Hey Redlocks - only just picked this up, haven't been on the forum for about a week! All I can say is about my experience. I was on AD's for over 40 years problems with anxiety and depression and supposedly fibromyalgia or ME (yuppie flu as they used to call it in the late 80's!) However, since going on my meno journey and learning loads and trying loads I came to the conclusion that I had underlying hormonal problems all along since a teenager which just made life plus anxiety (difficult life) much much worse.
So you are not mad! regarding this grieving, worrying ,irrational thoughts about friends and family. Here's what happened to me.
When I was at my worst I could not leave the house or talk to anyone on the phone, nor did I want my family to leave the house! and I was only sleeping about 2 hours a night.
I just thought they were going to die or something terrible was going to happen when they stepped outside the door and regarding the phone I thought I would make a mistake in my job or forget something important in our day to day living which would render us bankrupt or homeless or result in some other irrational catastrophe. I catastrophised 24/7 on the days I could actually get out of bed! I also had the urge to physically run away - which I did, usually in the middle of the night! terrifying my husband and family. I got picked up by the police one night because they were worried about me wandering around and then I tried to pick a fight with them! I had it in my head that I was walking to the airport to visit my one and only friend in England! This kept on for just over a year and to be honest nearly cost me my life! Suppose you would call it a psychotic episode or a breakdown whatever...
but no amount of counselling or anything else fixed it. I reckon looking back that if our health service had been any good I probably could have ended up being sectioned...UNTILL....my hrt came right 18 months ago...now all gone!!! absolutely all gone!! even a lot of the stuff from 30 years! Sounds impossible but no...that's how it was for me. I wish it could be for everyone else. xxx but what it has done is give me hope for everyone else. xx
Its a question we hormonal women ask ourselves over and over...is it all hormones making an underlying issue worse or are the hormones irrelevant, we need to fix the underlying issue?? In my case, it was the hormones all along but no one clocked it!
If 30 years ago there had been proper credence given to endocrine and hormonal issues (In fairness I have to say that it didn't happen because the world had not moved on to the position it is today because it is only just becoming an area of proper research now but...) my life would have been very different instead I was just drugged up to the eyeballs and put down as a clinically depressed whinger, with varying mental health issues who "had to learn to live with it"!
I am not fixed though entirely because I believe all those drugs and the past issues are still in my head and cloud my thinking somewhat...well 30 years of that must do and it is only coming up 2 years that the change occurred, but I can now deal with stressful situations and have only mild panic episodes that barely register and last less than 15 minutes. I am slowly managing to dump the attitudes of the past I had no control over. I don't have psychotic out of control thoughts and a proper course of AD's hasn't passed my lips in 4 years (I got given a course when one of my sis-in-laws died..not the recent one!) but only manage 3 days before I went "not taking these again"! The underlying thoughts and issues are slowing changing because I am physically and mentally more able to cope. And it is nothing I have had control over that has changed, just the "right" hrt...and don't let anyone tell you they all work the same and should have the same effects on every women because they don't!!!
Clio51- I too thought "it was my personality" - in the last 2 years turns out it "wasn't" and am so very different now than I was for most of my life and my life hasn't changed but I am convinced these imbalances change our thinking and take it totally outside of our control.
None of us are mad, nor "is it just our personality"...what it is something the so called experts are not very expert on putting their fingers on and something that goes on in our heads controlled by the chemicals in our bodies!!! The impact it has on lives is beyond immense and I think womens health should be taken far more seriously for future generations so others don't have to "learn to live with it"!
I don't know that any of this helps either of you but it might put a different perspective on things. Much love xx
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Topic: Medicine not helping my panic attacks right now (Read 14234 times)