I know that anxiety is not a symptom of bipolar disorder, but many with bipolar disorder also suffer from anxiety, whether it’s an official anxiety disorder or not. And when my anxiety gets really bad, which it has been lately, I become absolutely incapacitated by anxiety. I, literally, sit on the couch unable to move to do anything. And writing or working is right out. Anxiety causing an inability to act is having a devastating effect on my life.
Why Am I Incapacitated by Anxiety?
What seems to happen is that the anxiety takes up all the space in my body – especially the space in my brain – and then there is nothing left for anything else. And being totally full from anxiety, I feel like I’m vibrating or made of smoldering coals or something. And all that vibrating and slow-burning incapacitates me and makes it impossible for me to do anything. Like, even getting up to go to the bathroom seems like an almost impossible chore.
Effects of Anxiety Incapacitation
Having no brainspace available means no writing for me. No working for me. No billing for me. No money for me. It’s fairly devastating when you’re a freelancer.
And, just like I can’t write, I also can’t move to clean, cook or do anything else. My apartment looks like a bomb site. Hazmat is coming at noon.
And, of course, having this catastrophe around me and being unable to fix it causes even more anxiety. What if someone comes over? What will the person think? How will the person judge me for not being able to do something as simple as vacuum?
Admittedly, depression can cause a person not to do any of this stuff, too, but right now, anxiety is the culprit.
Why So Much Anxiety?
I’m prone to anxiety; I have found and many medications make this worse. I have learned to deal with this side effect but sometimes the amount of anxiety is simply unmanageable. And a few weeks ago I changed bipolar medications and that has made my anxiety reach that unmanageable level.
And while some people would just say, “well, get off the medication, then,” I don’t think that’s the answer. I have to wait and see if this side effect dies down, then I can make discontinuation decisions.
Handling Anxiety Incapacitation
Sometimes I take medications to counteract the anxiety (as-needed medication) but while that lessens the anxiety, it doesn’t necessarily fix the problem as it tends to still leave my brain full, although less anxious. So what I can do is simple things that don’t require intellectual capacity, like make myself dinner, but what I can’t do is things like writing for clients.
And, of course, I’ve tried traditional anxiety-coping techniques, too, like meditation and relaxation, but they do absolutely nothing to help me with this level of anxiety.
In my case, the only answer I can think of is to wait out the anxiety and hope the side effect will dissipate so I can get back to a level of anxiety that’s doesn’t incapacitate me and that I can handle.
For other people with bipolar and severe anxiety, the answer may be different medications – perhaps ones specifically for anxiety. I’m trying to avoid this, but some people can’t. The good news is that some medications can treat anxiety and other symptoms of bipolar, too. However, your doctor cannot make the necessary changes if you don’t tell him or her. My advice is don’t wait to be absolutely incapacitated by anxiety before you mention it. Try to quell the anxiety before it gets out of control.
Banner image by Wired Anxiety (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.
Anxiety kicks my butt sometimes. I do as you mentioned, I take an as needed med to help get through the attack then try and move on.
Natasha, I completely understand what you are going through. I too am a freelancer and have difficulty doing my job. I have bipolar 1 with psychotic features, GAD and adult ADHD. I am not on anything particular for anxiety. Since I quit my last job, my stress level is way down and my anxiety isn’t off the charts.
Currently, I do not want to leave the house, go to the mall, run errands, meet up with people. I primarily suffer from social anxiety. When I worked at my last job, I was on high alert all the time because of the stress. My psychologist is big into self-hypnosis. I would try self-hypnosis, but was too anxious to do it. Besides, the adult ADHD kept me from focusing. I am like you, I just sit and let it dissolve on its own.
Feel better!
Amy
I have had, and diagnosed, with Generalized Anxiety Disorder much much longer than being diagnosed with Bipolar. It has always ran along with the primary diagnosis.. be what it has been (Severe Recurring Major Depressive, with or without psychotic features to Bipolar I, depending on who the diagnostician is).
I “see” the Bipolar (the true diagnosis) and the GAD as being 2 angry animals that just feed and taunt and poke each other… when both of them are going at it… I am totally incapacitated and cannot make decisions. I just cannot think clearly and all I do is “feel” horrible inside my mind and that, in turn, in my body (lots of digestive issues). I can sometimes even develop a full on panic attack.
