While playing frisbee golf on Saturday, we were trying to find a disc that had gone into some woods. There were spiders (big spiders) everywhere. I kept thinking thinking how 2 years ago I could have been within 3 feet of a spider that big without panicking. This actually happens to me on a fairly regular basis, where something happens and I react or handle the situation is completely different than what I did 2 years ago. No, I didn't just grow up and stop being afraid of a lot of things. I realized that I had anxiety and decided to start taking medication.
Most people know I have narcolepsy, I'm pretty open about that one, plus it's harder to hide, even medicated I still nap and fall asleep more than most people or just make me laugh then people really wonder what is wrong with me. Anyway, I've always been less open about anxiety. For years I had some pretty significant phobias (needles,spiders, bees) it was so bad that anything that might have resulted in stitches or an IV made me nervous. But that wasn't an anxiety disorder, especially not one that needed medication. Honestly, I thought that in order to have an "anxiety disorder" I would have to be completely home bound and constantly feel like I was panicking. That wasn't me, I had friends and a job, I lived on my own, got married. To me my life was normal and anything that was a little off was just who I was, I was a "worrier". One time I told Brian that I worried about worrying too much. Brian telling me that wasn't normal was the first time I thought maybe being a "worrier" wasn't how I had to be.
So 2 years ago, my husband had been gone for 7 months doing training for the Army, I was living with my parents, I was done working, and I had a lot of free time. My worrying had turned into me doing things like checking our bank account 10 times in 10 minutes. I would log on, check it, log off and repeat. I would constantly ask my husband, who was 1000 miles away, what was wrong or if everything was okay. There were days would the only thing I wanted to do was curl up and hide in a corner because I felt like something bad was going to happen. I had always done this sort of thing or had these kind of days but finally I was fed up with it. Long story short, I ended up at the Dr. on medication. Then I started to realize all the ways anxiety had affected my life. With medication I can...
1) Get a shot, have blood taken, be in the same room as a needle
2) Kill and/or walk by a spider
3) Drive at anytime of day, without crying.
4) Walk into a room full of people, even if I am late.
5) Eat in front of people I don't know
6) Go a day without checking the bank accounts. Make one budget and not check the math 100 times for hours.
7) Do parent teacher conferences without crying for days in advance.
8) Call and order pizza, food, or call customer support
9) Ask where something is, or for help on how to make something work
10) Sleep at night without being convinced there are people in my house coming to kill me.
I'll leave it at 10 because I like even numbers. This is just a few of the things. There are so many more. It's not that unmediated I never did of these things (I'd called to order pizza). It's that now I can do them without crying, shaking, getting sick to my stomach, curling up into a ball, digging my fingers into my arms, or trying everything I can to avoid it. I never realized how much better I could feel and all the little ways anxiety ruled my life until I started to get medication. At first I was worried that with medication I wouldn't care about anything. This has not been the case. I still don't love needles and I still hate walking into a meeting late but with medication I am able to stop myself from overthinking or overreacting. I can tell myself that it's my anxiety talking and choose to ignore it. I still have good days and bad. When I'm sleep deprived and stressed it is harder. Yesterday, was one of those days when suddenly I just felt nervous and worried. But rather than shut down or obsess over everything that could possibly be wrong, I got up and got busy. Within 30 minutes, I didn't feel this impending sense of doom and had a productive day. I could go on for hours with all the examples of what I used to do or how I used to feel but this post is already getting too long. I mostly wanted to share because I think anything mental health related gets a bad reputation and that a lot of people think like I used to: that their anxiety or depression or whatever isn't that bad and that they have learned to cope. Now that I know how much better I feel and how much better my life can be I'm glad that I finally admitted and realized that I had chronic anxiety, that it was affecting every aspect of my life, and that I wasn't really coping with it I was letting it control me.
