Not coping

Hi @seraphiel

I am Arie, one of the moderators on the forums. Firstly, welcome to the forums, I hope that you will find these forums to be supportive.

Congratulations on reaching for final year of med school, this is quite the achievement! Study can be a stressful time on a number of fronts as you have mentioned and I hear that you are feeling overwhelmed. Have you felt like this before? Sometimes thinking about what we have done previously to help us through can assist in guiding us through again.

When feeling anxious or overwhelmed, others have found grounding strategies to be helpful in addition relation. Grounding activities may include the 5 senses; name slowly and out loud 5 things that you can see, 4 things that you can hear, 3 things that you can touch, 2 things that you can smell and 1 thing that you can taste. This acts to slow your thoughts down and connect you to the space around you. You may then find it helpful to do some relation.

Hope this is helpful

Hi @seraphiel and welcome to the boards!

Firstly congratulations on the achievement of reaching your final year of medical school, I can only imagine the stressors that would impose upon you, as a student and as a future doctor.

Have you ever heard of mindfulness at all? There are plenty of easy and free apps available in the App Store/Play Store that cover mindfulness practices and have mindfulness meditations on them. Some that come to mind are Stop, Breathe & Think (it's free for the basic version, a small fee for the premium version) and Smiling Mind. Both come with recommendations from psychologists and counsellors, so are quite well worth looking into.

Hi @seraphiel, @Queenie and @Former-Member 🙂

@seraphiel thank you for your post, its graet to have you here.

Wow! That is an amazing achievment, so much to be very proud of. You are highlighting some very good points and seems to have identified a lot that is happening for you all at once. I'll list a few links below which I hope can be of interest to you, in relation to mindfulness and self for panic attacks.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness Apps

Self help for panic attacks

I'd also like to ask if you have been in a similar situation before and if so was there anythingthat you can draw upon now, what was helpful then?

Sometimes asking oursleves what we would suggest to a friend if they were telling us this story can be another angel to look at. Interestingly what we may offer to someone else is sometimes different to what we apply to oursleves.

How are things for you at the moment?

Hi @seraphiel.

Im not sure if he's around anymore but I was thinking @BeeGee may have advice as from memory he may have experienced something similar in a similar situation to you. I'm sorry if I'm off the mark but thought it was worth a try.

Yes, still here! Been somewhat busy of late (gasp! shock! I hear you say...) hence have been a little quiet here.

@seraphiel I can relate to where you are coming from. I self-diagnosed my dysthymia in 2nd year of med school and, while not the same disorder as what sounds like an anxiety disorder for you, nonetheless occupied a huge amount of my attention ever since in seeking treatments and engaging with significant amounts of introspection to try to understand what was going on. It can be exhausting. I'm now in my intern year and am very glad to have the student years behind me! Being an intern is (in my view at least) much easier - when I'm not at work my time is my own (well, as much as it can be in a family) - I no longer have to spend all waking hours at my desk or feel guilty if I don't. Yes, there is life after med school! Oh, and don't forget getting paid! It's been sooooo long...

Have you sought treatment for your disorder? It's been my experience that generalised anxiety disorders seem to respond quite well to a combination of SSRI tx and good CBT/ACT/mindfulness strategies. I cannot recommend strongly enough that you engage with a GP you trust to get a MHP started, commence pharmacotherapy, and find a psychologist you are comfortable with to find a cognitive strategy that works for you. Others have mentioned some good ones, but it's really a matter of suck-it-and-see what works for you.

There IS hope that you can find a way to manage this. It may not be the first med or first cognitive therapy you try, but sooner or later you will hit on your winning combination. It's worth the effort of persevering until you do - the effect is truly transformative.

As for myself, I am still on the treadmill of trying different meds... so far without success. That can be discouraging in itself, but I push on because, well, what else is there to do? Either that or I accept that this is the way I stay till I shuffle off this mortal coil, and I am not in that place yet. Perseverance is an important quality in this marathon.

Keep in touch, let us know how you get on.

Hi @seraphiel CONGRATULATIONS WELL DONE!

I suffer from BPD and have had huge anxiety, diagnosed with GAD as well.

Last year I got to a point where I wasnt coping anymore and everything just seemed to mount up. I used to freak out a lot and most of it from anxiety. I get the heart palpatations, sweaty, feeling faint and dizzy, everything sounds like a blur at the time, stomache issues when like this, either no appetite or eat for comfort and usually after an anxiety / panic attack need to sleep.

Last year when I wasnt coping, since I dont see a pyschologist anymore I spoke to my GP about having a pysch medical review to see if my meds should change. I found out I was on such a low dose that they litterally doubled it and this helped tremendously but like the pysch stated meds will only help if you have a brain chemistry issue if you dont its more within you and you need to make those changes yourself.

Some of the strategies I have used and works for me are:

• Deep breathing (breathe in and out real slow 5 times)
• Doing something physical when extremely anxious helps to work off that feeling - when I'm tired I'm not anxious
• Create a worry period - for me this helps and I learnt in DBT. Basically you commit a time eg. 6pm every night to worry about anything that stresses you. So if you find something that gets you anxious you are meant to write it down and say to yourself " ok I will visit this issue and worry at 6pm about it when I get home - until then I will carry one" then when 6pm comes you start going over strategies to help solve these issues BUT the reality is 7/10 times when it gets to your worry period you have forgotton about it or figured its not worth worrying about. I do this now with work, often due to the sort of workplace I'm in I usually do get anxiety on a Sunday night at the though of going to work. Now I say to myself " ok nothing has happened yet to make me anxious but if it does when I get into to work I will deal with it when I get home and worry then". Usually within an hour of being at work I'm ok.
• Often dealing with your anxiety head on is liberating too, it makes you realise that this is not such a bad thing and the next time you have to do the same thing that gives you anxiety it will be easier as you know you can accomplish it
• Lastly realising that anxiety whilst it is uncomfortable and frightening at the time really cant hurt you - its just a feeling, no more than a feeling and it will pass. Dont stop the anxiety from coming on, let ic come on and wash over you, the quicker that happens the quicker it goes. Its like the body has to go through these motions.

I still get anxiety and panic attacks but I deal with it and its more the physical symptoms that get to me now.

Hope this helps!

Dear Not Coping,

Congratulations on all your achievements despite the problems you have to wrestle with. I have read over the other posts, and so far no-one has suggested seeking professional help. You may prefer to speak to a counlsellor at Med. school, or get your G.P. to refer you to a psychologist or psychiatrist. Personally I would go with the psychiatrist, because he/she is able to prescribe medications to help you with your anxiety and sleeping disorder. Sometimes when things are all too much we need a bit of help from medication to bring us back to normal. A psychiatrist will also provide "talk therapy" to help you get that burden off your chest which you have been trying to carry alone. You help people with medications and procedures yourself, right? There is no difference in getting help for yourself. You may not need help for very long - luckily you will get on top of things quickly - but it sounds to me as if you could use some help, and as a medical student you are obviously intelligent to know when that is. My thoughts are with you,

Ellu