Everything in my life is going great right now. So I don’t understand why I am so incredibly stressed every day when I get home from work. I do have a very high stress fast paced job. Probably about as high stress as a job gets. I cannot turn off that nervous energy when I get home it just keeps going. The only thing that seems to stop it is alcohol or Ativan and I don’t want to become dependent on either.
I have tried everything else, short of exercise as I have a knee injury though once that recovers I do intend to try that as well. I try snuggling with my boyfriend, watching silly fun shows I like, reading, playing videogames, showering, playing with dogs, watching asmr, spending time with family, listening to music, i mean i have tried it all. Nothing gets rid of this horrible tension in me except alcohol or ativan. I don’t know what to do.
No i don’t smoke. I really think its because of my high stress job its like my brain doesn’t know how to switch into relax mode when I finish work and get home.
I tried propranolol before but it made my blood pressure too low. I should probably be on some form of antidepressant but they all irritate my bladder.
It maybe your environments are too different. As in you’re in really high stress when at work and then really low stress at home and like you say. Your body doesn’t adjust quickly enough between the two. The result is that you when you do sleep, if you do much at all. It’s not good quality and then so it’s a build of improportionate stress on you.
I’d say; you need something to stick to for awhile. If propranolol is posing danger, fair enough. But if you kept at it, your body could create coping mechanism biologically when it gets used to biologically knowing that it will experience the drop in pressure (as it does work directly on the heart).
If this doesn’t make sense, my apologies.
Maybe try therapy? or be more relaxed with whoever you are living with (in the sense that, you all are less stressed out) so you can have better quality sleep which will make sure your body can take the anxiety even if it does arise.
The trick I think is a routine releaxation so where or a routine destressor of some sort. Another medication maybe worth a shot; one that works without posing danger/discomfort unlike the propranolol did?
Good luck, anxiety is just so so horrible. For now, I’m working on reducing smoking and controlling my stressors in the environments I put myself in.
(BTW self administered CBT for your workplace environment maybe worth trying!! You try to change how you behave, think and respond to whatever “usually” happens at work — building a response of resilience that minimises how stressed out you get from it?)