Anxiety Disorders

[Guest RootsRadicals]

I didn't think this fit in the suicide/depression forum and of course it didn't fit in any of the other forums so I thought I'd stick it in here.

Lately I've come to notice that I am constantly anxious for no reason. At first it was just in my road tests where I get so anxious I cannot function and I withdrawal into this place where I get sensitive and just cannot drive to save my life. So I figured, heck I need to figure out a way to stop getting so nervous. But then I stopped and thought about it, when am I not really anxious? When do I not just snap for no reason, when is my chest not feeling like its in such a knot that it's hard to breathe?! Every morning when I first walk into school I feel so paranoid, so anxious that its hard to breathe and I have to make myself breathe without looking like an idiot. I don't understand why.

So I looked up some information on the everhelpful webmd and noticed I have all of the symptoms of General Anxiety Disorder. My dad has some anxiety disorder so it would make sense. Here I was thinking this whole time that I was just a manic depressive lunatic from mars. Nope, there's more or less behind it.

So I was just wondering if anyone's ever been diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder and if you have what do you do to take care of yourself? Are you on medication? And how could I bring it up to my therapist? Could this jepordize my chances of transitioning?

[Guest ashley4623]

Yes..... I have been diagnosed with that

Many years ago when i was about 12, I went through a HORRIBLE period in my life where I had many anxiety attacks. It's a very very very VERY long and detailed story.

They prescribed me medication that was supposed to "help" me to relax, but IMO it didn't do anything, it just made me feel uneasy. I think that for me personally the thing that helped me the most was TIME. Over time I became used to the anxiety, and gradually I was able to ease myself into being able to deal with it.

Almost 10 years later (I'm about to turn 22), I still have relics of that, but I haven't had an anxiety attack in a very long time. In many ways it still affects me, but im SO MUCH better than i was then. THANK GOD.

I still get nervous for no apparent reason, but Idk... I just take a deep breath, and try to relax. That seems to help me a lot. And also the biggest thing is to understand what's going on inside of your mind that's making you anxious. I think for me that has helped me to mentally speak to myself to calm myself down.

I'm not sure if this could jeopardize your chances of transition, but if you find out the answer, I'd love to know, because if that's the case that could be a problem for me too. I don't think this should have an effect on that anyway... because the more i think about it I think the reason I started to have the anxiety attacks was because of gender related issues. Back then i didn't know it but in retrospect I'm pretty sure this is why it happened.

Anyway, I hope this helps, if you have any further questions feel free to ask me

--Ashley

[Guest Evan_J]

From reading, listening to other transsexuals, and peeping out things said by my gender therapist, I've pretty much figured out that "depression and anxiety" are the "matched box set" diagnoses most common amongst t folk.

It won't stop you from transitioning. They'll just check (therapist) to make sure neither is at an escalated level and managed (either medication or because you just feel better) before referring you for hormones.

By and large, people truely ready to transition find a decrease in both when they start gender therapy.

[Sally]

General Anxiety Disorders are more common than most people think and the usual treatment is to dump medicine in you, like they do for ADHD - I would have been diagnosed with the later if I had been born a few years later but its cure is not rooted in drugs either - it is finding what you are interested in.

The cure for anxiety Disorders is with inyou - you have the power to stop or sart Anxiety attacks, but you might need help.

There was a girl on this site all of the time who because of terrible eyesight and a fear of going outsede of her apartment had become a total reckluse and would not leave her apartment with a friend - canselled two appointments with a gender therapist (tshe went on the third try) and even skipped an eye appointment - terrible idea when you are legally blind already.

Several of us spent a few evenings on line with her telling her that everyone else can walk out the front door and survive, try it - well you don't hear a lot from her that much anymore because she is always out - her friend has a band so she goes to clubs to listen and dance - recently she went camping with her son and had a wonderful time came back and told ua all about the sounds of the night away from the city.

If she can beat her anxiety with the added burden of failing vision - you can do it too.

You will have to work very hards on identifying what it is that scares you about each activity and fix them one by one - let's start with that driving thing.

Do you think that because you are an FTM that you are secretly holding yourself back because of the old sterrotypes that say that women drivers do this and men do this?

