Cannot calm down

[Guest [...]]

I cannot calm down or relax I'm really getting scared with these intrusive thoughts. My life is falling apart.

[[mi...]]

@[Su...] I was once treated for Lyme and treatment always made me feel a lot worse and that was before daily benzos. Not that you have a choice but do you think your Lyme treatments could be exacerbating your wd symptoms. Just curious. 

[Guest [...]]

I feel the same regardless. I had C19 in May and stopped all my lyme meds and supplements for 8 weeks to give my body a break. Zero relief mentally or physically. I'll never regain any normalcy.

[[Bu...]]

I'm sorry, sunflower. You are still feeling like this. So am I. I hope people can jump on here and give some good suggestions. 

[[ia...]]

 

Hi @[Su...]... I'm so sorry you're suffering. I understand how truly awful, overwhelming and terrifying it can be with the intrusive thoughts. When the intrusive thoughts were the worst for me, I remember saying out loud: "I didn't THINK these thoughts... where are they coming from!? GO AWAY THOUGHTS!" I felt like a crazy person. I promise... the intrusive thoughts... the fear etc... it WILL subside. 

These things may or may not work for you - but what REALLY worked for me, (even late at night), was going for walks, deep breathing - or watching some type of show. It wasn't a cure all, but it helped. I also used affirmations, which in the beginning just irritated me, but eventually I started to believe the things I was saying (i.e.: “My body is healing. My brain is healing every day.”).

I promise you… things will get better. Let us know how you’re doing. Keep checking in and reaching out.

 

[Guest [...]]

I'm not healing I'm only getting worse. At this time next year I could be job and home less. I have zero quality of life anymore. That isn't healing that's sad, cruel and debilitating without actually dying.

[Guest [...]]

At work and so effing sick. Awesome 

[Guest [...]]

I'll be on vacation in 8 days. Even vacations I don't get a break. I don't think I want to come back after and face this scary life and see more things go wrong. I'm having legit panic and fear and feel nothing is ever meant to be. Everything is falling apart. I'm waking up and up in the middle of the night feeling so sick and exhausted and anxiety riddled.

[[Sw...]]

@[Su...] do you want someone on one support?

I struggled with Bartonella (basically neurological Lyme) and heavy metal toxicity and mycotoxicity and benzo tolerance withdrawal  for 2.5 years in total. I have had every symptom in the book. I was also divorced from by my daughters father in the middle of all of this and left broke. I moved into an apartment with NOTHING but a bed and kitchen table and a2 year old who couldn’t understand what was happening. And myself, a guilty shame filled  sick supposed to be mother. I thought about offing myself every day for two years and suddenly it ALL got better… the only thing that kept me going was my daughter… and hope… no matter how bad things were I had hope… and I got better!

 

now years later I’m back here because I’m a drug addict moron. Lol not a moron but now in the stage of life where I am being asked by God to stop 🛑 and be different. Breaking the cycle, even if it means suffering. 

[Guest [...]]

Thank you for that Sweet Surrender 💚. I'll PM you sometime. I'm a mess and getting real scared. I swear sometimes my lack of healing and improvement is from chronic nonstop stress. I feel I'm on a verge of a bad breakdown.

[Guest [...]]

I thought going into treatment would heal me eventually, the total opposite happened. Damned if I do damned if I dont. My mom had a former coworker of hers call last week and ask how about lyme treatment and doctors to seek out. Her son, husband and even her may have it and she assumed I had healed. She received a rude awakening. My mom was brutally honest with her and told her what happened to me. Think about how worth it and risky it can be not to mention incredibly costly. Not every patient is saved and healed. Sadly in my state where I live alot of these lyme doctors are retiring or specialty centers are closing, a highly endemic area for lyme/coinfections, riddle me that?  My mom told her she can only help her so much but that's it, she's trying to keep me alive and functional again she can't give her all her time and advice. Harsh? Maybe but I wasnt the lucky one. We personally know a few families that were successful in Lyme treatment, very close to death before treating and actually weren't in treatment as long and fully recovered...uhhhh wtf?  They're devastated and questioning why I can't recover.

[[Sw...]]

@[Su...] my questions would be which came first the lyme or the benzo?

i know you might have mentioned it already but do you take any other drugs?

and what has been your lyme treatment protocol.

I healed from bartonella, and know many that have and are healing from lyme. 

It IS possible. Its all about having a healthy liver!

get those micronutrient levels tested 

[Guest [...]]

Everything is fine. Some things aren't just meant to be. Like a cancer pt I'm giving up on treatment. The Lyme is too far in it could be effecting me cardiac wise. I'm done. Next year it could very be wheelchair time and they're prepared for that.

[Guest [...]]

@[Su...]

Are you still tapering the Zoloft? 

If so, where are you in your taper? 

