Fatigue and Anxiety

[Mariah]

I am new to this forum, but I wanted to ask for some advice/opinions. I have lived with depression (since a nasty bout of postpartum depression 20 years ago) and try very hard to do all I can to stay well. I am currently completing my preceptorship for nursing which involves 12 hour shifts of high-pressure learning. Today, after finishing 3 of these 12 hour shifts, I drove home. I was only partially into a 3 hour drive when I suddenly was overwhelmed with anxiety laced with exhaustion. I wasn't sure what was wrong.... Is this "normal"....?

[paul m]

Hello Mariah and welcome. I can't say if it's normal or not, but I've had problems similar to that. In fact I've been 5 minutes or less from home after a long drive and had to pull over as overwhelming fatigue suddenly hit. I just couldn't make it those last 5 minutes without taking a breather. (not a short one either)

With me it usually happens when I am dealing with a very stressful subject for several days or even after 1/2 a day if the subject is stressful, enough for me.

My own feeling are that when I start to relax my brain just shuts down and/or goes into high anxiety mode. I think that during the stressful time I can sometimes control things for the period of stress, but after that my brain sez" ok I'm taking a break now" That's certainly not a medical opinion, just my own observations.

On a slightly more scientific note there is a lot of medical conservatory around how much we can overdraw our adrenal glands during times of stress and overwork and what the effect of that is when it happens. Some feel that it is possible to suddenly have many problems such as anxiety,fatigue, depression, mania etc when we overdraw our adrenals. However for every article that sez that, there is another that sez it's B.S. and that it can't happen.

So I'm not sure what the cause is, I just know that I sometimes crash suddenly. Take Care. paul m

[AJ]

Welcome to the forum Mariah. I find that my anxiety is the highest when I'm either in the middle of a very stressful situation, or it happens when the highly stressful situation is over. Travelling it usually hits me at the airport. When I used to work, it was after the shift was over that it would hit me.

[cbee]

Hello Mariah,
I've just recently been diagnosed with GAD and my anxiety manifests itself in almost the same way. For me, exhaustion usually kicks in when I'm at the peak of an attack. Almost like what Paul M described. I'll be at the height of my anxiety attack and then my brain will say "I'm sleepy now time to go to bed". The way that I fight my anxiety is by recognizing it and having a conversation with it, talk to it like a friend and sometimes it'll go away, other times it will just lessen enough for me to remove myself from w.e triggered it/ to get to a neutral place.
This post is from a month ago, how are you doing now? Have you had any more episodes like the one in your car?
Hope all is well