For some background, I have diagnosed general anxiety, panic disorder, and cptsd. I had to stop seeing my therapist because she said a handful of things that made me feel triggered, judged, and unsupported in very unprofessional ways, and I haven't had the chance to look for a new one yet. I've been dealing with this for over 20 years, and it always cycles through phases of intensity from mild to unable to function. It was in a mild phase for quite a while, then spiraled during covid, leveled off again for a little while, and I'm recently nose diving again. 

The last week has been an absolute fiasco of triggers, and with them, anxiety levels and panic attacks like I haven't experienced in years. With those has come chest pain. With the chest pain has come health anxiety (am I having a heart attack?). I can tell myself, logically, this is all it is, it's just anxiety. I can do breathing exercises and progressive muscle relaxation and the feelings dissolve and my chest feels fine. But then I worry that I ignored something serious, and then I get anxious, and the chest pain returns. Or, I wake up feeling fine, but immediately do a physical assessment of myself, hyperfocus on "when am I going to start feeling bad again/when is my chest going to tighten up/when is the panic going to drown me again" and of course that fear-of-the-fear sets it off again. And then panic. And tightness in my chest. And of course all of it is exacerbated by being alone. My husband travels for work and is gone for months at a time, my only local friend also travels for work and is gone this week, none of my other friends live in this state anymore, I don't drive, and I have a dog with separation anxiety so bad that he hurts himself if he's left alone for two minutes, hell only knows how bad it would be if I serious medical issue and had to leave to the hospital alone. And of course that anticipatory anxiety just melts right into the rest of it.

It's a cycle I haven't been able to break out of since Sunday. I know it's just a feedback loop. I know I'm feeding it. I know if it was a legitimate serious physical issue I would KNOW by now and I wouldn't be able to make it temporarily better with breathing and pmr. But none of this logic and reasoning is helping me truly remove myself from it in any meaningful/lasting way to get true relief. I'm so tired. I just needed to vent. Thank you for reading.