I realise there are multiple issues going on here, so I’m just starting here… 

[Guest [...]]

Yea, at 50 mg.

[Guest [...]]

How long would you say you’ve been holding? 

Between that couple of years or so where you had tapered off the Paxil and before you started the Zoloft, how were you compared to now? 

[Guest [...]]

Sweet surrender asked you something about a benzo, but I don’t see you mention a benzo in your medication/taper history? 

[Guest [...]]

I'm worse now. Yea I did a benzo, Ativan, and CT no problem in 2014-2015.

[Guest [...]]

Holding maybe 8 weeks at 50 mg. Psych meds never did anything for me I do a slow or fast taper I FEEL THE SAME with Zoloft. Alot of my stuff is situational that makes me ill mentally 

[Guest [...]]

You have a host of things going on @[Su...]

I want to ask you to try something for me.

Beth O’Hara from Mast Cell 360 urges most of her clients to first undergo the Gupta (brain retraining) Program (neuroplasticity). This is because she knows that many patients simply won’t respond to any treatment until they’ve calmed their systems down. They simply can’t tolerate medications (pharmaceutical or natural)  or supplements until their system is calmed to a state of non-reactivity. 

Take EBV for instance… Just as stress triggers its reactivation, meditation and other similar therapeutic/calming techniques calm the vagus nerve and adrenal response. It takes calming your system to put it back into dormancy. 

The Gupta Program deals with all these types of illnesses, basically, getting the body into a place where it can heal, whether it’s EBV, Lyme, ME, MCAS, CFS, Mold, MCS, EHS, EDS, Fibromyalgia, Food Intolerances, and any type of mystery illness. 

You can do a month free trial without adding any credit card information. It’s truly a free trial.

All I ask is that you go to The Gupta Program 7.0 (Beta) and sign up for the trial.

Once you have signed up and accessed the site, tap on the menu on the left hand side and tap on (4) Medical Explanation. There will be 4 videos appear. Watch all 4 videos.

1) The Evolutionary Background (11min)  

2) The Insula And The Amygdala (3min) 

3) How The Condition Starts And Develops (13min)

4) The Vicious Cycle (13min) 

Then continue to explore the entire program menu over the month. 

You have nothing to lose and everything to gain… You may actually find the hope you’ve been looking for all along! 

[Guest [...]]

Thank you Winter. I have heard of this, I understand its controversial ? By any chance did you send me the info on my personal email?  I just got something regarding it, weird if it wasn't you.

[[An...]]

I agree with @[Wi...]

I am doing Gupta now and I think it is a great program for so many illnesses. I'm using it for long covid, lyme and ebv. When I am consistent, I notice improvement. It seems hokey at first, but getting our bodies out of fight or flight is such a big deal. I have heard of and read of so many people healing because of doing the brain retraining or even getting to a place where they can tolerate treatment for the above. Check out Rachel Elizabeth on youtube. She has healed from serious stuff. Inspirational. 💜💜

[Guest [...]]

Thank you so much for the reinforcement @[An...]

@[Su...]

It can seem hokey to some, but scepticism is often attributed to those who refuse to open their mind to anything outside of mainstream medicine. Neuroplasticity is no longer in question. It’s absolutely been proven beyond any doubt that the brain retraining creates new neural pathways.

AnnaMeg mentioned the importance of getting your system out of fight or flight, and settle back into rest and digest. The rest and digest state is where healing takes place, as opposed to fight or flight which doesn’t support healing. When your system is in fight or flight, especially over a long period of time, all the systems in your body become very sluggish. Things like your detoxification pathways shut down, and your body becomes flooded with a build up of ‘nasties’. You cannot heal when you are constantly in this fight or flight response. 

Two examples… 

1)

When I was treating SIBO, I simply couldn’t tolerate antimicrobials or antibiotics when I was in fight or flight. It would cause symptoms reminiscent of acute benzodiazepine withdrawal within a few days of beginning treatment, so I would have to cease treatment altogether. What was happening was that as the bacteria die-off began through treatment, the endotoxins would flood my body, including crossing the blood brain barrier, and it was simply unbearable. The reason this happened was because when your system is in a state of fight or flight, your detoxification pathways shut down and cant filter the toxins from your body, so those toxins continue to build and continue to circulate, completely flooding your entire system, causing extreme mental and physical symptoms. When I would stop treatment, the symptoms would eventually resolve over a few days, but I would have to practice meditation and other calming techniques to drop out of fight and flight and back into a state of rest and digest. Once I’d remain in that rest and digest state for a certain amount of time, all those detoxification pathways would open back up and allow me to begin treatment without any symptom uptick because the toxins didn’t build up and continually cycle through my system because my detoxification pathways were open again, doing the job they were meant to do in filtering the toxins and excreting them from my system. 
 

