[solarmist]

Thank you for clarifying. I know a bit about the brain and brain chemistry, but I was unfamiliar with NMDA receptors.

Unfortunately the rest of your explanation was too technical and I didn’t follow any of it. Can you explain what NMDA receptors are for and what the link to anxiety, in either direction, is?

My anxiety wasn’t caused by this, but I was able to treat it because of the memantine. I just stopped memanitine a month ago after about 5 years and all the symptoms seem resolved now.

[FollowingTheDao]

You are saying that your anxiety was not casued my NMDA receptor changes, but it was. Traumatic events change the function and density of these receptors.

https://www.nature.com/articles/1301605

NMDA receptors allow calcium into the neurons. The more calcium in a neuron the more excitable it is, like in hyper-arousal.

By taking the memantine you allowed you possible grow more healthy neural pathways, away from the hypervigilance and towards calmness. I am assuning you have been in therapy?

[solarmist]

Sure, on a technical level, but the cause of it, globally, was several layers up the abstraction stack. It feels like blaming the add and multiply instructions for poorly written firmware/software, especially since it resolved itself once I addressed the issues I listed below.

Thank you for the paper. That's just the kind of thing I was hoping to find.

The experience of going on memantine for the first time was like becoming in sync with my body for the first time that I could remember. My body, mind, and thoughts stopped being out of sync, like a video that wasn't streaming well. That allowed me to slow down (and not try to anticipate the ten different ways a conversation could go), stop rambling, and listen to what people were saying to me instead of what I expected them to say.

I'm only seriously pursuing therapy now; hyper-independence is another symptom of my CPTSD. I learned all this by trial and error and reading ungodly amounts of self-help books (moving to psychology books lately), helping my wife through losing her parents at 21, and teaching my wife to work through her PTSD.

What allowed me to be calm was learning to trust, at least to some extent, people again (which I didn't even realize was an issue) and learning to express my emotions (I had nearly total blocks on sadness and fear). Then slowly processing the traumatic events from my childhood. After I forced myself to cry about one event (the last time I cried as a child) and allowed myself to feel fear about things I couldn't control, my chronic anxiety faded, and now it is situational. I continue to work on the underlying causes of these distinct reactions.

It is very difficult because fear of being like my dad or being poor drove me so hard for 20+ years to become a software engineer and make it into a top-tier company. Without that desperation, I have to relearn (learn?) how to live and do things.

[FollowingTheDao]

Yeah, I get it. My condition is more of a genetic sensitivity to foods/environment. Yours was more caused my the environment alone.

Different causes, different cures.

Glad you are doing therapy. While it had no impact on my anxiety it helped me deal with the ramifications.