Can't sleep now

[vangoghnights]

hi. i am 33 yr old. female. i have suffered from anxiety, panic attacks, and various forms of depression with heavy concentrations of fear. basically when ive tried to explain these things to a doctor...the whole story does not come out. so i am going to try now. i have religious fears...i have seen church counselors and they tell me i am oppressed with spirits...i believe that but i was wondering if maybe something else is wrong with me since their solutions are harder for me to live with. anyways, i just want to say that i need some help very badly and i am not sure if i am going to give you enough info in order to convey to you exactly what is going on in my head. either way, it is effecting my life not to mention my sleep as bad as it did when i was a young teen. my grandma was schizophrenic although i dont see how that would affect me since i dont have hallucenations. but i dont hear things outside my head although the thoughts i have are not all mine. dreams i have have always been about the end of the world and now i dream them every night. i am not paranoid in the sense of making friends and whatnot however i have think i know that there are ulterior motives in everyone and everything and i see them. i hope this makes some sense since i am not going to reread this over to check...since then i will not send this.

 

[Daniel E.]

cant sleep now`

Have you tried meds for irrational thinking like Seroquel, Zyprexa, or Risperdal, etc.? I was prescribed a few different antipsychotic meds when my anxiety/OCD was most severe.

I would stay away from the religious "counselors" since you fundamentally have a medical/psychiatric problem, not a religious problem. In my limited experience, church people who try to help often do more bad than good and can actually perpetuate your fears rather than calm them. They are often oblivious to significant mental health issues.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

cant sleep now`

Hi, vangoghnights.

If you have trouble explaining your concerns to your doctor when you see him/her, why not try writing them down before your appointment? As I have said several times in other threads, I will not try to diagnose anyone in a forum like this but it does sound like you might benefit from some medications and psychotherapy for anxiety, depression, and obsessional thinking. Your family doctor could probably prescribe the mediaations and perhaps refer you to a therapist.

i have religious fears...i have seen church counselors and they tell me i am oppressed with spirits...i believe that but i was wondering if maybe something else is wrong with me since their solutions are harder for me to live with.

Yikes. I don't mean to be insulting to anyone's spiritual or religious beliefs but "oppressed with spirits"? I thought we'd left that behind at the beginning of the last century. I agree that such comments or advice are NOT going to be helpful to you at all.