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Serious Hypervigilance

indigoaura

indigoaura

Bluelighter
Joined
Jan 4, 2009
Messages
1,707
Can't honestly say that this is due to drug use, but I suppose long term use of ecstasy could be a factor. In recent years, rolls have been spaced out by 2-6 months.

In any case...

Been having issues with hypervigilance. During 2020, my partner and I isolated hardcore due to COVID and reality basically just dissolved. Basic things like job and stability changed. It was stressful. 2021 brought more challenges that I don't really want to get into, but it involved more instability and more things happening that I did not expect.

Off and on, since then, I have struggled with hypervigilance. It is like my brain is in overdrive trying to anticipate every possible scenario that could go wrong. Sometimes I find relief for awhile and it lets up, then some small triggering event will activate the whole process over again. When it is fully active, it is LOUD, like non-stop disaster scenarios playing in my brain all the time, all these fantasies about what could be going wrong. It is exhausting. At its worst, there can be panic attacks with chest pain and labored breathing.

I have a legit xanax prescription that I have had for years due to flight anxiety, and that stops it. However, I really don't want to develop a benzo addiction.

Has anyone else dealt with this? Did you find anything that helped? I have been considering therapy, but I don't know how useful that will be. Maybe EMDR? I was using ashwagandha for awhile with good results, but then those results seemed to dry up and the ashwagandha sometimes seems to make it worse.
 
Hi.. I feel therapy would be a good call. There are established steps a trained therapist can lead you through to treat this successfully. First is to help you out the sympathetic state your in.. want to slide back into the parasympathetic.. that’s where we chill eat and fuck and have a good time.

Triggers can start a ruminating thought pattern. These can feed off themselves and become more ingrained. Grounding and learning successful techniques to exit out of unwanted loops is where I’d be looking.

Possibly check this out.. https://www.audible.com/pd/Overcoming-Unwanted-Intrusive-Thoughts-Audiobook/1684036933
 
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neversickanymore said:
Hi.. I feel therapy would be a good call. There are established steps a trained therapist can lead you through to treat this successfully. First is to help you out the sympathetic state your in.. want to slide back into the parasympathetic.. that’s where we chill eat and fuck and have a good time.

Triggers can start a ruminating thought patterns. These can feed off themselves and become more ingrained. Grounding and learning successful techniques to exit out of unwanted loops is where I’d be looking.

Possibly check this out.. https://www.audible.com/pd/Overcoming-Unwanted-Intrusive-Thoughts-Audiobook/1684036933
Click to expand...

Thanks.

I have reached out to a few therapists, but they did not reply to me. Kinda hard when it takes a lot to muster up the motivation to click "send" on an email and then no one replies. :/ Do you think online chat therapy could be productive, or is this something better left to a more traditional avenue?

There has definitely been a fair amount of ruminating. And yes, the triggers set off the ruminating and then it is hard to stop.

I have always had a certain tendency towards anxiety and OCD (imagining my house is on fire, worrying the dog is dying, etc). This has been a thing since childhood. I can also be a fairly empathetic/intuitive person with predictions and awareness. Unfortunately, there was a recent experience where an intuition/gut feeling about something negative ended up being correct. So now, all of the standard anxious/obsessive thoughts seem more plausible. Like, the anxious/obsessive thoughts have become blurred with intuition. Maybe the house really IS burning down right now, maybe I'm right!

But it is becoming difficult to sort it all. What is intuitive and what is an intrusive thought? What is a legitimate concern based in reality and what is fantasy? Is something horrible really happening right now, or does my body just feel like something horrible is happening?
 
@indigoaura you are DEFINITELY not alone in this, with how the covid quarantine/lockdown/isolation has all panned out. I actually developed full blown agoraphobia like a crazy person last year because of it! I've had a shit-tonne of CBT and DBT therapies in the past so when the time came to say enough was enough, I just drew on what I learned from previous therapy, to get my anxiety, hypervigilance, and ruminating thoughts under control then to desensitise myself to my fear of going outside the house.

So I will echo what @neversickanymore said, that to get good, relatively quick results it will probably take therapy, and maybe even medication if it's really bad and impeding on your daily life.

BUT you can still do it on your own. Practice mindfulness meditation, so that you have more control over what comes in to your mind. Mindfulness has helped me IMMENSELY.
 
Sounds like you benefit from using Ashwaganda like Ginseng or Shilajit. You only stay on it a couple weeks or month then stop or else it starts to backfire or something.

Thought about other herbs in the Ayurvedic canon you can cycle on?
 
indigoaura said:
Do you think online chat therapy could be productive, or is this something better left to a more traditional avenue?
Click to expand...
If by online chat therapy you mean video conferencing like Zoom, Skype, etc, then yes I think that can be very productive. Like everything else, covid has changed the dynamic of health care and mental health care. Once lockdown started last year, I started seeing my psychiatrist via video chat and it has continued that way to this day. For the past year I have also been seeing therapists and it is all by video chat. I would argue that video therapy is better than no therapy at all.
 