Everything, during those periods, is too hard.. too overwhelming.. too all consuming and I have to make something stop. Something has to stop. It’s “warring” thoughts battling one another, figuratively, inside my mind. It whirls and swirls and churns like a maddening tornado.
Like D. Denney… have had family that just refused for a long while to even consider that I am and was ill. They’ve slowly, very slowly, have started to come around… progress… very slow but progress.
You are also correct in that quite often the medications that we are all prescribed do have adverse and annoying side effects. Some are severe and even life-threatening and others are just psych symptoms that are either magnified due to the medication OR are new symptoms can sometimes occur (like hallucinations, etc.) that you’d normally not experience. The chemicals are designated and designed to alter brain… it’s their purpose.
I do, however, try to do at least 1 constructive thing per day when these bouts hit me… when both illnesses rage together and I feel that I have to just sit or lay down… I try to do at least 1 constructive thing so that I can honestly say that I’ve done something this day and often, just knowing I did 1 thing.. even if it is to take a much needed shower or fix my meal or even to wipe the kitchen sink off…. is 1 thing I’ve accomplished, knowing that when this too passes… I can perhaps do 2 things… 3 things… so forth.
When I am employed and this hits… and the chaos, found typically in work, is making it all churn faster and harder… I sometimes go somewhere to myself (often the bathroom) and I sit, rock to and forth, hold my head in my hands and close my eyes.
I try to imagine the maddening tornado of thoughts and feelings twisting furiously is above my head and I imagine taking a breath and reaching up with both arms to grab that tornado and then pull it down into a tight spiral and thrust it into the ground… as if I am grounding the circulating surge. I do this for as long as I have to do this to then get calm enough to return back to the work… sometimes, I have to go home and feign illness (like I got sick in the bathroom, type of thing).
Employers, as a whole in my experience, really do not like mentally ill folks…. especially once they find out that ya are mentally ill.
Hi there Natasha:
I suffer too,from awful bouts of severe anxiety.
My GP LOWERED my anti anxiety meds by 1/2 ( daily) not QHS)
So,I’m freaking out…….never felt worse…meh.
I’ve felt the lot : my apt looks like a tornado,yet my brain feels full
Of novocaine
( or something) trying to sound….sort of ok….when I’m SO NOT
Am going to tell my psych re this mess on the 30th June ….when I see him
To discuss anxiety,I’m not going to let it get way way out of hand.
Straight away,that’s not ME)
I’m super irritable I’ve been also diagnosed w GAD.
& RCBPolar.
Messy messy…..
Like,I’m not puking or anything….(???)
Yet)
He told me though,I’d feel AWFUL anxiety wise…..ok….that’s enough
Ta.
Anyway,
I’m pretty strong,as I think most of us are….
But even my fingers hurt so I’ll shoot this off now…
Stay well.
Good topic….very relevant in my life presently!!!
Cheers.
I too suffer from severe anxiety ,bipolar and depression .When the anxiety hits ,it feels like a tight cardigan i’m wearing of which the buttons cannot be undone ( even though they are there) and too narrow to pull over my head ……it is the most awful feeling and makes me regress into the total incapacitated state which you mention .
I am currently on a good “cocktail” of meds which seems to be addressing all three problems. I need to know if we are allowed to compare notes as far as meds go on this forum ?
Much love Natasha and thanks for all your sharing and all that you do for us all.
Hi
There’s no set rules of that ( as you stated re comparing notes”) re meds.
If you simply are looking for life exp. only )
Otherwise,if it were me I’d speak directly to my chemist/ PHARMASist for more assistance)
As required.
Hope this helps you out ?
Sandra in bipolar cyberspace ?????
Anxiety is a fight or flight response. If the source of the anxiety is a genuine threat then you may have to flee, but often it is inside you, something you can’t flee. If we take a defeatist attitude to anxiety it will just get worse until we are incapacitated in the way you describe. The only way to conquer anxiety is to voluntarily walk into it. To face our fears. I was listening to psychologist Jordan Peterson talking about phobias and he claims that a good psychologist can help someone free themselves from a phobia in about an hour through progressive desensitisation.
