I've been experiencing feelings that have best been described as anxiety since I was around nine. I always had difficulty relating to my peers and feeling comfortable with my self image. The best way I can describe it feeling from my perspective is: It feels like your swimming as hard as you can, but you can't seem to break the surface and get your head above water. As I progressed into high school my parents began to recognize behavioral signs of this as my grades began to fall. Speaking with my primary doctor my mother blamed my change in hormones and had me put on birth control to control my mood swings. The pills didn't do much, but it kept taking them anyway because mom insisted that there could be no other reason for these feelings. At the same time this occurred my father lost his electrical company to economic downturn and my family filed bankruptcy. My freshman year my mother was diagnosed with chronic lymphomic leukemia, and I shut down. I stopped talking to old friends and lost interest in things I used to enjoy. Late in my junior year in high school my father finally asked me if I might need someone to talk to. I told him no, but began making weekly lunch appointments with a school counselor. It never made the feelings go away, but I didn't stop. It felt nice to talk and be taken seriously. She talked to me like I was an adult and understood my desire to do things like straighten, sort, or count. By this point it had reached a stage where I was beginning to feel uncomfortable with certain things. Like, I can't sit down in a room with the door open. I have to stand until someone closes the door. I feel the need to do things in even number, specifically numbers that are in multiples of 6. Odd numbers make me uncomfortable. On a day where I'm feeling particularly anxious I'll do things like was my hands over and over till it feels right, or count bites at lunch sometimes not eating simply because it felt wrong (I hate my body). Describing these feelings she would remind me not to chew my nails or cuticles till I bled because I tend to fidget. The feelings never went away, but she convinced me to try to talk to my doctor. She would loose her job to budget cuts in the district the next year. When I told my parents I wanted to ask my doctor about my anxiety they told me to stop being so emotional. I would move on to barely graduate high school. I am now 19 years old and have had to drop out of college as my parents have moved to phoenix az ( I live in northern michigan) to find work and i can no longer afford to keep attending classes at my local community college. I am renting my parents house with my boyfriend (whom I met my senior year in high school). The only friend I have because I have difficultly talking to people. He listens and attempts to console me when I lay awake because I can't breath I'm so anxious, but can't explain why. He is a good listener, but admits he isn't sure he can even begin to understand.
Over the years I've tried everything from yoga and meditation to xanax and counselling, butt talking to someone and things like meditation of writing or other things that are suppose to make me feel better never help me to shake the feelings that at this stage keep me awake and make me too nauseous to eat, and the xanax makes me feel like a depressed zombie tired all the time. It's embarrassing to admit and I know how it sounds, ( like every other college stoner) but I've tried self medicating with marijuana and it feels nice. I can feel my muscles (which nearly aways ache) relax. I can sleep all the way through the night and make a meal and actually eat it instead of cooking and watching my boyfriend eat because by the time it's done I feel so nauseous with stress I'm not even hungry. I need help. I'm sick and tired of feeling this way all the time. It has effected too much of my life and I'm ready to get better, but the only thing that seems to really help me is illegal and I don't know where my state stands on medical marijuana use as I have never discussed these feelings with my doctor and had them taken as anything more than hormones and now because of my financial situation I can't afford health insurance. Help me I need advice please?