For years I have been silently living with anxiety and depression. I now realize that a person cannot go through the things that I have lived through in my life and not experience some repercussions to their mental well-being. What I did not realize is that it is okay to ask for help. I thought that I was just crazy and I'll be damned if I was going to let some therapist who has never lived my life tell me that I had a problem. I mean, I thought I was doing pretty good for someone who had lost so many important people in their life in such a short time. Granted I jumped on a downward spiral for a couple years following the death of my mom and my granny, the two most important people in the world to me but I had moved past that. Or so I thought. On the outside I was totally capable of creating the illusion of normalcy but on the inside I was a mess. I had become a master at faking it to make it on my better days and a master of excuses on days that I simply could not bear to leave the house because I just did not have the energy to deal with people. I couldn't bear the thought of another panic attack; that feeling of your chest tightening up, getting dizzy, unable to breathe and feeling like you're going to pass out. It was awful!
All of my thoughts were consumed by what others were thinking of me. Running to the store which should a simple task would sometimes end in a horrible panic attack at the check out line because I just could not handle being around so many people. Part of it was easy to explain because I knew I had issues with my self image. I felt like people were looking at me and judging me based on my weight or the fact that I went out in jeans and a hoodie or tshirt rather than a cute blouse or sweater. The little everyday things in life had become a huge time consuming production that took all of the energy that I could possibly muster. It was awful and it was time to admit that something was wrong. Now, getting help was a fight in and of itself. After one visit with the women in behavioral health I never went back. I told my doctor that she was crazy because she wanted me to take deep breaths and count pretty numbers to reel myself back in during a panic attack. Clearly she had never been there before. What I didn't see was that she was just starting at the basics and trying to help me. In the end she helped me tremendously.
What she made me realize in the end was that I had a problem. She showed me that anxiety is real. It manifests itself at the worst possible times and can make life miserable. I wasn't sleeping at night because my brain would not shut up. A simple sentence could make my brain spin so far out of control. I would have a plan for every scenario and an alternate plan for any possible changes in the scenario. I am a catastrophiser and I doubt that anything will ever change that. I see the worst possible outcome in every situation that comes my way. There is nothing that anyone can do about that. What I can do though, is stop giving myself and my energy to things that do not matter. She taught me that I had to live for me and my family. I had to let go of all the crap around me that was slowly drowning me. I had to stop taking on everyone else's problems and trying to fix their lives when they were content in being miserable.
This woman taught me that even though I cannot make the panic attacks go away, I can decrease them by lessening the unnecessary stress in my life. By filtering out the negativity I can focus on me and the little things in my life which are absolutely amazing. Anxiety no longer has the control over my life that it once had. It is still there and I am sure it always will be but it doesn't have the hold it once did. My only regret is not talking to someone sooner because I could have spent a lot less time feeling miserable.
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