Nervous Disorder

You're very young still. It gets easier as you grow older. I was on Klonopin for awhile. I overdosed and was hospitalized and then put in an institution for a few days. A rough experience. I cant reccommend drugs to you, they are a crutch; not a cure. Dont become dependant upon them. Look up Cognitve Behavioral Therapy. Its a difficult path, but it works!!!

Change your perceptions

good advice - and yoga - relaxation techniques, look them up.

Cognitive behavioural techniques are the best supported interventions with anxiety.

You would actually be best to have a good therapist to work through this stuff with you.

There is a big thread about this somewhere here....lemme try and find it for you.

I will alaso try to find some good sites for you.
I work a lot with anxiety problems, by the way - but not in the USA, where I assume you live, so I cannot help with therapist suggestions.

Yep. Cognitive behavioral therapy is the way to go. My roomate, who is a sociologist and psycologist (with degrees in each) says this is the best route.

If you can't get to one, maybe you can practice on yourself. Try to associate food with good things. Try to counter your negative fixations with positive ones. For example, throwing up when you have to is simply your bodys' way of getting rid of something it is having trouble digesting, or helping you get rid of bad stomach bacteria. If you are doing anything more than in moderation or fixating on it, try to force yourself to stop. Do something else. Join a fun club, draw, play a sport. Go rock climbing, take a relaxing bath, meet some new people.

Thank you all.. I will definantly look into Cognitive behavioural techniques.

DC DarkAngel89 -I prefer Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. This therapy, developed by Dr. Albert Ellis, is cognitive, short term and extremely efficient. I dont know where you live, but here is a list of referrals from the Albert Ellis Institute:

http://www.rebt.org/counseling/referral.asp

Here is a link that explains REBT:

http://www.rebt.org/about/whatisrebt.asp

What exactly happens during both of those kinds of therapys mentioned above? What are the procedures?

Link to article

In this therapy, the therapist will help his client understand how his irrational thinking has caused him distress, and help him to learn new ways of understanding and dealing with life situations.

ahh ok, so it's not like I have to move into an institution and endure severly stressful things? It's just another type of more effective therapy, correct?

RET is a sub-set of cognitive behavioural therapy. It suits some well - but, at least as practiced by Ellis, is far too confrontive for many.

CBT consists of educaion about how thinking affects behaviour, and an examination of how your ways of thinking may affect you negatively - unhelpful thoughts are challenged, and new ways of thinking and behaving are rehearsed.

Treatment of anxiety does entail confronting situations that make you fearful, until they no longer cause you major distress.

CBT is best undertaken by a therapist with whom you feel good and comfortable - ALL therapy requires a positive relationship with another person - but all therapy requires some work and discomfort.

I'm not sure that could help my anxiety then...I mean, I have to face things like ex boyfriends, puking, and that's about all I'm really scared of..
How would they make me encounter those types of things?

I cannot diagnose/work out the basis of your specific fears over the net - but, you say youare afraid of eating - it would need to be established what the specific fear/was/were, and they would need to be challenged - in your thinking and your behaviour.

This might include getting you to induce vomiting! I cannot comment without knowing way more. However, as you noticed with accidental exposure to vomiting, this helped you go some way towards losing your fear of it. The context of your fear might need to be explored, too - how did it come about that you began to fear this? It might be that the ACTUAL fear is of something else.

Usually exposure to a fear is graded - ie worked up to slowly.

And yes - if you have a non-reality based fear of seeing your ex, you may need to be supported to see him - from here, I cannot tell.

Here are some site which may help explain things:

http://www.cognitivetherapy.com/

http://www.psychnet-uk.com/psychotherapy/psychotherapy_cognitive_behavioural_therapy.htm

http://www.beckinstitute.org/books.htm


It is worth noting that some of the claims made for efficacy are not absolutely supported - many of the clinical trials supporting CBT as an approach do not include the people who dropped out in the final statistics - nonetheless, in the hands of a good therapist, it is an excellent approach to a number of problems.

There are also many self-help books based on it which some folk find helpful.

About what caused my fear of vomiting..theyve already told me it's a fear of losing control. people with GAD(what I have) have that. It's pretty commen apparently, that and my mom had cancer in her stomach and used to be sick alot pile up my fear of vomiting.

One technique that may be used is called "systematic desensitization". In this, the person slowly learns to become calm in the site of the thing about which he is anxious.

Here is a little interactive site, that you might find interesting:

http://www.dushkin.com/connectext/psy/ch14/sysdes.mhtml

Alrighty then, thank you much.

Just for interest - a free CBT site for depression - which also looks at anxiety, as the two are often very intertwined:

http://moodgym.anu.edu.au/

And - an Australian ABC radio look at cybertherapy - which is where I go tthe moodgym site from:

http://www.abc.net.au/health/features/cyber/

And two sites for panic disorder, one from Monash University in Oz - one Canadian - from the page I just posted the url for.

I don't think you have panic attacks from what you say, Dark Angel - but from a quick glance, these are useful sites, and it won't do you any harm to read them - (one includes a MODERATED support group) - but I am posting them here for others' benefit as much as anything:

http://www.med.monash.edu.au/mentalhealth/paniconline/ (This one contains a Step One, which is useful general information - and a Step 2, which is a registered online therapeutic program - to enter which you must be assessed to suffer from Panic Disprder. This is assesed through questionnaire and you would be contacted by email if you wished to register for this. This is clearly part of a research program - but appears to be run by very qualified folk. Very interesting idea, methinks! There is no cost.

http://www.paniccenter.net/

They are stock standard CBT sites (personally, unadulterated CBT drives me nuts) - but well done, I think.

This page also contains lots of good info:

http://www.abc.net.au/health/regions/library/anxietydisorders.htm

Here is a general Oz site for doctors in mental health - some is out of date:

http://www.mja.com.au/public/mentalhealth/index.html

Here is a page of treatments that work in anxiety disorders:

http://www.mja.com.au/public/mentalhealth/articles/andrews/andrews.html

(Oz medical folk are often not very expert in this stuff, but this info appears pretty good on a cursory examination)


Womens' Health Victoria site re Anxiety:

http://www.whv.org.au/packages/anxiety.htm

Clinical research Unit for Anxiety and Depression: ( I haven't looked at these last two yet)
http://www.crufad.com/cru_index.htm

Shyness and Social Anxiety Treatment Australia (I haven't looked properly at this one, either)

http://www.socialanxietyassist.com.au/

Depressionet on Anxiety:

http://www.depressionet.com.au/conditions/anxiety.html

Bluepages - for depression
http://bluepages.anu.edu.au/