coping strategies

My favourite coping techniques are eating, drinking booze, cutting and occasionally taking lots of OTC drugs. I should probably be more careful with multiple drug combinations. Take 5 that can't kill you at any dose and you're actually at high risk. When I had to get my implanon taken out and had extreme anxiety I took about 1000mg of valproate (which I hadn't taken at all in a while), 6 nurofen plus (probably about 75mg codeine), my usual 5mg of abilify and about 6 kwells. This was over the day, so at least I didn't take it all at once, but it was dangerous nonetheless. I didn't think of that at the time, all I cared about was getting through the implanon removal procedure.

I have had such terrible anxiety, which I was quick to blame on the abilify, but looking back at previous posts on this blog I can see that anxiety was already a problem. Agitation is usually dealt with using booze and food. Intense sadness is best dealt with by cutting. Anxiety is what brings on the drug use.

My friend just came around to say hi for my birthday and even just talking to her made me feel so anxious. There was a time when I was confident and outgoing. I was even pretty stable. I don't know what happened there, it's quite unlike me to be confident and stable.

I get all the physical symptoms of anxiety, which is the only way to know it's there. It's easy to not realise that what I'm experiencing is anxiety. I usually just focus on the problem I'm dealing with, not realising that the problem is actually anxiety.

Some things that make me anxious: making and receiving phone calls, reading text messages, checking email or facebook, opening mail, pretty much any sort of social interaction, checking my bank balance, attempting to do anything... and then there's the free-floating sort of anxiety that isn't connected to anything in particular.

I know that problem solving skills might help with the general anxiety but what is there to do about social anxiety? I don't always avoid these things so I'm getting plenty of exposure. I think some hardcore psychotherapy is what is needed. I'm just waiting patiently for a referral to a good psychologist.