Sry for the long post but I have to vent. Some context: I’ve always had anxiety ever since I was young. I remember my first panic attack was at around 6 years old when the 2004 tsunami happened and I found out in class that I had classmates who died along with their families. It was kind of my first exposure to the concept of “death” that I got so scared I hyperventilated and couldn’t breathe. The following year I lost someone close to me, and then I’ve just been rly afraid of “dying”. But I didn’t know that was the trigger, so growing up I just had little moments of chest tightness and difficulty breathing, but it would go away once I like shake my legs quickly (weird Ik lol but I think it’s bc the movement covered my palpitations so I could calm down). From then on, I had other triggers of anxiety but the symptoms would be manageable (like above) and I never felt like i had a problem. Fast forward to lockdown 2020 :3 

2020: Obvipusly this was a shit year for all of us :(  but I was living alone in nyc and news of covid deaths plus the rise in anti-Asian violence amongst people I knew (I’m Asian) rly took a toll on me. Plus I didn’t have good health insurance on my student visa so I was stressed out about not having access to covid treatment if I needed. Every night in lockdown I sat at the end of my bed hyperventilating for 7 hours then fall asleep the last hour before I got up to work and the cycle would repeat. I started tensing my muscles A LOT and flaring my nostrils (??? Lol) so much that it became a habit I couldn’t break. I started getting rly violent hypnic jerks when I slept cuz I was so tired and would JOLT up my whole body and sit up completely in confusion. I’d get tingles in my hands and legs and sometimes I would feel a complete loss of sensation in one limb. The only way to feel better and breathe and not tense up was when I was outdoors and walking in the park etc (I guess bc I don’t feel trapped).

After summer my visa expired so I came home to Asia. I thought my anxiety would be better knowing I have my family by my side and that where we are there’s like zero covid and safe. It was not better. My resting heart rate was literally 130bpm and started feeling ectopic heart beats as well as palpitations. And along with the symptoms above, because I tensed my shoulders and neck so much, my head started feeling weird. Not headaches but feeling heavy and sore, like I couldn’t move my head and didn’t know how to hold it up properly. It was like my brain was swelling up from being so tense all the time. I would also tense my eyebrows and sides of my nose so it feels blocked and there’s no air going in when I inhale. I also started getting panic attacks in public, like eating dinner at a nice restaurant then suddenly I feel like I’m dying and need to cry. My parents took me to seek non-psychiatric help: TCM and acupuncture. Acupuncture helped my feeling of a swollen head, but my doc was concerned about my heart rate (when I saw him I would be 155bpm just sitting down) so I went to see a cardiologist who monitored my heart for 24 hrs. Results came back normal (I was kind of upset with this bc I was hoping that if they found smth, there would at least be an organic reason for why I was feeling like hell and not just because of my anxiety). After all my tests came back negative, I just tried hard to feel better with my therapist and consciously stop tensing because even when I’m not triggered by anything and I’m just eating or brushing my teeth, I realise I’ve been tensing up my shoulders, sticking out my neck, rounding my shoulders to a hunchback cuz I’m so stiff, and holding my breath/tensing my diaphragm 24/7. 

When I’m out of my house or in the outdoors, I’m essentially completely fine. Zero neck tension, no round shoulders, I’m not aware of my breathing (unless I suddenly think of it then start getting scared), no clenched jaw or holding my breath etc. I think im subconsciously associating my home or anywhere indoors with feeling trapped or being on “lockdown”, so the second I come home after being outside I feel myself tensing up again for no reason. I feel like I tense so much now I don’t know how to not tense. Like it feels so unnatural to me. My jaw and neck also hurts like a bitch when I massage it. I can’t look up withoutbeing in agony, and I recently starting go to ohysiotherapy twice a week instead of once every two weeks bc my doc could feel how rock hard my jaw and neck is from all the tensing so I’ve been doing both ultrasound therapy and shock wave treatment for muscle relief. I’m literally tensing so hard everywhere as I write this lmao but when i realIze I relax for like 2 seconds then it comes back again. 

I just want to feel normal again!!!!! I know anxiety can be good as a natural flight/response for our bodies, but man it can be such a bitch!!! At least let me have the level of manageable anxiety I was dealing with growing up ugh. My symptoms of anxiety are triggered so easily now.. I am so damn overly sensitive about EVERYTHING. I read horrible news and can start crying and feeling like I can’t breathe. But the same thing also happens when I watch dodo videos of puppies being cute. I just wanna go through my annual Harry Potter marathon without having some kind of major panic attack when Cedric Diggory dies…. Lol. I was never ever this emotional, only since 2020. 

If you have any tips or resonate with anything I just word-vomited, feel free to share lol so I can feel like it’s not just me. Meditation and yoga doesn’t rly help my anxiety because I get too caught up on whether I’m breathing properly. Like when they say to count my breath or to feel my breath going down into my stomach for a deep breathing, I go into panic mode bc I’m overthinking how I breathe then start hyperventilating. This starts making me count my breath or hold My breath to “prep” before I speak out loud/drink water/eat. 
 
If you’re still reading thanks for listening lol bye x