Hi everyone

Im new to this – just singed on yesterday after having another day full of anxiety and  self doubt.   I realized I need to find something to help me, some kind of release so I googled generalized anxiety disorder on line support and found this group and thought I would give it a try.  I can\'t afford a therapist right now as I\'m trying to save to get the hell out of Vancouver so I can continue traveling the world – it\'s a huge passion of mine and I love it.  When I\'m away nothing seems to really bother me, I feel pretty free, it\'s reality that really screws with me.

I got my first anxiety attack when I was a kid and didn\'t really know what it was but it was terrifying .  I was scared to go to school for a year.  My parents were awesome but very disfunctional, my mum was an alcoholic drug addict that suffered severe depression and dad was awesome but didn\'t know how to cope with it – none of us did.  Despite all that there was loads of love  and I had a great child hood and an amazing teenage life full of friends, parties, drinking recreational drugs (which im sure didn\'t help my current situation.)  

I then moved to London around 20, had an amazing time there, partied, travelled, met my future husband, but by 21 experienced 4 months of severe anxiety attacks.  I was anxious all day every day about everything.  I was worried about worrying and it was awful I couldn\'t make it stop.  Eventually after 4 months it did but it was kinda too late – after that  anxiety had arrived and I truly feel since then I have not been the same person.  The essence of me is still there but I\'m scared of everything now, scared ill be unhappy.   For the past 8 years anxiety has plagued my life on and off and at times I just feel like I kinda can\'t take it any more but some how I get to the next day.

I have amazing friends  an amazing fiance and family. I am traveling the world and have a bright future ahead of me, this is all the stuff I keep trying to tell myself when I miss a step and fall into the grips of a full blown anxiety attack.  Anxiety sux, I hate it, it consumes my life and causes me to doubt almost every decision in my life.  Im hoping that through this blog and meeting and talking to other people that suffer the same problems as I do I may get some peace, some answers and at least  have a place where I can talk about anxiety as much as I want to without feeling guilty that I\'m being negative or feeling that I\'m putting too much on people.

This is going to be the place where I vent everything, and hopefully someone can read it and relate to it and get something out of it, and hopefully I can get something back from it.

To all of you out there, there\'s other people that feel just as shit as you some days, we all think we are the only person out there that is this stuffed up or disfunctional, but we are not.  I guess remember that, remember to stop and smell the flowers and keep trying.

Love to you all

x