Sounds silly and way too simple, but guess what the fears behind panic attacks are usually silly and so often simple to find and then overcome.

Think about that for a bt and then see if the thought odf driving is less scary (a little secret - I was born male but never liked driving in traffic - I want to be alone on the road - I don't trust other drivers, I get very nervous in traffic, but I use it to heighten my awareness and drive defensively not to avoid driving).

Work on that one first and we'll see if we can help.

OK?

Love ya,

Sally

[Guest StrandedOutThere]

I'm 99% sure I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, but I haven't tried to get a diagnosis. It runs in my family too, so I guess I'm also not surprised I have problems with anxiety. I take medication for ADHD that exacerbates the anxiety too. It's pretty annoying. Meds that help the anxiety make my attention span worse. Things that help the ADHD make the anxiety worse. In the end I just decided to take a minimal dose of stimulants and try and cope. My brain is my bread winner...so I need to leave it clear as much as possible.

How do I manage it? Sheer will mostly. Mind over matter. Every once in a while I get this feeling like you would if you were walking into a dark house and a malicious spirit were lurking right over your shoulder. When that happens I try to distract myself for a while and it usually goes away within an hour or so.

If I have a random health worry...like thinking I have some disease or another, I think of lots of reasons why it is unreasonable to think that.

On a day to day basis I just try to minimize stress. Where some people take on lots of projects and are "go getters" at work, I hold back. I've just accepted that it isn't worth it to bust my butt because the anxiety cost is too high. I do one thing at a time, at the pace that suits me. People get annoyed, but that's just the way it has to be. I've been down the other road where I work really hard to please people. It made it where I couldn't manage without meds. That's not how I wanted to be so I "simplified" my life.

In really, really stressful times, when I just can't function, I get a short acting medication. Sometimes there is no way around it. The only kind of meds I take work within a half hour and wear off completely in 4 to 6. There are longer acting medications that stay in your system, but I don't like the way those make me feel. With my anxiety, it's around all the time, but it only occasionally gets to the point where I can't function without help. To me, having constant side effects isn't worth the 2 to 4 times a month that I have an anxiety attack. Your anxiety may be worse. It's good to keep a journal of how many times in a day or week your anxiety is a problem. I carried a pocket notebook for a couple of months.

I'm not sure if anxiety could jeopardize your chances at transition. With me, it didn't. It's hard to say what impact it will have on your situation. It might depend on your therapist.

FYI, some people say T makes anxiety worse, that wasn't the case with me. In some ways it improved on T. In some ways it didn't change.

[Guest ashley4623]

Every once in a while I get this feeling like you would if you were walking into a dark house and a malicious spirit were lurking right over your shoulder.

I know exactly what you mean that same thing happens to me every now and then. Used to happen all the time, but less and less thankfully.

[Guest RootsRadicals]

Thanks to everyone. At this point in time I feel that it is genetic and that I may have to turn to medicine to fight it. If it doesn't help, then I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I've fought both my anxiety and depression for years though and it's only gotten worse, especially with coming out to my parents and hitting a brick wall with my mother.

I don't think it's gender stereotypes that keep me from passing my roadtest (besides the person giving me the roadtest judging me for the way I look.) When I drive with anyone but the instructor giving the road test, I drive perfectly fine. My Drivers ED Teacher doesn't understand how I don't have my liscence and my parents have both said that while there are little things I still need to learn, it seems like I've been driving for years. It's just when I get into stressful situations such as the roadtest, I freak out.

I'm going to discuss this with my therapist on monday (she is a gender therapist by the way.) Hopefully she can refer me to my doctor for anxiety medication.

[Guest My_Genesis]

So I looked up some information on the everhelpful webmd and noticed I have all of the symptoms of General Anxiety Disorder. My dad has some anxiety disorder so it would make sense. Here I was thinking this whole time that I was just a manic depressive lunatic from mars. Nope, there's more or less behind it.

