These past 3 weeks have been some of the worst (mentally) that I have ever experienced. I’ve had anxiety for as long as I can remember. I started out taking propanolol but didn’t find it helped much so I moved onto sertraline and I couldn’t cope with the disconnection that I felt from both myself and the rest of the world. I quit smoking around a month ago, so it aligns with the length of time that I have been feeling this way - which reassures me that this could just be down to smoking withdrawals. 

I had my first session with a therapist last week, I’m hoping this works better for me than medication did but it was more so just as assessment… so I just feel much relief in terms of the way I am feeling. 

I am SO terrified of mental illness. My anxiety already gets the better of me most days and I feel like there’s not much more that I can really take. I work in healthcare and have been lone working with a man that suffers paranoid schizophrenia. He has never had an episode in front of me, he’s the sweetest gentleman ever. But I’ve noticed that the health anxiety has plummeted since working with him… which has now resulted in me taking a backseat with work. I’m falling behind with uni work, I’m not socialising, im not making any money, I’m just living panic attack to panic attack. I keep convincing myself that I am schizophrenic. I don’t believe I’ve showed any symptoms of it. I’m just so scared of it, to the point I convince myself I am in the early developmental stages. I argue with myself in my head and convince myself that intrusive thoughts are more than that. I also keep mis-seeing things… I’m not seeing things that aren’t there, but when I quickly glimpse at something, I think it’s something else. This lasts about half a second before I realise what it actually is. My opticians checkup has been due for a year, bear in mind. I also believe this happens in day-to-day life to everybody, everybody has mistaken what something is before. But the mental health anxiety convinces me that it’s a deeper problem. 

I don’t know how to get over this. I went through a similar stage with a fear for BPD when I was younger. In turn, I start feeling like I’m driving myself crazy. I get so overwhelmed by worry, and then start worrying that if I admit my problems to a specialist, they will put me in a psych ward (which I am also terrified of). I can’t keep reliving this cycle of fear, it’s really burdening me and I’m worried for my future if I never get better. 

I’m having to avoid people with mental health problems and when I pass ill people in the street talking to themselves, I instantly go into shutdown mode.