I used to suffer a great deal from anxiety. I think the fact that it affects me only occasionally and fairly mildly these days is a combination of having adopted an attitude of unconditional self-acceptance (a great deal of anxiety, especially related to work tasks, as you describe, comes from ingrained perfectionism and the unfounded belief that we just are not good enough) and because I try not to let anxiety be the boss.
Anxiety is like a ghost in a horror movie. The ghost is insubstantial. It’s not a like a zombie or a vampire which can physically attack you. The power of the ghost comes from inspiring fear in you and controlling your behaviour that way. But if you walk straight into the ghost you find that there is really nothing substantial there. You can walk right through it and it can’t do anything to you.
Hi Joe. I’m happy for you that you can control your anxiety. But there are many people who can’t. The first time I got hit with an attack of anxiety, I was reading news on the air at a small FM radio station. I loved that job, but apparently I had some form of performance anxiety. I tried to just work through it (face it head on), but it only got worse. I eventually had to quit that job.
Since then, I’ve seen numerous psychologists and psychiatrists for all sorts of therapy and meds, but nothing seemed to help… until I got on the correct med. I now have very little problem with anxiety and panic attacks. Sometimes the “power of the mind” just isn’t enough to be effective in fighting anxiety – only the correct meds. I’m not trying to sound cavalier, but I’m just speaking from personal experience. And I can almost guarantee that you’ll get other replies that say about the same thing. Peace.
hi Joe,
Glad that you managed to find techniques that worked for you.
Like you, I also used to face my issues head-on. But I learned recently that facing things head on is only possible while the anxiety has not reached levels of being overwhelming. Unfortunately the nature of anxiety is also that when people face it head on they often can end up fixating on the issue that is causing the anxiety in the first place and the anxiety becomes a self-perpetuating beast that rapidly and inevitably becomes overwhelming.
(This from an ex-mil who is used to managing his own feelings and very much being ‘on top’ of highly stressful situations).
So for me, when my ex left me (I believe she had a bipolar manic episode – I say “believe” because we never got to discuss it so I’ll never know for sure) I was left with all sorts of questions:
– how did 2 1/2 years together end in the space of 2 weeks?
– how did 6 months’ engagement end so suddenly?
– why had she started saying that she hadn’t been in love with me for a long time – but she was unable to say exactly how long?
– why did that change to she hadn’t loved me for a long time?
– why did that then change to she had never really loved me?
– why did these different views on her feelings for me change in the space of a week after we broke up?
– had she been seeing someone else?
– was she falling into the stereotypical bipolar pattern that I was (then) reading about and was she already sexually involved / exploring with someone else? (She had explained to me that she could just have sex for the sake of it – unlike me, I have to mentally connect before I share myself that way).
– how could she say the things that she had said about me? (Accusing me of having the personality traits that had come up in HER recent psych-assessment (she worked for a Health Care Insurance company. I now know that she was (probably unintentionally) gas-lighting).
– what will it take to calm her down and win her back?
– would I ever again get to look into her eyes, see her smile, feel her touch, smell her or experience that nervous little shudder that would go down my spine whenever I was near her?
– or was that now someone else’s privilege? Or, worse still, was someone else enjoying that but not even caring enough to be impacted the way I was?
– why was I such an emotional mess? Where had Mister Cool, Calm and Collected gone to? Why was the brain that could handle high stress (think life or death for myself and others) unable to handle this domestic situation?
– was she right? Was I a sociopathic narcissist without realising it? (Oddly enough, the fact that this bothered me was enough to tell the quacks that I was neither of these things. Still – I went through 6 weeks of evaluations to make sure).
All of these thoughts consumed my mind for pretty much every second of the day. And I can understand how others with anxiety might find themselves consumed with an inner cyclone of unanswerable questions.
For me, what I needed was to find a way to turn my mind off to that. I know the techniques for that and have been practicing them for 20+ years. But none of that was working this time. The spiritual group that I found that used chanting and affirmative meditation gave my mind the distraction (from thinking about her) that I needed.
So in my case, it was quite the opposite: rather than focusing on the issue, I needed to NOT think about her and restore my calm.
And that, I think, is also where the meds come in. I was lucky and found something that replaced the need for the meds. In reality, meds can take a while to get right so I do still believe that had I stuck with the meds then eventually my Dr would have eventually found the right combination and had the same success rate as the chants and meditation did.
