I don’t know what is happening with me anymore

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raksturtle, how are you?

raksturtle wrote:Hello, this is the first time I’m posting here and I’m asking for help/ opinions because I just can’t think straight anymore.
I’ve been taking antidepressants due to depression and [mental health for three years and stopped taking them one and a half months ago. The first few days were the usual withdrawal symptoms and then everything went back to normal.
Approximately a month ago my problems started :
One day I suddenly started to experience this weird burning sensation in my head, stomach and chest and I was shivering on my whole body. One time I even woke up in the middle of the night and I couldn’t stop shaking for an hour. And I don’t know why this is happening, they feel like some anxiety symptoms? But the thing is, at the beginning, I didn’t have any (intrusive) thoughts while experiencing these symptoms, they just came without particular reasons.
After a few days I started feeling worse, lack of motivation, feeling depressed came on top of these other symptoms. When I’m with people or generally in public I get overwhelmed and start to feel out of place, wanting to leave as fast as possible.
Recently, on top of all problems, I’m starting to feel this way with my partner (3 and a half years relationship). Like I get these thoughts: Is the relationship the right thing for me? Do I love him? Is he still attractive to me?
This gives me so much anxiety because I can’t answer these questions. I feel I don’t know anything anymore, it’s like I can’t form any answers or opinions in my head because everything is foggy. I don’t know why I even get these questions, like there weren’t almost aren’t any problems.
The only problem in our relationship is my loss of libido after taking my antidepressants, that’s one of the reasons I stopped taking them. And my libido problem felt like it was getting better in like the first two weeks, after that my symptoms were starting.

Now my question is, what could be happening to me? Am I having a relapse? Or is it still withdrawal symptoms?
Could I have these thoughts about my relationship due to my mental state? What can I do?
Please help me, I’m really desperate and I don’t know what to do anymore.

Greetings from raksturtle

Stress, depression is not the solution of any of your problem but it create more problems for you. Keep calm whenever you have panic attack or feel depressed. Take long Breathe. Do something anything which keep you busy.

Hi Raksturtle,

It sounds like you are really going through a difficult time. I want to offer you a simple awareness practice that will help you to integrate your focus back into your body to be able to release the overwhelming emotions and intrusive thoughts you are experiencing. This is a daily practice that you can do for short intervals of 5-10 min. This will slowly build your awareness muscles to create a new foundation of self acceptance that will support you to build the self confidence to learn how to process through what you feel, rather than be victim to it. Once you are able to be with what you feel, then the overwhelm will have nothing to hold it in place and it will let go. In time this will teach you the ability to see what is causing your difficulties and how to resolve these imbalances back to the harmony of mind/body/spirit alignment.

Awareness Practice

I call it a practice for a reason, because with regular practice you will be building a new healthy behaviour that will support your attention to detach from the old habit of identifying with your intrusive thoughts, and reorienting your focus back into your body in the present moment. The present moment is where our point of power is, which is the only place you can make conscious purposeful change from, but to do so you must build the awareness skills foundation to support this ability. Once this practice is established enough it will become a habit and get easier. If you do not practice building the skills of awareness to act from purposeful intention, every time you get triggered your automatic default programs in your subconscious mind will run your behaviours the same way they have habitually been doing that leaves you feeling overwhelmed. Choosing to make healthy changes takes work, but we can all do it with self commitment and follow through.

Here is the practice:

Every day sit somewhere you can be left undisturbed. This needs to be a place you feel safe. Then simply breathe in and out as you follow the feeling sensations in your body as your lungs and ribcage expand and contract. Your attention will wander, and most likely get pulled into negative thinking that will try to get you to quit. This is normal. When you notice your attention has wondered, just notice and then guide your focus back into the feeling sensations of your breathing. Feel the air moving in and out of your nose or mouth. Just feel it in your body.

You will feel as though you are no good at it because you keep getting distracted away. Just notice those thoughts and feelings and come back to your breath over and over. If you have unkind thoughts to yourself just notice and practice coming back to the breath. This will begin to create space between your focus and them so you can start to step back and see them more from a distance rather than being helplessly stuck in them as though they are the truth of your reality.

You may feel overwhelming emotions or feelings in your body that make you want to stop. Just notice the feeling, and in time you will start to see the process of how this is all happening through coming back to your breath and creating space from them. This will teach you the process of detachment.

Slowly expand your awareness into your body and notice the physical sensations. Just be with them, allowing, accepting and experiencing them. This will support your body to learn how to relax into a calm state because you are accepting what you feel, which will send a message to your subconscious mind that life is safe right now. When we resist what we feel we send the message to our subconscious mind that life is not safe, because why would we be resisting if it was safe, and it will trigger survival programs that overwhelm you to get you out of the threatening situation. When you practice this in a safe place that is comfortable to you, you know it is safe, so as you do the practice of accepting what you feel with your breathing and body sensations, you are supporting your body to go into a state of ease and slowly recalibrating your autonomic subconscious nervous system to re-align its responses to your newly created perceptions of life being safe and supportive.

In time with regular practice, you can then safely be out in life where something triggers you, but now you have the automatic practice of coming back to center (your breathing) and allowing/accepting your body sensations in a safe place, which will support your body to calm, and your attention to be grounded more in the present moment so you can now mindfully assess the best course of action to take. This will give you freedom through mindfulness, which will allow you to step more and more out of your comfort zone to do new things because you know you can now be with what you feel when emotions arise through the steps of doing new things. This will also help you to slowly process through any unresolved emotions from that past, so you can then be present mentally/physically/emotionally with life directly as it happens without the past diluting your perceptions and causing fear. From this place you are free!

I hope this makes sense to you and helps

Arne Pedersen
Awareness In Health
http://www.awarenessinhealth.com