Wow, the year has come and gone, and to be honest, I kinda forgot about this thing. I am going to open up a little and be completely honest here. I started this blog as a vice of sorts about a year ago when I was going through an extremely difficult time. About a year ago, I was diagnosed with GAD, which is Generalized Anxiety Disorder. For months, I thought I was going insane. I went through all of the stages, trying to pinpoint what could be the cause of my racing thoughts, the feeling of never having enough air fill your lungs, the dizziness, the night sweats, the mood swings. It was just overall a really bad time for me.
I am a person of logic, so I figured there had to be something really wrong with me. Now, let me tell you if you are feeling any of this at all, DO NOT GOOGLE! I googled my problems, the things I felt going on in my body, and convinced myself, that I was dying. You name it, I had it. I spent countless hours trying to self diagnose, countless nights unable to sleep. Anxiety is horrible. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. The worst part about it, is that it is so misunderstood. People that have never had it, or that just don't know very much about it will tell you, "It's all in your head". That has to be the WORST thing you can say to someone that has GAD. It makes you feel like you are insane, like clinically insane. Sometimes people can think of it like anxiety you would experience before a big test, or before riding a roller coaster. A short lived feeling of nervousness, discomfort even, but those with GAD know its nothing like that. It is a constant battle to do anything at all. Things that sound enjoyable or easy become unmanageable. Tasks like going to work, driving your car, going out to dinner, become things that actually scare you.
Now the problem with anxiety is if you feed it, it will grow. For example, I was out and about one day, trying to get some Christmas shopping done and I was in the car by myself, and an enormous amount of anxiety just swept over me! I began to panic. My vision went blurry, my hands became clammy, I could barely breath. I pulled over into the closest thing I could find, and broke down and cried for an hour. I couldn't imagine living a life like this, constantly afraid and not sure why. That day though I made a choice. Was I going to feed my anxiety, give it power? Or was I going to starve that SOB and kill it, one day at a time. I had two choices, the flight or fight response and I chose to fight. I could have gone home, gone to where I feel comfortable and safe. Taken my anxiety pills, or my "happy" pills, but I didn't. I breathed through it, and finally when things started to feel at least semi-normal, I started my car and I kept going. I ran all the errands I needed to run. Even though I wanted to crawl into a hole and hide, I wouldn't allow myself.
That's the beauty of anxiety. It gives you a choice. It allows you to fight it, and have a fair chance at beating it, you just can't give up. Had I looked at my life a year ago and thought I'd be where I am now, I would have thought I was crazy. I had tunnel vision, I couldn't see beyond the dark place I was in, but every day, every step I took, was like a step through that tunnel, and it just kept getting bigger and brighter until I was free.
If you're struggling with anxiety, don't give up. Never give up. There are so many things you can do to help it improve with every passing day. For me, it was a mixture, of learning to control my breathing, eating right so that my body wasn't riding a crimson wave of caffeine and sugar (which both heighten anxiety by the way), begging to exercise, and meditate, which helped WONDERS! Therapy, talking to people about my problems and finding the source or what started it all. So many different things you can do, and also writing. This blog was one of my escapes. It was something I could do to get my mind off of the fear, and then something I could read and see how amazing my life is, when I felt the anxiety coming on.
It will get better, I promise.
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