How many people are experiencing/experienced fear through their NoFap journey

Its relatively common for anxiety to spike on people during a reboot. I myself have had it hit pretty badly a few times now, always without any real reason and it always passes if I just stay the course and ride it out. It took me a long time to even realize these random stretches of intense anxiety I was having were related to withdrawals, usually after a similar situation you mentioned, going for a (relatively) longer streak, relapsing, then abstaining again. For some reason, for me at least, this always puts me in a bad place mentally and its something I just have to push through.

As to why it really happens, that's hard to pin down. For me, I think I'm predisposed to anxiety in general, but going through a neurochemically unbalanced withdrawal seems to really draw it out and make it much, much worse. A severe drop in dopamine, especially after a high watermark (usually much higher than baseline immediately after a relapse) has been my best guess at what's going on, but there are likely a lot of things going on that result in being anxious/fearful.
This is an interesting article about a severe dopamine drop induced medically and the severe side effects of what the person went through, but again I think there's more than just this going on in our case.

https://www.reuniting.info/science/articles/acute_dopamine_depletion_causes_psychological_distress

Try to not let it get to you. Know that's a lot easier said than done, but I've been able to deal with it much better lately by trivializing it and seeing it as just another unpleasant part of rebalancing an addicted brain. If you start listening to the what if's it will only make things worse, and that has been a major reason in the past for me to give into a relapse.

 

I got hit by massive panic attacks, heart racing +200 bpm during first months of abstinence. Even my Doc thought I was having heart attacks, send me to ER, but ECG did not show anything.

 

I refuse to drive because my anxiety skyrockets.