How to ease my worst anxiety symptoms?

[dtrotter]

Over the years I have had many different symptoms, as we all have.

For a long time I had a constant headache, I would go to sleep with it, wake up with it, it was terrible. That was certainly one of the worst ones. This one took a while to go away. At the time I was terrified of having a brain tumor, and I think that it was the anxiety related to this concern that was causing the headaches. Once I accepted the fact that I was healthy, they gradually went away. I still get them from time to time, but I don't even think about them, and they rarely last longer then a few hours.

Derealisation was by far the worst. As I have mentioned in other posts, I have a handle on this one now, but it was so scary when it was at it's peak. it still creeps up on my now and then, but I always immediately distract myself and just force myself to ignore it. Very hard, yes, but it does lesson it.

Currently, the major thing for me is tiredness. Being anxious and worrying all day wipes me out. I find that I can rarely get through watching a movie with my husband without falling asleep. I figure that my body is finally relaxed, and so it's just pure exhaustion.

Has anyone else found a way to cure this level of tiredness? My first thought is to drink coffee, ha ha, but that's terrible for people with anxiety, so I stay away from it. Any other ideas?

 

[sabbath9]

even though it's counter intuitive, i think exercise is probably a good way to treat tiredness, mental exhaustion plus physical inactivity can become an endless cycle, also drink lots of water, power naps, cold showers, take two vitamins and reply to this in the morning

 

[Yoyshaia]

I went through a period of experiencing constant tiredness, and at first I tried sleeping more. I was really confused when that not only didn't work but seemed to make it worse! What eventually did help me was food! I found that if I ate better meals more regularly (I used to sacrifice breakfast in favour of sleeping in, and didn't really bother with real food for lunch) I was a lot less tired. I don't know if that'll help you, but I know that I still notice a definite drop in energy levels if I don't eat properly!

 

[HidingOnThe4thFloor]

Glad you got over the headaches, dtrotter. That's muscle tension, pure and simple. I often wake up with them at night and I have trained myself to become aware of the tension, relax, and go back to sleep.

Tiredness sounds more like a depression symptom to me. It's well established that high, constant levels of anxiety lead to depression in rather short order.