2)

When we taper too fast and crash… slip into acute withdrawal, we generally have to hold until (to a certain extent) our symptoms have resolved, but that’s not all that is happening. We are really only thinking of it in terms of recovering from symptoms, never thinking of the way in which that crash is affecting our bodily systems, and while ever we remain in acute (fight or flight), the increased stress that that continued storm of symptoms and accompanying fear is having on our systems ability to do it’s job to its optimum. Again, all that stress sends us into deeper levels of fight or flight and the fearful thoughts and panic over what we are experiencing creates a vicious cycle, feeding and increasing symptoms further, trapping us within this cycle where the constant panic, fear, and stress of the experience takes a toll on our system, eventually shutting down our systems ability to do its job. Obviously everything is connected, so if our detoxification pathways are shutting down this will have a downstream affect on our entire system. When I got to 7mg diazepam making 1mg reductions, I was in a horrid state. I decided to only reduce by 0.5mg the next time, only to find that the withdrawal was just as unbearable as the 1mg reductions. I then decided to do a 5% daily micro taper over 21 days, however, I only got to day 4 (less than 0.1mg reduction) and I had to stop because I was back in acute. I then held for 13-14 weeks, allowed my symptom to abate (eventually), but that wasn’t all that was happening… It wasn’t simply about allowing symptoms to resolve… it was also about allowing my system to up-regulate and start working efficiently, closer to its optimum so I could tolerate reductions again. It needed to find its way back into a rest and digest state in order for all the pathways in my system to open up again so it could process those reductions again. 

Think about it… why did I get to the point where 14 weeks earlier I could not even reduce by 0.1mg even though I felt my symptoms had decreased enough to start making that reduction? It was because my internal systems had shut down from being in a constant fluctuating state of fight or flight over a long period of time. Reducing too much too fast played a big role in sending me deeper into that constant state of fight or flight, and my system eventually screamed out NO MORE! 

After that 14 weeks, symptoms had all but resolved, my system had calmed down, relaxed, and all those internal pathways opened up again…. my system up-regulated in the same way we talk about our Gabba receptors needing to up-regulate through recovery. Once my system up-regulated, I began reducing by 5% every two weeks, and I barely even noticed an uptick in symptoms after each reduction. 

These are just examples, but the point is… there is very little healing whilst in fight or flight. Your system needs to be in its healing state… REST and DIGEST. 

For those tapering, some of you will find that your system settles down enough to start tapering again through just holding for an indeterminate amount of time. It will be enough to allow your system to up-regulate, open up pathways and allow you to taper again. For others, they get suck in a cycle of the fight or flight state (no matter how long they hold), distressed and frightened about their benzo experience, often compounded even further by extremely difficult external circumstances and the flood of emotions attached to complicated issues in their surrounding lives. For those constantly stuck in that heightened fight or flight state, it’s important that you do whatever you can to work on calming your system. We talk about distraction as a very important tool here, and it is, but sometimes it’s not enough and we have to commit to some kind of calming technique. We need it to gradually decompress our system, slow the adrenals, cortisol, and the release of other stress hormones. 

I’m very aware that some of us simply can’t meditate when in a super heightened symptomatic state, something I’ve experienced myself, even though I had meditated for 2-3hrs a day for the 10 yrs prior to benzo’s. But what we can do is consciously practice deep, very slow breathing (resonant breathing) whilst we go about doing whatever we are doing (distracting). If you commit and practice this every day, it will begin calming your system and gradually over time move you closer to the rest and digest state, or at least to the lower levels of the fight or flight state. 

It’s not all about withdrawal symptoms… withdrawal symptoms are so much more increased and difficult to deal with when we are stuck in the upper levels of the fight or flight state. 

@[Su...]

Although some of your symptoms may or may not be related to your medication, you are clearly dealing with multiple other issues which have you caught in a constant state of fight or flight. In order to get out of that fight or flight state and on a healing path, I truly believe you would benefit greatly from the Gupta program. It is a truly powerful program in moving those with chronic illnesses to a point where their bodily systems can up-regulate and allow them to finally begin healing. 

 

[Guest [...]]

Thank you I'll check it out.

I'm do exhausted and anxious, feeling horrible psychosis but well that's nothing new so why am I surprised. I can't handle anything anymore. I want to put my hands over my ears now when people talk and talk about about stressful stuff and yell like a crazy person at them PLEASE STOP!!!!!!!

 

 

[Guest [...]]

Heard an old song on the radio this morning  I guess it can have multiple meanings for people. It resonates with me be missing my old life, my old self. I'm sure even "healthy" ppl can be drawn to that but when you're ill, to me,  has an even deeper meaning. 

The song is by Madonna, This Used To Be My Playground. Very old song. I'm a huge 80s and 90s music fan.