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After straining some muscles, my doctor prescribed me muscle relaxers to ease the pain and tension. After using them for a week, my anxiety went through the roof once the muscle relaxer wore off. Best I can guess is that because the muscle relaxers work to calm your central nervous system much lower than my body is used to, once the med wore off, I got rebound anxiety. Yay. 

I spent a week with my resting heart rate between 105-115. I wound up going to the ER because I felt so rundown and exhausted. They said I was dehydrated and gave me fluids. Next day I felt even worse despite hydrating, so I went back to the ER. They put me on a beta blocker to finally bring the heart rate down.

I'm angry that a stupid medication threw my whole world upside down. I'm just so frustrated because my mind doesn't feel anxious, but my body is clearly responding to some perceived threat. Just wondering if anyone has any experience with muscle relaxers giving them anxiety and suggestions on how to bring the body anxiety down.

Lakelynn,

I use a fitness tracker occasionally which confirms what I feel in my body which is feeling like my heart is going to pound out of my chest, and I can feel my pulse throughout my body like in my chest, face, fingers, etc., sometimes I get dizzy, and breathing hard even if I'm not pushing myself very hard (I have an albuterol inhaler that I use which helps but doesn't eliminate the breathing issues).  I've gotten my heart checked, and the doctors say everything is fine. I'm just hyper-aware of it, so I feel all of the changes. There isn't a magic BPM that triggers the panic attacks, but I would say it's usually anything above 150 which, unfortunately, even moderate activity can get it racing that high. Even very light jogging for like 30 seconds will get my heart racing around 175.

With the pinched nerve, it isn't presenting like a normal pinched nerve with the sharp pains. It first showed up as a dent (atropy) with swelling in various parts of my leg. There was almost no typical nerve pain, just pain where the swelling was occurring. The PT exercises are helping with the atropy and strength, but I'm still noticing some swelling even though the pain from that has subsided. It's been a slow healing process, but I think I'm finally getting there.

The PT exercises are all very slow-paced mostly floor exercises which I can do easily: clamshells, leg lifts, bridges, stuff like that. I suspect that it's going to simply take distress tolerance to build up my tolerance to my heart racing. I'm just looking for suggestions to slowly ease into that and how to get into a good routine.

I wish I could exercise more, but I have so much anxiety surrounding it. I used to be really active and go for 30 mile bike rides and do 10 mile hikes. Around three years ago, I started getting panic attacks anytime my heart rate got too high especially from exercising. My brain interpreted it as, "Oh, we're going to freak out now? Yeah, let's freak out!". Cue several years of not exercising, and my body feels like it's falling apart from it. Then, a month ago, I found out I have a severely pinched sciatic nerve which is causing inflammation and atrophy in my leg. I've started PT for it, so I'm starting to get some sort of activity from that. It feels good, and I know there's a lot more I can do for my body.

I know I need to get into some sort of an exercise routine, and I know there are a lot of low impact exercises I could start out with. I just really struggle with the consistency. Any suggestions to get back into a routine for a newbie who gets panic attacks when her heartrate gets too high and is struggling with other back/leg issues right now?

I've been in therapy consistently for 10 years, so I'm acutely aware of my traumas and could honestly write books psychoanalyzing them, myself, and my behaviors due to them. I keep going to therapy not to learn and uncover more things but to help me finally process the traumas. However, this past week, I had a breakthrough.

I realized that there's a time period in my life that I refuse to talk about or address in therapy. Even when I think about it, I can remember places but not necessarily the people that were part of my life at that time. I remember the events that occurred in the same way I remember watching a movie. There's a huge disconnect between me and the emotions of that time. I've spent most of the past 10 years focusing on other parts of my life that this one got swept under the rug. Probably for good reason.

My therapist helped me understand that's because my brain found the trauma of that time period to be too much and simply shut it out. I was at an age where I didn't have the capability or bandwidth to process what was going on, so, as a protective measure, my brain blanked it out.

While it's a success that I'm still discovering more events to process, I'm left wondering if the rest of my life was pretty awful, what was so bad during this time that I completely shut it out? What demons will I unearth under this rock?

Hi all,

I'm new here. I'm several years into my healing journey, and while I've come a long way since I started, I'm looking for additional support from people who get what I've gone through. Not everyone does, and that makes it difficult to connect with people.

My childhood was fraught with abuse from basically everyone in my family and emotional and physical neglect. Anyone who knows what ACEs are will cringe when I tell you my ACE score is an 7/10. So, yeah, it was bad. I barely speak with anyone in my family as they were all abusive or forgot I even exist, including my bio father who I haven't seen since I was 4 and now denies that he has any children. My mother has always favored my sister to an obnoxiously obvious degree and constantly throws me under the bus to protect her, even if it's at my expense. She's the only one I still communicate with once in a while, and I'm considering cutting off all contact with her as well.

Through adulthood so far, I've collected a lot more traumas: medical, therapy, sexual, emotional, to name a few. I've had to endure all of these hardships completely alone since I have almost no family to support me. Therapy has helped me to some extent, but I still feel lost and disconnected every day of my life. I find it incredibly hard to make friends. A few years ago I cut out some very toxic friends. The few friends that I do have left from that culling regularly blow me off or only contact me when they want something.

I struggle with depression and anxiety and, the past few years, a growing number of health issues. I feel like I'm doing all the things I'm supposed to according to my therapist, but I never feel any better. I feel like I exist, and that's it. I'm not sure where to go from here.

Thanks for reading!
Magpie