32 months later, looking back on it, I guess that you could say that everything I went through was typical of someone who’s simply heartbroken and had their world unexpectedly blown apart.
I’m lucky – I’m EXTREMELY lucky: I just don’t get anxiety or depressed and I’m able to tackle my issues head on. BUT … in this particular situation I had a large dose of both and it basically put my whole life on hold for those last 32 months. It’s given me enough insight to now understand that not everyone can handle what’s on their plate – and that often what might appear as laziness, or a lack of care for personal presentation, a lack of motivation, an inability to complete simply daily life-tasks … these can very simply be a case of being overwhelmed emotionally.
Without a doubt it’s made me a better person. Better able to understand and empathise. But I wish I hadn’t had to go through it. Some of those times were very VERY lonely and dark doesn’t even begin to get close to starting to describe it.
That’s just my personal experience.
This is so informative and so interesting. I know so many individuals who suffer from anxiety and depression and it is just so cool to see someone relate and take it at the pace you did to explain it and really break it down! Thank you so much for sharing, I will be passing this along.
Anxiety is a nightmare – and when it becomes overwhelming then it totally incapacitated me. Fortunately it’s only happened once in my life but it had such an impact. It led to me obsessing and my mind became an absolute tornado of obsessive thinking which just became a self-feeding beast in itself.
I found that what worked was deep deep DEEP inhalations. I discovered this purely by accident at a spiritual group I was trying out. They focused on re-assuring meditation, chants and music. It worked better for me than the meds – to the point that I came off the meds completely and focused on anything that forced me to inhale deeply and expand the chest. This ended up being chanting (once a week) and gym (3x a week). That worked really well to reduce the knotted ball of tension that I had in my chest.
Admittedly I was then depressed (and medicated) for the next 2 years but things would have been far worse with the anxiety as well / instead. But you could also argue that the 2 years is just what it took to process a broken heart.
The only other thing that I think I really needed was just a HEAP of people around me to keep reminding me that EVERYTHING WILL BE OK. It might sound crazy but for me, anxiety reduced me to a child-like state so hugs and a soothing voice would have been the distraction I needed from obsessing. I think that would have helped during both the anxiety and depression stages.
We’re all different so this might not work for everyone – but it worked for me and will hopefully work for someone else.
Hi Natasha,
Your levels of anxiety are seriously high and still you have managed your life in a meaningful and productive way. I’m thinking some people are born stronger than others, having a more resilient nature.
You mentioned the ” as needed ” medications. I’ve been on a maintenance level of Xanax for over a decade until my psychiatrist switched me over to Klonopin. The plan is to get me off all of this class of medicines. There’s a link to dementia; she says it’s well reached and true. Do you agree ? I’m scared witless of dementia ( no pun intended- merely gallows humor ) but the anxiety I get is pretty wicked. Which one would you choose : the possibility of dementia or terrible anxiety ?
I’m lucky not to experience that kind of crippling anxiety, but have several people in my life (plus are acquainted with many others) who do. The prn benzos (or Seroquel for some of them) are a huge help. In a group my wife runs for her anxiety patients, she has the mindfulness/relaxation stuff to help decrease baseline anxiety, but its not there to help with the really acute stuff. She also gives out a laundry list of suggested grounding techniques to help people with their in the moment severe anxiety. There’s a wide variety, some visual, some tactile, auditory, etc. with the hope that people find just one thing that works for them if they don’t already have something.. either on that list or maybe inspired by something on the list. The theory being that once you get out of lizard brain mode some of the other techniques stand a fighting chance. Not perfect success with people finding something that works for them, but surprisingly good odds, usually a surprise to the people themselves!
Hi Natasha. I also have bipolar and GAD. The ’80s were hell for me, as I had to quit my two favorite jobs – DJ and news director at an FM radio station, and barber/stylist. I also had a very stubborn wife that refused to believe that I was ill. I was very much in love with her, but she basically left me. I was having very bad anxiety attacks that made it difficult to breathe, and it would also affect my mind – tons of confusing and overwhelming thoughts. At times, I couldn’t even go to the bathroom without having an attack. I was put on just about every benzo out there. I’m much better now, though, and I don’t take anything for anxiety. Maybe it’s the gabapentin? Anyway, thanks for all you do, and I hope you’re feeling well today. :)