Stress.
They say we all need stress in our lives. It’s stress that will make you get up and run if ever you encounter a bear while walking in the woods or make you hit the brakes in sight of upcoming traffic. I also heard that stress is the greatest cause of people not feeling well now days. As all of you I am sure, I feel like my level of stress is too high and I wish it could go down a bit but I choose a career that is not considered relaxing and I have yet to figure out how to balance work and life.
Anxiety
Four years ago, I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. I have been treated and made great efforts to cope with the sometimes overwhelming feelings and thoughts I had. I had good days, very good days and quite bad days. Thought it all, I still managed to graduate from University, move to a foreign region and find love. Why am I telling all that pretty personal stuff on here? Well, as I stated here before, I also gained all the weight I intend to loose during that period of my life. I also stated before that I managed to get back the control of my head in 2011 and I feel like 2012 is my year.
On Tuesday morning, I went to the gym and got on the treadmill. After 18 minutes, I began feeling tired. My heart rate was a little high and I felt like panic was on its way. This had often happened to me before: as my heart rate was going up, my breathing gets heavier and it feels like I am having a panic attack. I told myself to calm down even if I had the feeling that the whole gym knew I wasn’t doing so well in my head. I struggled to get my workout done but I did finish it. I have not gone back to the gym yet but I will be there when you will read this post. What will happen then? I have a number of fears associated with the gym, but I will conquer them and go back, do my thing and be proud.
I guess I wanted to share this with you all because I need to get out of my chest the fact that I thought those panic attacks were behind me but there not. I know for a fact that exercise helps me reduce my stress level, but I still need to practice coping with the heavy breathing associated with cardio training and, ultimately, weight loss.
I also wanted to ask all of you if a situation like that have even happened to you and how you handeled it. Thanks!
Wow! Good for you for working through it. I had a MILD anxiety attack once while swimming in the pool, nothing as bad as yours, but I took some deep breaths, got myself to the end of the pool, calmed down and went back to doing lengths. Would it help if you had a buddy to work out with? Someone to keep you calm that you can use as a bit of a security blanket?
I have anxiety too, I’ve struggled with it since Highschool. I have taken paxil or prozac to treat it since highschool. But went off the drugs about a year ago because I was exercising, by some miracle the endorphins from exercise replaced the need for the drugs. I still get bits of anxiety, especially on days I don’t workout. Which is part of the reason why I workout so much
But the days of the bad attacks seem to be gone for now….not fun…not fun…when that happens. To this day the feeling of my heart beating really fast reminds me to much of an anxiety attack and I don’t like it.
I’m proud of you for fighting through this, its not easy, try your best to stick it out, and get past the anxiety and find a place in the gym that is safe for you.
I’ve never had a panic attack working out before but I have had them in high stress moments or when there’s just too much going on – and even sometimes for no good reason. I think I have anxiety in general as I definitely am a worrier. Well, I think if you worry about going to the gym enough you might have a panic attack just from getting so worried about it, so definitely the biggest hurdle is to go back those first few times since this happened to you. I think the friend idea at least for those first few times is a good one for sure. If you can’t hook up with a friend, make sure that you have some uplifting music that makes you happy – songs without lyrics that are too emotional. Good luck. I know it’s not easy at all. Keep us posted!
Thank you all for your replies. I am going to push trough it and I hope that, like you Katie, endorphin will work it’s magic in my brain!
There have been many struggles with anxiety for me, Mr. Wort, and for most of my family members. So even if I’m not going through it at a given time, someone I love probably is. Like you, I workout on the treadmill (but at home, not the gym – way too much anxiety there for me!). Some of my best runs have actually been when I am feeling anxious beforehand (not about exercise, just about life in general or thinking about some particular problem). By getting my heart rate up through exercise, and then back down through the cool down period, I feel MUCH better with regard to anxiety afterward, and I have read that this is one way that exercise helps with anxiety – if you start to feel your heart beat faster, that’s a good time to exercise, because the body will take over instead of the brain, your heart will beat fast due to exertion, and then your heart rate will naturally go down after the exercise ends, leaving you on a more even keel (so seriously folks, if panic strikes at the office, running up and down the staircase a few times can head it off!). In this case, it sounds to me like maybe when your heart started to beat faster due to the exercise, your brain associated that increased heart rate with panic, and made you want to stop the increased heart rate. Maybe you can have a talk with yourself about when it feels bad to have increased breathing/heart rate due to panic, but that sometimes it can feel good to have a healthy breathing/heart rate increase due to exercise.
Hope this helps! Hang in there! I know it’s hard!