anxiey and potassium?

[pleasehelpme88]

Ok like the anxiey disorder, how there is 4 types...
i have more than one type.
OCD
Panic
and PTSD appartently.

is this the same with anyone else??

and another question
i when i dont have a 'panic attack' or my anxiety is ok..
i get these weird shakes
leg cramps
(like ill wake up and cry coz the pain in my calf can be THAT bad)
and my heart races sooo bad.

is this still the anxiety but im not concious of it?
or is there a posibility my potassium levels low
(suffering from an ED too )
Um so yeah
Advice appreciated

[RubyWitch]

Hi and welcome to the forum. I'm really glad you found us! I'm certain their are many on here who will be better able to help you with your particular issues than I am. I think there may have been some misunderstanding with the posts you read, mostly on MY part. I was a little confused about what exactly pleasehelpme88 was asking. I thought he/she was asking if you had OCD, did that mean that you would sort of automatically have anxiety/panic as well. I believe I responded on THAT assumption of the question. I said that it was my GUESS that just because you had OCD, you wouldn't neccessarily have anxiety or panic. Reading those posts again, I find that I am still a bit confused and feel that I probably didn't give very good advice, which is why I told anyone with OCD to jump in and help me with my ignorance.
You have done a fantastic job of clearing much of this up for me. I wish you could have been the one to respond to pleasehelpme88! Perhaps you could try to reach them with a PM and offer your insights and wisdom. To send a PM (private message) just take your mouse and hover it over their username and a box will pop open and one of the choices will be "send a message." This will allow you to write to them in private and then a message will be sent to their email that they have a message. A link is supplied. They just have to click on that and your message will open.
Don't feel badly about not being a computer geek, I am SO not one either, so maybe we can teach each other a few things along the way! I know I need all the help I can get.
It's also OK to respond to any post, no matter how old it is. When you do, it "bumps" it back to first place and hopefully will gather some more responses.
Thank you for taking the time to educate me. I sure hope you stick around. I think there are a lot of folks here who could learn much from what you've been through.
And I apologize if I offended you in any way, it was not my intent, only my ignorance.
Peace
Greenlydia

[eeuuhija02]

Just wanted to respond to your March 11 response about OCD not being anxiety.  I do agree that while some issues may not be so anxiety causing ( I like having clean hands and think its gross when people don't wash and so that's not a big deal for me) but I have other OCD symptoms which cause major anxiety.  Like picking at my skin till it bleeds, hoarding things that i may need "someday", and obsessing on constantly replaying conversations or situations in my head and reliving my decisions over and over trying to figure out what I should have done differently to make things better.  
I have absolute panic attacks at just the "thought" of someone coming in my house-my safe space-to see my stuff and judge or comment on it.  Also I can have panic attacks and flashbacks just from someone asking me about the scabs or scars on my arms-so much so that I wear long sleeves pretty much all the time no matter how hot it gets.

I wasn't exactly sure which forum fit me either since I have PTSD, OCD, and ADHD.  But since the anxiety is what causes me the most distress, I figured this would be the best place to start to see if it would at least be helpful.

It's my first time in any kind of web group-I'm still half computer illiterate-so I'm not sure if it's ok to respond to old posts or not.  I was just browsing through to see if other members may have similar issues as me.

Also--I have seen several therapists and have had extensive psych testing done and each have confirmed the above-the last Doc without knowing any of  my history -medical or otherwise.  That's when I realized I really did have these issues. (Had WAIS and Woodcock Johnson (WJIII) and because of the results had Rochach , MMPI, and Trauma Symptom Inventory (TSI) tests done to confirm what the doc suspected.) That's when I decided to see her for therapy as no one had ever "gotten me" enough to know how to help without making me feel like the therapy was more traumatic and unhelpful then going it alone.

Anyway-I may have misunderstood what you were saying about OCD as I just read your response to one old post and not all your comments.  But I just thought I'd explain how it sounded to a newbie who's never done this before.

eeuuhija02

[RubyWitch]

Mornin' Toots,
Many folks have more than one "issue" in the mix. I think you will find, if you browse through some of the posts here, that you are not alone. I'm no expert and certainly do NOT possess a medical degree and more than likely am wrong, but it's my GUESS that a person with OCD may not have any anxiety problems. They probably don't like washing their hands a million times a day or checking that they turned the oven off......but I'm not sure they have panic attacks while doing this. You say you have been diagnosed with OCD? And anxiety. And PTSD. In this particular instance then, I suppose while you were checking that the headlights were off for the 39th time, you could possibly get hit with an anxiety attack and tie that into your OCD. Just a guess. And anyone out there with OCD, if I'm wrong, I'm more than happy to concede my ignorance.
As for the leg cramps, it is POSSIBLE that your potassium levels are low, but only a doctor and lab tests could find this out. I wouldn't go out and buy a big bottle of potassium supplements and start eating them like M&M's. Like just about everything else, too much of a good thing................
I would urge you to see your doctor and discuss ALL these issues with him/her.
Off you go then...............(to your docs)
Peace
Greenlydia