My Anxiety Journey
Trigger warning: This article contains scenes which may be hard for those with anxiety, panic attacks or intrusive thoughts to read.
I started having panic attacks when I was 24. They were horrible. My first one was going over the 520 bridge at night. The floating bridge is about 2 miles of no exits, no pull overs, no turn arounds. Once you’re on it, you’re on it. I was alone and I was more scared than I’ve ever been in my life. My vision tunneled; my mind raced with memories of kids my age from other schools who had died on it playing games in their car. I couldn’t see straight and my mind was hazy. I felt like I was going to pass out. I was so scared of losing consciousness because at 60 miles an hour over the two-lane freeway, I would have pinballed back and forth between the concrete medians, taking others with me and possibly going over the edge and into the water. It was more dangerous to stop. I knew that much. I couldn’t stop and I had no way out. I was trapped and that knowledge fed my fear even more. I began rocking back and forth, just to try and keep myself conscious. I tried drinking water. I tried chewing gum. My mind left my body and hovered, watching me rock back and forth as I raced down the freeway, certain my parents would get the call that their oldest child was dead.
When I made it across the bridge, some of my panic subsided and I pushed myself to get home. I was too scared to pull over because all I wanted was to be safe and at home. When I got home, I was the only one up. I had no one to cry to and even if I did, I wouldn’t have been able to form the words. I laid in my bed shaking and hyperventilating, willing sleep to take me out of consciousness but so afraid to fall asleep because I was sure I wouldn’t wake up.
I haven’t been the same since. I don’t remember the next day or any specifics after that. I remember calling a doctor, knowing it was probably a panic attack – they weren’t something people talked about yet, they weren’t mainstream – but I knew enough from my psychology classes in college to be able to make a pretty good guess. I know the feeling lingered for days and weeks after, constantly threatening to resurface and happen again. I began to live in constant fear of another attack. I fought going on medication for months. I didn’t want something to alter my brain and make me not me. I figured if I was having them my body or my brain or God or something was trying to send me a message.
I felt trapped in a body and mind that had betrayed me. Having been raised by someone who told me every limitation I had was only in my head, I felt shame. I felt weak and unworthy. Afterall, it was my brain. Why couldn’t I just stop it from happening. If I was mentally stronger, I would be able to stop it. But the more I tried to hold onto control, the more I fixated on it and the worse it became. I refused to leave the house alone. I only let a few select friends come over and I stopped driving all together. I was a prisoner of my panic and my fear.
Eventually, I realized I couldn’t even escape them at home. I was still having panic attacks on a regular basis. It was like once that dam broke and I had the first one, they came rushing over me like a tidal wave, drowning me over and over again. I needed air. Every time I felt like I had caught a breath, another panic attack would hit and I was back underwater. So, I gave in and tried medication. Every time I took a new medication, I was afraid of what kind of side effects it would bring. It got to the point where I wouldn’t even read the little pamphlet the doctor gave me. I would just hand it straight to my mom and then continuously ask her if random things were possible symptoms. Some caused more panic. Some caused auditory hallucinations where I would hear knives crashing against each other right next to my ears. Some made me so sleepy I couldn’t get out of bed and some made sleep impossible so that my anxiety was compounded by fatigue. I finally found a medication that worked for me and promptly gained 60 pounds which brought its own mental health issues. But the panic had finally stopped and I was able to breathe again and so I chose the lesser of the two evils. I stayed on the medication despite the weight gain. I began trying to live in my new body and rebuild my life. I slowly began to leave the house again and with the help of Klonopin when the attacks did set in, I began to piece my life back together. But I was still so broken.
Over the next 20 years I tried every kind of therapy imaginable. I tried countless special diets, talk therapy, behavior modification, EMDR, biofeedback, acupuncture, herbs, exercise, colonics, cleanses – every new therapy I tried I threw myself into whole heartedly, convinced this would be the magic pill that would fix me and take it all away. It never did.
I had times of greater mental stability and times of less. I was on a constant rollercoaster. I would feel like I had finally gotten a hold on it, that I had finally conquered it, only to have anxiety rear its ugly head and tell me I was still broken. My life and my dreams grew smaller and smaller. My biggest goal in my life became to go to the store by myself without freaking out. I was lonely and I was lost and I felt damaged beyond repair. I did research and found that it was probably genetic, so I resigned myself to living a life without kids. I couldn’t imagine passing this curse on to another human being. My life wasn’t worth living anymore.
