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Mental Health Does anyone's anxiety get worse at a certain time of day?

nuttynutskin

nuttynutskin

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Joined
May 15, 2011
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Strange question perhaps, but I've noticed that unless something is triggering my anxiety it gets worse at almost the same time every day which is around 9pm. At first I thought maybe it was because my medication was wearing off, but it dissipates and usually by 11pm or so I'm back to baseline. I am a night owl btw. Anyways, does anyone else have a certain time of day where your anxiety gets worse seemingly out of nowhere?
 
Definitely. Ever since I was a child my anxiety would get worse without any sort of trigger close to bed time. I guess sleep was a trigger because I would loathe going to school the next day. Just laying in bed terrified of the next day. My anxiety was quite intense, I couldn't talk to people, I couldn't think well enough to sustain a conversation and there was only 1 or 2 people I could feel comfortable enough with to talk to.

It's different now however. I learned to control my anxiety at night time and not obsess so much about the day ahead of me. Now my anxiety is most intense when I have to leave the house to go to work because I have people literally calling out that I have lost weight or am doing drugs from across the alley, that trip to get in the truck to go to work is so uncomfortable for me. It's a fucked up situation for sure.
 
Generally my anxiety is bad in the morning. This is a new phenomena for me since my memory became bad due to many ODs. When I wake up I start obsessing about the things I need to do that day. I have started making a list the night before because I get anxiety when I know there is something I need to be doing, but I can't for the life of me remember what it is.
 
My anxiety is non-existant in the morning. I feel great waking up. I have a happy little glow until about 2PM. Then I start to get uncomfortable. This all fades around 9PM, and from there until sleep I feel great, maybe manic even.

Rx: 10mg escitalopram, 200mg lamotrigine

Temazepam 30mg and amphetamine 40mg XR prn, not every day and sometimes not even every week.
 
I've recently been having this burst of anxiety that lasts for an hour or two just when I get home from work and "relax" (or at least that's the plan). It could be chemical, or it could just be that my brain isn't occupied with anything at that time.
 
I have severe social anxiety and over the years I think I've associated the getting ready process in the morning (getting washed, dressed, hair and makeup) to an impending situation where I will feel anxious as I'm obviously getting ready to go out where I will see people. This is almost like a trigger routine to me I think, I cant be around people when I get ready I get so anxious and snappy and its the time I have most frequent panic attacks. I can link this back to where I was younger and dropped out of school due to a debilitating fear of people which developed into agoraphobia (fear of outside spaces) alongside my social anxiety. At this point and thnking they were helping I would be physically dragged down into school in terror and tears everytime until it became impossible to keep me there and I dropped out of school completely. Many of the most "tramatic" inccidents happened in the early morning routine as that was when the signs which at that point no one understood came out and they were not handled corretly. I believe this has rubbed off on my morning routine now and something I have found useful to distract myself is having a set routine that I can almost go on autopilot on with my favourite upbeat music and a cup of tea. I dont know how much help this will be to anyone else, but its a pattern I have noticed in my own behaviour and am tryng to manage.
 
Isn't it amazing that when people that are supposed to care for you do not understand your mental health concerns and end up damaging you even more. My parents did not understand OCD. Certain foods would cause me to have the tactile sensation of choking when I would bite down on them with my teeth unless I performed a little ritual before each bite. They always became angry when I would gag on food even after they wouldn't let me do this silly innocuous ritual. I ended up losing a bunch of weight through my teens because I pretty much stopped eating regularly until I found pot.
 
My anxiety has always been worst first thing in the morning & generally speaking will have dissipated by mid-afternoon/evening. In many ways I am a morning person, but at the same time I am always most relaxed in the evenings. What this tends to mean for me is I rarely have trouble falling asleep with my anxiety but it causes me to wake early, or have interrupted sleep in the early hours.

I think cortisol peaks in the AM for many people, which may well explain why there can be a diurnal variation of symptoms similar to depression.
 
nuttynutskin said:
Strange question perhaps, but I've noticed that unless something is triggering my anxiety it gets worse at almost the same time every day which is around 9pm. At first I thought maybe it was because my medication was wearing off, but it dissipates and usually by 11pm or so I'm back to baseline. I am a night owl btw. Anyways, does anyone else have a certain time of day where your anxiety gets worse seemingly out of nowhere?
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If i am experiencing anxiety usually it's worse right after i wake up especially if i have had nightmares or Depressing dreams. Why this is i don't know but in the past when my anxiety was untreated i would often wake up with a full blown panic attack.