So I was just wondering if anyone's ever been diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder and if you have what do you do to take care of yourself? Are you on medication? And how could I bring it up to my therapist? Could this jepordize my chances of transitioning?

would work better if i could mention actual meds but i guess there's always PM if you really wanted to know. for about 4 years now i was taking an antidepressant that is indicated for general anxiety disorder. i never really had the depressed part so much as the anxiety part. what happened though was about a month ago i got sick because since im in college now i keep "accidentally on purpose" "forgetting" to take meds. so after a few days of not taking them they would make me vomit...my doctor said it's serotonin overdose and switched me to another antidepressant which ironically made me more anxious and depressed and turned me into a girl seriously though...like at one point i was crying for no reason, although i felt kind of emotionally numb, whatever i felt i didnt feel as strongly, my bad temper (which i have a lot of sometimes) just became this brooding melancholy depression, i lost motivation to do anything, i kept getting panic attacks and there was a lot of self-hate, feeling inadequate and like i was a failue at life etc.

i think if you have GAD and you take an antidepressant not indicated for GAD, but for depression, bulimia, PMDD/PMS (any ther problems you don't have to begin with)...it'll do more harm than good

so right now im not taking anything except one of those short-term (like 4-6 hours) anti-anxiety meds, because i get kind of sporadic anxiety attacks now. idk if i shold go back to the original or not. we'll see what happens. those short-term meds are very effective although ive heard they can be habit-forming, so i try to keep it to a minimum how much i take them mainly because i worry theyll stop working if i take them more than i really need to.

ask your doc about them (if you have one), i kinda have to swear by them now as an emergency backup plan for really bad spur of the moment anxiety. this happens to me a lot around summer time for some reason i also match a lot of symptoms of panic disorder and claustrophobia. i think its all under the same general umbrella issue though, and a lot of it, especially the claustrophobia part, has a lot to do with the way i grew up. so i just go with GAD lol

[Guest Elizabeth K]

Here I was thinking this whole time that I was just a manic depressive lunatic from mars.

Women are fom Venus, Men are from Mars, So if you were born on Venus but now live on Mars, you may have some confusion in your life, and GAD, General Anxiety Disorder is one of those conditions that seem to follow us GDFTM/MTFTS/GID around. Gender Dysphoric Female to Male / Male to Female Transsexual Gender Identity Disorder.

Zab has a friend with this. Perhaps you can PM him. In any event, like all conditions, suspected or confirmed, a psychologist / psychiatrist needs to be involved. As to hurting transitioning? Getting permission from your gender therapist is based more upon the study of your mental state (1) to determine if your need to transition is caused by other factors than true gender dysphoria (split personality disorder for example), and (2) if transitioning would exaserbate any other existing conditions. In other words, you need to be reasonably stable and self assured, as transitioning is extremely stressful.

One final note - 'psychyatrists' will almost always go with medications - so be careful. And as Sally said, medications are not always helpful, and of course there can be side effects. But like the common headache, takng meds can help, but it the headache will eventually go away without them, right? USUALLY! To eventually eliminate headaches, it seems best to figure out what causes them. The six tequila shots? The D+ in Comparative Anatomy? The running into that tree full speed while role playing with swords? Or the fact that your mom just outed you to her entire side of the family?

GAD is much more complicated than a headache. Gender Dysphoria ain't much fun either. Think on that a while and you can add depression and self distructive tendancies, because they will suddenly kick in. Therapists make a living from people like us!

Lizzy

[Sally]

The roadtest has become one of those roadblocks that we create for ourselves - we have something go wrong when we first think about something and from then on trying to do it triggers the memory and causes the anxiety - all in the back of our minds where we have no idea it is even happening.

The trick is to locate that problem and work on it and then to disassociate it from your road test and get that out of the way.

My only fear that comes close to causing a panic attack is my fear of confined spaces and I know that it can trigger anytime so I avoid really small spces, when I can't I have to reassure myself that there is air to breath and that I will be out soon.

When I am tired or stressed it is much worse - so I avoid booths in restaraunts and anything that I can't just go out into a bigger space immediately (sometimes teesting to be sure).

When not stressed it is easy to control, I've been on several submarine rides - the real thing in Hawaii and you are packed in so tight that you can't even move and then the inside cabins on cruises and packed busses on tours - you can do it for the road test just by seperating it from everything else in your daily life and thik of it as your chance to drive not your chance to fail - that is the key!

Love ya,

Sally