There are probably many threads on this, but I wanted to make one.

Please post your experiences of anxiety disorders.

I'm interested in this just now because I've been having extreme stomach problems for nearly five months, and despite various blood and pee tests, and being spit-roasted by camera probes (thanks to kesh for the imagery) they can't find anything wrong with me...

It's got to the stage where it's totally affecting my life, and I feel like the stress of it really makes it worse.

For an example of my retarded thought processes: today my stomach felt a bit churny, and I became scared that I was going to be ill this weekend, which would be bad because my in-laws, my mum and my best friend are all visiting, and I have to go to work on Sunday. And then I started thinking that maybe my brain is subconsciously afraid of this weekend because it's busy (I know that seems weird, but I hate being ill so much, and now I live in fear of making plans that I can't keep - often when I get ill, it comes on quite suddenly, and I really fear letting people down). And then I start to panic that all this illness is just in my head and there's no way it'll ever get better, and I won't be able to travel ever again, or... blah de blah...

Before I know it, my stomach's got all worked up and I'm a puking, ****ting, shaking wreck.

And the thing is, generally irl I'm quite bold and reasonably confident and functional. So to be suddenly rendered a puking, ****ting, shaking wreck who has to cancel holidays or miss a friend's wedding due to awful stomach problems which might be down to fear, is pretty shocking for me. I'm totally not the person I was six months ago.

Wah, wah. Anyway, you can think tl;dr all you want, but this is the mental forum, so you'll just have to get over that.

Please share experiences/advice etc.

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Oh, and I haven't been diagnosed with any form of anxiety disorder, but I've been looking up some things about them, and most of the physical symptoms of general anxiety disorder are things that are wrong with me.

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Sure sounds like it
a) the stomach problems (physical manifestation of internalising the stress)
and
b) the obsessing about it and worrying about how it is going to impact your plans or other people

most people would go hmmm, must have eaten something off. And then they wouldn't worry much about it

anxiety can look like a lot of different things and can get worse (or come on) as you get older. I had my first big struggle with it at 28 or 29. Never had problems with it before then

Was yours triggered by an event? How did you deal with it? Do you still have problems with it?

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I definitely think that anxiety can make physical ailments 1,000 times worse. When I was 19 I got pretty mild viral meningitis and had a problem with vertigo afterwards because it had started with an inner ear infection. I got myself so worried about the dizziness and vertigo that the anxiety was making it worse and I was the same as you- I was so worried about it ruining events that I obsessed that it would then I had the symptoms and it did.

I found giving up coffee helped, ditto alcohol, going for a really long brisk walk every day (45 minutes plus) regardless of the weather and how busy I was and making lists outlining a) what was making me scared and b) the worst case scenario of it. So for example I was terrified I was going to get vertiginous and not be able to sit my first year uni exams, so I made this huge list of what I could do if it did happen (take medicine, take a break and lie down- 20 minutes out of an exam isn't that much, miss one exam and resit it at the end of the summer, take a year off, move to a different uni where it wasn't all based entirely on exams) and in the end it was fine because I think I'd worked through all the worst case scenarios. Eventually it faded and now I'd say I'm a lot less anxious now. Still way more anxious than your average person, but not cripplingly so on most days.