Ouch. That *is* bad. Your description reminds me of how I felt
in school. I'd get a thought in my head and it wouldn't go away.
People looking even close to my direction were distorted; always
negative and judgmental or mocking in some way. I'd get nausea,
tunnel vision. My mother said I'd get into inconsolable states.
[I was talking with Jay about this earlier, so he gets a repeat]
At 11, my mother took me to biofeedback. I learned to "breath
through my feet" / "be a bottle in the warm sand". There were
these tapes of guided meditation and I had to control a
computer's beeping with my mind and make the tone go down in
frequency and volume.
[this was back in 1983 when biofeedback was considered a bit
quackery. She also fed us homemade yogurt a lot, which wasn't
half bad].
Anyway, it worked. Breath in for 6 seconds, breath out for 6
seconds. That's the gist of it in a nutshell.
Didn't cure the anxiety problem but it gave me my first handle
on it - something I could _do_. I picked up vipassana meditation
at some point, found other outlets like manic piano playing or
fast typing.
I did recently find that magnesium + zinc (regular amounts) were
a big help; my body reacts to it the same as it did when I had
Lorazapam (atavan?) in my mid-20s. Occasionally I'll use it even
now.
