Morning anxiety and fear

I am not suffering chronic pain but anxiety/depression. I find my mornings are pretty awful….waking up fearful of who knows what, shaking, shallow breathing, loss of appetite, feeling of weakness, not wanting to do anything. I do get calmer in the afternoon, sleep is pretty good though not perfect. I have tried magnesium, tryptophan, melatonin, meditation, deep breathing, affirmations, chamomile, crying, Google all day and so much more but mornings still are bad. It has only been real bad for 4 months but it is wearing me down, physically and mentally. Been to doctors, no physical issues, but they all want me on tranqs, anti depressants, beta blockers, etc. Not going there. I am pretty sure it is TMS. I am 70 year old lady and old age has crept up on me rather quickly. Suddenly wondering about the future, my future. Covid, world threats, and political junk isn’t helping and these last Two years have been very stressful. Hoping I can get some help here, some suggestions, success stories. Thank you all for sharing, it has helped. Thought I was the only one going through this.

 

This forum is particularly geared towards that mixture of chronic pain and anxiety, but most of us know your symptoms. TMS is not something usually used as a “diagnoses” for anxiety/depression without the physical.

It would probably be beneficial for you to watch something on youtube related to Dr. Sarno and pain science so you don’t start going down a path that doesn’t meet your needs.

That said, many mind-body therapies treat anxiety and depression without meds - but they can be useful, even for short periods for some.

Methods of EMDR, ITDSP and Family Systems tend to focus more on short term treatment than meds.
Clair Weekes book (also audio book free on youtube and she’s reading it) Help And Hope For Your Nerves is helpful to many. She discusses morning anxiety.

 

Anxiety and emerging depression played huge roles in my crisis point back in 2011. Feel free to read my profile story and check out my list of resources. One them is a link to a post I made years ago, with the title "How depression tried to bring me down and failed"

Hope & Help For Your Nerves by Claire Weekes (available everywhere, including your library, most likely) was the second book that changed my life after The Divided Mind by Dr. Sarno - and I can't recommend it enough for anyone who suffers from anxiety and what I think of as "general" depression.

As for Dr. Sarno's books, I prefer TDM over his earlier ones, because he dispenses with his theory in four efficient chapters, and by then he had totally accepted the fact that symptoms other than pain can be TMS - and that anxiety and depression were probably TMS equivalents. He then turned the book over to six other mindbody professionals, five of them MDs. It was one of the six other authors who mentioned aging as a source of rage and anxiety - and that was my lightbulb moment, and the beginning of my recovery.

I was 60 then, and well on my way to becoming housebound. I'm 71 now, and while the fact of aging still enrages me, at least I can acknowledge and face it. Actual physical issues do seem to pile on after 65, and what appears to be complete world and societal dysfunction is hardly conducive to ideal mental and emotional health - nonetheless I'm in WAY better shape and have a much more active life than in 2011. All thanks to the work we do here, in honor of Dr. Sarno.

Take a look at our free Structured Educational Program (the SEP) which is on the main wiki, and go directly to the Success Stories subforum for those. The SEP is probably out of date, and not all the links work, but it's still a useful way to get started in small increments, and to test the waters to see what else is out there.