Living with Anxiety

Over the last few months I’ve become aware of just how much anxiety I live with on a daily basis. (TW: Anxiety described in detail)

It’s something I hadn’t put much thought into before I started going to therapy, but now I’m aware just how much it affects me and why I reacted the way I did to things in the past.

Talking with my therapist I know why other therapists have said the things they have to me and why they’ve reacted the way they have when I’ve told them about my life.

Not every therapist is trained to handle someone who’s had multiple traumas and not every person can handle hearing the traumas some people have had. Some of the therapists I’ve had in the past have actually re-traumatized me without meaning to. I can’t blame them, they didn’t realize what they did. I do wish more therapists were properly trained for people like me though.

Over the last couple of months I’ve cut my circle of friends down quite a bit and I must say I’m the happiest I’ve been in a long time because of it. I started cutting out the people who treated my anxiety like it was something I just needed to brush off or get over and it’s taken the pressure to heal off of me and accelerated the healing process. I don’t constantly feel like I’m doing it wrong now.

I’ve realized I can’t run from my anxiety anymore. I have to accept it as a part of who I am in order to truly move through it. There are some things I can push past within my anxiety and some things I can’t. I refuse to re-traumatize myself just because my anxiety makes someone uncomfortable or they think I’m handling it wrong. I realize now I’m the person who’s in control of my life and only I can say what’s right or wrong for myself. I’m not going to let anyone tell me what to do with my life.

This week in therapy we talked about how much I’ve overcome in my life and how I always find a way out. My resiliency is something I’ve always been proud of, but until recently I didn’t internalize just how strong I am. Internalizing and processing everything has become a top priority in my therapy sessions. I’ve spent far too long just pushing through and not stopping to take care of myself. Self care is the single most important thing in my life right now.

As I learn more about my anxiety triggers I’m starting to see all of the anxiety attacks I’ve had in my life and how they were misinterpreted by others as me being controlling or demanding or weird or bitchy. I see the times I cried out for help and was brushed off by people who didn’t understand what was happening to me. I don’t blame them. How could they have understood when I didn’t even understand myself?

I see how I was misdiagnosed as Bipolar for years and years. I wasn’t having Bipolar mood swings; I was having anxiety attacks. As my list of triggers grows, my therapist is helping me find the original reason for the trigger and I’m working through them one at a time. Sometimes this leads to even more triggers, but I usually come out of a therapy session relieved and smiling.

Throughout my life when I’ve tried to state my boundaries because I was having anxiety it’s been brushed off and/or ignored which just made things worse.  I’d go from uncomfortable to full on bitch mode in seconds because I wasn’t being heard. The worst part back then was I didn’t understand what was happening to me.

Therapy has taught me how to recognize the red flags within myself so I can control the anxiety before it gets really bad and I lose control of the reaction I have to it. The more I pick up on the signs within myself, the easier it is to calm myself down before I snap at someone who probably doesn’t even realize what’s happening to me. It’s given me a lot more control in my life.

I honestly can’t count the amount of times I’ve changed plans suddenly or snapped at someone or had a total meltdown in my life. I’m not using the anxiety as a crutch, but understanding why it happened has really helped me come to terms with not being angry with the various names I’ve been called over the years.

A lot of people think of an anxiety attack as a panic attack with someone crying, unable to breathe or speak, sitting in the corner, rocking back and forth. For me it’s rarely every like that. When I’m having anxiety I talk really fast, I seem to have a lot of energy then I get really moody and temperamental. I can go from zero to sixty in two seconds flat with seemingly no reason. My mood can go from happy to angry or sad. From the outside all of that can look like Bipolar, but it’s not. Once my fight or flight response kicks in I’ve lost control of the anxiety attack and it can take minutes, hours or even days for me to calm myself down again. Any kind of stimulation (yelling, screaming, or anything with a lot of energy) will definitely make it worse. What I need is calm, low energy and sometimes the only cure is to be by myself. For example I spent most of the week before last with really high anxiety and even now I’m still coming down from it. I know without a doubt any little thing will set me off right now so I’m laying low and taking it easy as much as possible. Add in the high pressure from the weather change that’s causing my Chiari to flare and I’m a recipe for disaster at the moment.

Now I’m focusing on being even more vocal about my boundaries and only keeping people close to me that respect when I say I can’t and no. I’m done being pushed around and letting other people define and speak for me.

Lately I’ve started doing a bit of experimenting to figure out who I am without the outside influences I’ve had before. I’m learning a lot about myself in a million different ways and loving every second of it. Over the last week I’ve gotten clothes I never would have worn before, cut my hair and dyed it pink and pierced my ears. I’m thinking about getting a new tattoo, maybe even two. My therapist has encouraged me to continue experimenting as long as I do it in a safe way. She’s told me several times how proud she is that I’m taking therapy seriously and at all the progress I’ve made.

I haven’t dissociated recently. I’ve been implementing the coping techniques my therapist has taught me and most of the time they seem to work. Some days are still bad, but I know they’ll pass and they’re getting fewer and further between.

Overall things are getting a lot better. I know I haven’t written in a while but I’m trying to enjoy life instead of just writing about it.