My Depression is also worse at certain times of the day as well usually during sundown. This usually goes away within a few hours after the sun has gone down. I have always hated sunsets which must make me the only person in the world that hates sunsets but loves sunrises.
 
paranoid android said:
My Depression is also worse at certain times of the day as well usually during sundown. This usually goes away within a few hours after the sun has gone down. I have always hated sunsets which must make me the only person in the world that hates sunsets but loves sunrises.
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That's interesting because that's seemingly when my anxiety peaks (if it's for no reason). It almost seems like it coincides with the sun setting. I don't hate sunsets but there does seem to be some correlation with that time of day. I still haven't figured it out, although lately it hasn't been as much of a problem.
 
nuttynutskin said:
That's interesting because that's seemingly when my anxiety peaks (if it's for no reason). It almost seems like it coincides with the sun setting. I don't hate sunsets but there does seem to be some correlation with that time of day. I still haven't figured it out, although lately it hasn't been as much of a problem.
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Even as a kid i remember feeling down when the sun started to go down. Once the sun started to set i would get this feeling of melancholy coming over me and i would usually just go and be on my own until the feeling passed. This gets infinitely worse during winter when it starts to get dark at about 3 fucking 30. God i hate SAD :! . I have not been Depressed now since winter but i still occasionally get that feeling of Depression coming over me at sunset though it rarely happens during the summer months. My Depression usually stays away during the summer thank christ.
 
weekend addiction said:
It gets worse for me whenever I have to go to work. Its so bad I've actually called out too many times at jobs in the past year or so. I've had to cut back on the drugs and change how I think about things a bit.
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I myself have had to quit or been fired from jobs in the past because of my extreme anxiety. I now am a "homemaker", but continue to do my shopping and any errands that can be done in the middle of the night because of crowds. Also, I still cannot go into a mall after probably 6 or 7 years. Walmart is hard too sometimes. Really any place indoors that is big, I have a real hard time with. Baby steps.
 
B.Love214 said:
I myself have had to quit or been fired from jobs in the past because of my extreme anxiety. I now am a "homemaker", but continue to do my shopping and any errands that can be done in the middle of the night because of crowds. Also, I still cannot go into a mall after probably 6 or 7 years. Walmart is hard too sometimes. Really any place indoors that is big, I have a real hard time with. Baby steps.
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I too have agoraphobia. Mine tends to come from the OCD though. I obsess about all the bad things that can happen if I leave my home. My girlfriend is helpful though. I tend to do better when I am with someone that I love or trust.

I also get depression when the sun goes down. Mostly it is when I am laying in bed thinking. It is one of the reasons I sleep with the TV on. It helps to have something else to focus on. In rehab my bunkies hated the fact that I slept with the radio on....I ended up smuggling in headphones and sleeping with those on. I end up dwelling on past transgression that I have done or had done to me. It is not helpful to constantly rehash the past and I am working on it. They say the past is history the future is a mystery so live in the present.
 
paranoid android said:
Even as a kid i remember feeling down when the sun started to go down. Once the sun started to set i would get this feeling of melancholy coming over me and i would usually just go and be on my own until the feeling passed. This gets infinitely worse during winter when it starts to get dark at about 3 fucking 30. God i hate SAD :! . I have not been Depressed now since winter but i still occasionally get that feeling of Depression coming over me at sunset though it rarely happens during the summer months. My Depression usually stays away during the summer thank christ.
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Me too man, I remember my first summer before Kindergarten when I was 4 years old, and by the end of it I had become quite more aware, and it was august and the sun was setting earlier but it was still a warm day and I remember eating oreos on my parent's apartment front patio and feeling melancholic during the sunset. Sunset and Oreos marked my soul for life.
 
Definitely get scared at night. Some of my anxiety is focused on the dark and having my home be invaded by someone with bad intentions, so those fears normally make night time a pretty high-anxiety event
 
I have general anxiety and its pretty much all day for me, but It can sometimes get worse at night because that's usually when you start to think about everything if your isolated in your room or something. I always have to have music on or the TV on to go to sleep alongside with my meds.
 
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