Posted by mikhail99 on January 22, 2003, at 14:03:27
In reply to Re: How do you know if you have GAD? » Ilene, posted by ayuda on January 22, 2003, at 11:39:48
> > GAD is "general anxiety disorder," right? How is it different from regular anxiety? How do you know you are anxious and/or generally anxious? Seriously. I am so far from normal I don't know whether I would recognize it.
> >
> > Do ADs or mood stabilizers help? Are there any drugs specifically for GAD?
>
> Ilene --
> Like you, I am so far from "normal" that I may be wrong in this, but from my experience, I think that the difference between regular ol' anxiety and GAD is that GAD is not situational, it is constant and obsessive and about almost every aspect of your life, and you have physical as well as emotional reactions often.I hope you don't mind me jumping in here to agree wholeheartedly with you! GAD is not situational and that's what so frustrating about it. You could be sitting, reading a book or watching tv and you start to realize that you can't concentrate, you have a knot in your stomach and in my case, my breathing gets very difficult. And the thing that really sucks about GAD is that you start to think something is going to happen, it feels intuitive but it really isn't but you can't tell the difference. Does that make sense? And of course, this belief that something awful could happen just increases the anxiety.
>
> Such as, you can have anxiety about flying, and every time you think about flying or fly you have anxiety, including panic attacks, but otherwise things don't cause that level of anxiety, or every once in a while you get anxious about the future, but it isn't obsessive and can be related to a certain fear. I tend to think of those as "normal" and not obsessive.
>
> I think of GAD as more an approach to life -- tending to approach almost everything with a heightened level of anxiety, worrying about possible negative outcomes for many of life's tasks, the inability to stand-up for oneself or take a risk or be confrontational because of shaking, increased heartbeat, worry, fear, etc. Or also the inability to just let your life "happen" but to want to control everything because otherwise you will panic if everything does not go "perfectly."
>
> I make these distinctions from the observations of suffering from GAD, then going on medications that make me feel more "normal" in my response to situations that would cause extreme anxiety without the medications. So I distinguish between how I normally react, and how I react while on meds -- like I said, may be right, may not be, but I hope this helps.
>
> As for meds, some of the SSRIs now purport to cover GAD as well, such as Effexor XR and Lexapro. I can personally attest that they do, at least for me. There are other medications that only treat GAD, though since my main diagnosis is depression, my doctors have never treated the GAD alone (except in childhood, when I was on "kiddie tranquilizers"). I've taken Ativan (lorazepam) for anxiety, but that is not considered a maintenance drug by some doctors.I found paxil very helpful with my GAD but I gained a lot of weight on it so I decided I'd rather be anxious than fat (and I don't mean to sound flippant, it's just true, I'm horribly vain) and stopped taking it. Of course, that isn't the case for everyone.
>
> I hope some of this helps. Anxiety is not fun -- I know that is an understatement, but I encounter people, even doctors, who don't understand that you can't just get over a situation on your own, that you have no mechanism for it, because your anxiety has you on edge all the time.And since it's obsessive, it's so hard to stop the viscious cycle of thinking about the "what ifs" that make you anxious. And you're right, people who don't suffer from it have a very difficult time understanding it. Just ask my husband! :-)
>
> Good luck with your treatment!Ayuda, I think you did a fantastic job describing GAD, there was very little I could think to add except my own experience.
Ilene~Good luck with everything!
poster:mikhail99
thread:137024
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030119/msgs/137062.html