KNOW I sound mad). God, please help me (I’m not even religious) WTF.
3 comments
Hi there, you are NOT going mad or insane (tend not to use that as a term anymore either!) – those who state they think they are generally aren’t. You simply haven’t the internal resources to cope with life around you at the minute. It is a perfectly normal reaction to an abnormal situation 🙂
When you say professional, I gather you mean a stressful, demanding job, hard work and little recognition. Everyone, including us folks in healthcare, don’t place enough weight on stress and how it can be completely debilitating.
I am not even going to touch on the religious aspects, as that is such a personal thing and you may find that it gets used a lot on here to try and “bring people aroundâ€. It is such an individual thing that its probably best if the individual finds solace or help from whatever source themself, as opposed to people, with all the right intentions I may add, ramming religion home on here. This is my opinion of course and not necessarily shared by the management or others on here!! I say that as I’ve seen how some users are VERY quick to react and slate people’s posts. It is an open forum but everyone on here is vulnerable in some way shape or form and this should be respected.
I do totally understand what you are saying about how your are feeling.
Please feel free to email me if you want to sound off anytime.
gwf9965@hotmail.co.uk 🙂
Hi Time, thanks for the response to this. Yes my job can be stressful at times, although I can’t complain too much as I have a management team that is superb. Hmm, well I still feel the same, well in fact today I feel a bit better but last night was the worst night of my life, I developed a whole new feeling on top of everything else, and that was the feeling of being absolutely terrified for no reason whatseover. I slept with the light on for petes sake! I have never done that. I even vomited last night and I’m hardly ever sick. I thought today I would wake up and immediately just jump out of the window. But despite having a migraine, I seemed a lot more peaceful as the day went on. But then this happens occasionally, anything could happen tomorrow. I can’t describe it very well, i just feel very fearful of life lately (as if I’m expecting a monster to burst through my front door at any moment). It’s completely irrational I know.
Sorry I babbled a lot there.
No problem! not babbling at all. Sounds like a small panic attack which fits in with the rest of your symptoms…it is frightening and not a pleasant sensation at all….here anytime you need to talk in email as above…your not alone in thoughts and feelings.