I never actually became suicidal, I just became apathetic. I wasn’t about to kill myself, but I wouldn’t have minded if I died. It wasn’t that I actually wanted to die, it’s just that, I knew if I died, it would be over and I wouldn’t have to deal with the constant mental battle.
I eventually stabilized over the years. I met an amazing man and I got married, and my life began to expand a little bit, but never to what it was. I still would only drive alone within a 15-mile radius of our house, and only if I knew I was going to a safe place where I could freak out. My husband was on call anytime I went out with friends just to make sure that I had an out – an escape route – if I needed it.
I learned that if I took my Klonopin, I could do more of the things I thought I should be doing without the fear of having a panic attack and the more success I had, the more confident I became. I would go for months at a time not taking my Klonopin and still doing things with friends, but the experience was miserable because I was constantly on alert for the first signs of a panic attack. My social interactions without Klonopin were miserable but something I felt like I needed to do to prove to myself that I was stronger than my anxiety.
Anxiety isn’t like cancer where your body betrays you and you can fight a foreign devil. Anxiety is in your mind, constantly lurking, constantly eating a hole in your self-confidence. It’s the worst kind of pain imaginable because it’s something the world tells us we can control and it’s all in our head or the other theory is that we’re broken and our brain doesn’t work right and we just have to live with it. I had nothing to fight but myself. I had no one to blame, no one to hate other than myself and my own weakness. Anxiety became my dirty secret that I hid from everyone but a very select few. I never talked about it, never admitted to it. And that created even more self-loathing. It was a vicious cycle.
And then came the intrusive thoughts. If I couldn’t control my brain from having panic attacks, could I keep my brain from doing other things I didn’t want it to do? Would I jump out of a window even though I didn’t want to? Would I suddenly steer my car into another vehicle or someone walking on the side of the street? Would I take the knife I was using to cut an apple and slit my wrist even though it was the last thing I wanted to do? Or worse yet, would I turn the knife on my husband because I had no control? The fears paralyzed me and caused even more panic attacks. It didn’t help that every time I had a panic attack, I had to run to the bathroom. It just gave me further proof that I wasn’t in control of my body.
About three years ago, I wanted to go off my Klonopin but was scared to. It had become my safety blanket and I didn’t know how to live without it, but I was also sick of being made to feel like a drug addict every time I refilled my prescription. I never once “lost” my prescription. I never once tried to fill my prescription early. I took a only a quarter of the dose that was prescribed to me. But every time there were the questions. The “You’ve been on this for a long time, we should look at getting you off this.” Or my doctor would retire or go on maternity leave and I would need to start over with a new doctor and the inevitable questions like, “Have you tried therapy?” Or “Have you tried taking deep breaths or going for a walk?” I was sick of it and I wanted something different.
In desperation, I tried CBD and I haven’t looked back since. I’m still learning how to take care of myself, but the more I balance and temper my drive with self-care, the more I learn to say no to certain things, the more I give myself grace, the better I become. I’m a work in progress. I still fight to find balance in my life daily, but CBD has allowed me to let go of the security blanket I had for twenty years and has opened up my world and made it bigger. Through my daily CBD regimen, I finally have something that I haven’t had since I was 24. I have hope. I have a belief that the future really is better. And I have a newfound confidence in myself.
Over the last six years, I’ve been less secretive about my anxiety and I’ve been astounded at the number of women who tell me they have the same thing. The more I talked about it, the more I realized I was never alone and that has given me even more confidence and power. It also gave me the drive to start my own company because I realized how many other women are suffering.
If you’re having anxiety, depression, OCD, ADD or intrusive thoughts, know that you are not alone. I created Balance Health Products because of the huge need I saw in my own community of women suffering from the same things. You are so far from alone. There is a community our there waiting to support and understand you. Find a Facebook group or start talking to your friends about it. Don’t hide it away as a shameful secret. It will only fester and make your anxiety worse. You’re the only one who can reach out to others for help because more than likely, you hide it well. Share your struggles. You’ll be surprised to find how many others are struggling with the same thing. Mental health should be something we all talk about openly without fear of judgement. And if someone judges you, they’re just not your person. That’s not on you, it’s on them.
As I’ve shared, I’ve found plenty of people who don’t understand, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t sympathetic to it and sharing allows me the freedom to be myself.
It’s okay to be you. It’s okay to show your vulnerability. Vulnerability creates connections with others and allows them to be vulnerable too. You never know, hearing you have anxiety may be someone else’s lifeline.
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