Is it normal?

[OddHollow]

So I have this problem where I cannot seem to allow myself any sort of excitement without feeling extreme anxiety and aggression. Granted I am not one to get excited about much if anything at all but when I do it is not a positive experience for myself or others around me. I've heard it could just be from over stimulation and the fact that I cannot seem to handle or process excitement like most people I know. Instead of becoming Giddy, happy or just plain excitable I start to feel nervous, jumpy, short of breath, fearful, angry and defensive. There are moments of intense fear that shoot through my body making me light headed and somewhat dizzy and when I am able to calm down I am exhausted from the ordeal. There have been times that what should have been positive excitement lead me into a full blown panic attack. It is often that "excitement" will leave me with an intense headache or migraine.

In all (Healthy) feelings of excitement or happiness feel wrong or alien like I cannot seem to understand or grasp the concept no matter how hard I try to. I realize this is something that should just come naturally but for me it seems to be out of reach.  I'm not an unhappy person mind you but I wouldn't say I travel the boundaries beyond Indifference often. I am most comfortable when I am showing no emotion at all beyond the care and love I show to those closest to me. Otherwise you could say I am extremely anti social, Unable to meet the gazes of others for more than a few seconds at a time, Physical contact that's initiated without time for me to prepare for it wigs me out. (such as a friend reaching out to hold my arm as they talk) I'd rather be the one to initiate the contact, I am not a sharer of my problems, business,or feelings (esp If I feel they are unwanted). I am however tired of feeling alone on this and wanted to know if there are others like myself or going through the same things or near to them as I.

[Paxiled]

By the way, full disclosure -- I take medication and use natural remedies, whichever is called for in the situation, but I know natural medicine pretty well and never advise people who don't know it well to do it themselves but instead to see an expert.

[Paxiled]

Not to take this too far and hijack the thread more than we already have, but I'm not quite sure where you're getting your data about side effects from.  Again, you find very few reports of serious adverse effects to the FDA or CDC from truly natural plant remedies but endless ones from approved drugs.  The St. John's Wort study was fodder for further research, but did not establish anything that would be enough, say, for FDA approval if someone wanted to get such.  And as for side effects, St. John's Wort is one herb we know a lot about side effects, and they can be pretty bad especially for people who suffer from photosensitivity to begin with.  It appears you want perfection, and I notice you use the derogatory term "folk remedy" for the medicine that was used by doctors predominantly until the modern pharmaceutical industry was born during the late 1800s funded by the robber barons who decided to decide which form of medicine would be most profitable for them.  Hippocrates, creator of western medicine and father of the oath docs take, was an herbalist.  Observation is a scientific process when done by trained observers.  As for medications, all did double blind studies, but it takes about ten years after approval for FDA's review committees to determine how harmful these drugs are and whether they actually work in real humans -- in other words, trained observers.  Let's not beat this into the ground, but people have to lose their biases and use all forms of medicine so they can find the best and safest solution to their problems -- sometimes that will be medication, sometimes natural medicine, sometimes no medicine at all, and sometimes a combination.  I wouldn't want to warn somebody away from something that might help them based on a bias created by the profit that can be earned by things that can be patented and therefore can be studied more thoroughly but not necessarily more honestly and effectively.  Peace.

[ScalpMassager]

(same SJW study, abstract quote) "Analysis of covariance analyses showed lower mean HAMD-17 scores at end point in the St John's wort group (n = 45; mean +/- SD, 10.2 +/- 6.6) compared with the fluoxetine group (n = 47; 13.3 +/- 7.3; P < 0.03) and a trend toward a similar finding relative to the placebo group (n = 43; 12.6 +/- 6.4; P = 0.096). "

Which means, the sample size was sufficient for the conclusions to be considered by trained scientists as statistically supported.  

Folk remedies used by many people over much time are all very well, but (and especially in the face of well known and serious side effects, which to the layperson are often mistaken as a sign of herbal potency and not the danger it represents), the lack of a scientific study supporting their efficacy means that the result in individuals may be simply the placebo effect.

Which is not to suggest that the placebo effect is not large and positive in some people.  

[Paxiled]

That St. John's Wort study was on too small a population to confirm anything.  Holy Basil has been extensively studied in India, where the herb is native -- they've been using it for hundreds if not thousands of years.  Other countries do much more research on natural medicine than does the US.  And if you want to talk about double blind studies that actually study enough people to mean something given the extraordinary differences among people, no drug would ever be approved -- the studies for anxiety, for example, of antidepressants didn't use very many people either, and the dropout rate was very high and the placebo results pretty good.  Most of this is marketing, but you have to respect human history -- people centuries ago had the same brain we do.  The ancient Greeks probably isolated aspirin from White Willow Bark.  I doubt you'll find many double blind studies of White Willow Bark, but people knew it worked which is why they tried to improve it by isolating aspirin.  Ditto for many drugs that isolated compounds found in plants they already knew worked but had no double blind studies for, including statins, which were isolated from mushrooms.  That, of course, made statins incredibly strong and incredibly dangerous, highly liver toxic and destructive to joint and without conclusive evidence yet that cholesterol is that important in heart disease.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.  There are countless plants out there, all of which have active ingredients and have been used for medicine; almost none have studies large enough to prove anything.  Money talks louder than health.

[ScalpMassager]

If it works for one person such as yourself, great!  If it were of potentially great value or interest to a country's national healthcare program or people, governments (or even merely large universities, such as the one that funded the study that's the basis of my first topic/survey on this site) have been known to sponsor double blind studies of a herbal or natural medicine remedy towards confirming scientifically its therapeutic value.

No government or university appears to have enough confidence in Holy Basil being worthy of a basic double blind study demonstrating that its benefits outweigh its risks.  Unlike for example, treating major depressive disorder through the use of St. John's Wort [ J Clin Psychopharmacol. 2005 Oct;25(5):441-7. ], an OTC herbal med I was using for ten years.  I don't know who funded that study, but since it demonstrated SJW beat out prozac and a placebo, I doubt it was Big Pharma.

[Paxiled]

I use it and it is effective.  No natural medicine has proven claims -- without the ability to patent anything natural there isn't the money to do the studies.  But the claims made for approved medications are exaggerated as well, and the side effects minimized.  There is no perfect out there, so you have to do the best you can.  I know of no side effects of holy basil that actually occur much in the real world -- meaning, most side effects of natural medicine are theoretical, but few serious ones are ever reported to the FDA or CDC.  Whereas approved medications are, of course, all highly toxic and have claims up the yazoo that they have actually harmed people.  Again, there is no perfect.  That being said, it's not an herb I take regularly, just as needed.

[ScalpMassager]

Holy Basil has many claims, very few of which have been proven, but does have several side effects of likely concern to many would be users.  I urge researching it carefully before considering trying it.

[Paxiled]

You sound like a good candidate for a good psychologist to help you figure out why you react in this unwanted way.  You don't say if you're on any medication, but if you're not you might try an herb called holy basil for the times when you know you'll be stimulated -- it helps control cortisol release, the flight or fight hormone.  Don't take this if you suspect you have low blood sugar, as it also does this, which is a good thing for most people.  It can make you a bit tired when it wears off.  

[digitalrecon]

Dude that's exactly how I feel !!!!
reading you experience was like reading about myself...

[ScalpMassager]

I suggest you experiment with trying meditation.  If you find you can settle into that (it took me 3 or 4 days to get the hang of it), you just might find in a few weeks an appreciable attitude change and increased capacity for appreciating the world around you more actively.  The practice also ought to dampen your aggressive nature.