<p>Has anyone experienced this? Mild anxiety attacks that are triggered by playing out every horrible and sublime possibility of your future. My heart begins racing and I start to over think every aspect of my life (significant others, family members, jobs, just general enjoyment of life). It's a happened to me a couple times before and most recently happened to me last night. It was awful. The period of stress and anxiety lasts for about an hour or two. Is this common for a college student? Should I seek help? I don't want to end up taking anti-anxiety pills though because I think drugs are stupid and I don't want to become dependent. Can anyone recommend any natural cures for this problem?</p>
<p>Please consider seeing an anxiety specialists. Talking to someone will surely help. Also he/she will be able to teach better behavorial thought patterns, triggers, responses, etc. Also don’t forget to exercise.</p>
<p>nobody says you need to take meds, but to say " I don’t want to end up taking anti-anxiety pills though because I think drugs are stupid" is a very judgmental and closed minded thing to say. many people need meds to deal with mental health issues and there is no shame in that. on a separate note "natural cures"often times are a snake oil. do yourself a favor and head to your school mental health counseling services and let that be a first step in seeing what way you need to proceed.</p>
<p>1) Go see a therapist. You’re probably just stressed and need a person to hear you out and let you vent without judgment. But, given the way you’ve described things, maybe you have anxiety disorder.</p>
<p>2) There’s a good chance that if you do have something like anxiety disorder, you can take care of it just through therapy.</p>
<p>3) If therapy alone isn’t enough and your doctor recommends medication, take it! Mental illness is no different from any other illness. If you were diagnosed with diabetes, wouldn’t you take insulin? If you were diagnosed with cancer, wouldn’t you go through chemo or radiotherapy? You wouldn’t be “dependent” on it any more than you are “dependent” on antibiotics when you get an infection. I’m not sure what you meant by “drugs are stupid” but if you’ve ever taken Tylenol, antibiotics, antivirals, allergy medicine, then I’ve got some news for you…</p>
<p>tl;dr See a therapist, try and work it out that way. If, after several sessions, they recommend medicine, just try it and see how you feel. Let your doc know how it affects you so they can change the dosage or the medicine. And run, don’t walk, if they suggest medication after just one session (IMO that is not enough time to figure out your needs).</p>
<p>First, it is normal to play out these scenes and feels some type of panic. If this hasn’t happened until college, it may be that you haven’t put this much stress on yourself until now, so you just haven’t felt it yet, and that in itself can make your panic feeling last longer or feel more severe.</p>
<p>Luckily, you are in college and there are student support services available to you. Please reach out to student services to talk to someone. While you may not need meds, and I understand why you wouldn’t, you may need strategies for dealing with stress and that will help you in future projects, finals, exams and life events.</p>
<p>I concur with Snowflake - stress levels can increase as your responsibilities and expectations of independence increase. There are many strategies to try to help with anxiety. Take it one day at a time. Sometimes when my sleep cycle is suddenly interrupted at night, I have awoken with exaggerated anxieties and a racing mind and things seem scarier then. When I examine those same worries in the light of day, they are not serious at all. You will be fine.</p>
<p>See a therapist. But ultimately you must learn to turn off the anxiety and stop the reoccuring negative thoughts.</p>
<p>Agree with the therapist recommendation. You mention “last night” as the timing of this. Like marybee333, I also can really exaggerate my anxieties and issues in the middle of the night. But when I rationally think through them the next day, they are not nearly so formidable or insurmountable or scary as they seemed in the middle of the night.</p>
<p>Sometimes I can resolve this by reading for a while after I wake up to get my mind off the problem. I sometimes intentionally leave the light on and just put the book on the bed next to me when I finally am ready to fall asleep again, it seems to help. A couple of times I have gotten up and gone to my computer, and typed up my anxieties in almost like an essay format, with a list of things I can do to deal with them. When I am done with that, I read a little and then can go back to sleep.</p>
<p>But if these types of techniques don’t work, definitely try the therapist.</p>
<p>this a classic panic attack.
when these occur your body is going into fight or flight you need to figure out what is the trigger. you don’t always need meds they help reduce the attack or can stop it. Talking about it to someone can help. BUT you need to figure out what is the trigger. keeping a journal of day so you can look back and figure out what could be the trigger. also documenting before what it felt like durning and what you did after the attack is very helpful to help with pinpointing sometimes.</p>