Looking for advice
Hello all! So I (23 F) have been struggling greatly with what I think is HPA axis dysfunction for almost a year now. Before this, I struggled with severe anxiety (agoraphobia/panic disorder) for 2 years and left it untreated. Also dealt with other stressors as well. Physical stressors as well like over training, sicknesses, etc. Well things changed in April 2025 when I first started developing symptoms like air hunger and DPDR. I struggled with these weird symptoms for months and was told it was just my anxiety. Fast forward to December 2025, and my symptoms slowly started changing from what felt like “being stuck in fight or flight” to severe fatigue and feeling “sedated” all day every day (that’s the best way for me to describe how I feel; sedated like I took a Benadryl). I’m still struggling to this day and I cannot work, barely socialize, and can’t drive. I can leave the house once in a while but mostly stay home cause my symptoms are so bad. I listed my main symptoms below.
•Severe daytime drowsiness (feel sedated)
•Heavy eyelids
•Really bad DPDR
•Feel floaty
Now at night, my symptoms change. This is what makes this even harder to deal with. I feel like my body is in “hypo-arousal” all day until like 10am-5pm, then at night I flip into hyper-arousal. These are my night time symptoms:
•Air hunger (feel suffocated)
•Heart thumps (not fast but just hard)
•Feeling of “electricity” in body
•Alert
•Insomnia
Along with the day and night symptoms I also generally struggle still with my agoraphobia, bad physical anxiety and feeling on edge in places where I feel like escape is difficult. It’s not as prominent of an issue though and I’d say my fatigue and night symptoms is what I’m struggling with the most and putting my life on pause. I just wanna live normally again as a 23 year old!! lol
This pattern is affecting me daily. It’s the same thing every day where I feel functional at night then body flips into this weird hyper-arousal, only to wake up with sleep inertia, feel okay for first hour of day then the severe sedation feeling hits me and lasts all day until nighttime.
I’m writing this to see if anyone has been through similar and has any advice? I’d appreciate any advice and thank you to whoever reads this!
EDIT: I’ve seen many doctors and they either tell me it’s anxiety or I’m fine and they act like it’s not a big deal. I’ve been seeing an integrative medicine dr for a few months and he’s been helpful. He’s helping me try and flip my circadian rhythm. I put a photo of my saliva cortisol results below. I also did a 24 hr urine cortisol test. The reference range was 6-42 and mine came back at 6. My primary dr said it’s “normal”.