BasedGod said:
ptsd. Benzos help me. No therapy can help when its been going on since 11 years old or so. With benzos, nah dun give a shit.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I feel like a hypochondriac to diag myself, but it kinda seems like complex ptsd to me. I had already gone through years of my mother having a terminal illness and a lot of up and down emotions there (she is cured, she is not cured, she hardly has any time, she has more time, she is in remission, she has relapsed etc), and already felt like prolonged stress was an issue for me that was having an impact. Then COVID happened, and that was triggering for a variety of reasons. Then some other shit happened that was a trigger for some old trauma, and I think it was all just too much.

.5 mg of xanax will stop it 100%. It silences my mind and I feel normal, but I really do not want to come to depend on xanax for living my day to day life. Ashwagandha helped, but only for a limited time.
 
Jerry Atrick said:
If by online chat therapy you mean video conferencing like Zoom, Skype, etc, then yes I think that can be very productive. Like everything else, covid has changed the dynamic of health care and mental health care. Once lockdown started last year, I started seeing my psychiatrist via video chat and it has continued that way to this day. For the past year I have also been seeing therapists and it is all by video chat. I would argue that video therapy is better than no therapy at all.
Click to expand...

Actually referencing apps like Talkspace or Better Help where you have unlimited texting and maybe a weekly call.
 
I felt states of hyper-vigilance and disrupted sleep due to nightmares about being in danger and flash-backs of the traumatic event. Many are not a fan of Quentiapine which I took in order to sleep without waking up. It was that or to develop a benzo addiction for me I’m reasonably guessing. I don’t have much experience with talk-therapy and cannot recommend anything useful sorry. It took time to heal such as a couple years before my psyche to not believe that it was in any danger and that some positive events could indeed happen in my life, I felt hopeless for a very long time. I attended some lectures about the nature of trauma to try to make some sense about how I was feeling, reacting, and behaving. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful.

I hope you find the answers and peace in your life.
 
indigoaura said:
Actually referencing apps like Talkspace or Better Help where you have unlimited texting and maybe a weekly call.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I mentioned Zoom and Skype as examples. Honestly, my psychiatrist uses some type of medical portal for video calls. And my therapist uses a different portal but they all amount to watching each other via web camera. Since these specialists usually charge per session or by the hour, they probably do not want patients to text on an unlimited basis. I've never heard of Talkspace or Better Help but if they are avenues of therapy that allow for unlimited texting and a weekly call, then by all means take advantage of them.
 
indigoaura said:
Can't honestly say that this is due to drug use, but I suppose long term use of ecstasy could be a factor. In recent years, rolls have been spaced out by 2-6 months.

In any case...

Been having issues with hypervigilance. During 2020, my partner and I isolated hardcore due to COVID and reality basically just dissolved. Basic things like job and stability changed. It was stressful. 2021 brought more challenges that I don't really want to get into, but it involved more instability and more things happening that I did not expect.

Off and on, since then, I have struggled with hypervigilance. It is like my brain is in overdrive trying to anticipate every possible scenario that could go wrong. Sometimes I find relief for awhile and it lets up, then some small triggering event will activate the whole process over again. When it is fully active, it is LOUD, like non-stop disaster scenarios playing in my brain all the time, all these fantasies about what could be going wrong. It is exhausting. At its worst, there can be panic attacks with chest pain and labored breathing.

I have a legit xanax prescription that I have had for years due to flight anxiety, and that stops it. However, I really don't want to develop a benzo addiction.

Has anyone else dealt with this? Did you find anything that helped? I have been considering therapy, but I don't know how useful that will be. Maybe EMDR? I was using ashwagandha for awhile with good results, but then those results seemed to dry up and the ashwagandha sometimes seems to make it worse.
Click to expand...
i believe im suffering with this as well, in a week ive flushed 20 or more fake percs(fent) and today, morphine and lorazepam(liquids, from a loved one on hospice that recently passed) down the sink and im all shook up and focus with regrets and what ifs , after so many zombie survival films i think of stock piling meds, oh i dont know but im feeling fears and regrets, i know its my stinking thinking addict mindset, wish you peace i do
 
Robi said:
i believe im suffering with this as well, in a week ive flushed 20 or more fake percs(fent) and today, morphine and lorazepam(liquids, from a loved one on hospice that recently passed) down the sink and im all shook up and focus with regrets and what ifs , after so many zombie survival films i think of stock piling meds, oh i dont know but im feeling fears and regrets, i know its my stinking thinking addict mindset, wish you peace i do
Click to expand...
I can only stash drugs I can exercise willpower with. I can't keep opiates that were prescribed to me. If there's ketamine it doesn't last very long. Otherwise I try to keep some stuff near enough that I could access it if I wanted to. Not having it in my home helps a lot.
 
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