Emotional Fitness [Panic Attacks and Anxiety]
Making Change to your Anxiety Today
My own painful experience with
Panic and Anxiety Attacks lasted for five long years. Making a full recovery
when I thought it wasn't possible inspired me to create a forum for others who
are suffering, may be lost, and want to recover but are struggling in an
attempt to find the right answers and guidance to help them out. The purpose of
my advice is to assist those with high anxiety because I know how weird,
scared, confused, and awful anxiety can feel.
Anxiety is a behavioural condition;
it is a learned behaviour that has become a "bad mental habit" that
has taken over your life. If you have been told that you're stuck with anxiety
the rest of your life, or that there is no cure, that you can just "manage
it" you have most likely been told this by a doctor or therapist. As I will discuss later in this entry, ask yourself how much real exposure these individuals have had with the condition and then question how they come to their conclusions that you just have to "manage your anxiety" or can just breathe when you feel anxious.
My own personal struggle with
anxiety lasted five long years all while completing an undergraduate and
Masters degree at University in Canada. As any current sufferer would
understand it's very difficult how to just explain what it is that you're
experiencing to another person. All too many times I would get comments such as
"Just Relax" or "Take some deep breaths" or "What is
it you're worried about?". Often times I would feel ashamed about why I felt
so awful all the time, how it brought down my self-esteem and quite literally
made me think I couldn't do anything. I thought that others would just think I
was weak for experiencing anxiety, and I would ashamed of my symptoms thinking
I was legitimately going crazy.
My desire to create a blog about
anxiety is two-fold. First, I believe that medical professionals often provide
incorrect advice for those classified as having an anxiety disorder, not
because they don't want you to get better but often because they don't really
understand what the fuck is going on. When you go to see your doctor often
times they will prescribe you medication and tell you to go home and relax. How
much do you think they actually know about the condition? I mean how much do they
know about how it FEELS? Is it something they read about in medical school in a
few chapters of a textbook?. Second, I know that writing a blog WILL help
someone to get better and look back on anxiety as something they were proud to
overcome. I use to think that the painful memory would be stuck with me for life.
Personal Experience
My first initial anxious episode
occurred when I fainted while visiting the doctor when I was in the seventh
grade. For a short time after that I dealt with panic attacks and the constant
fear of fainting. However, since I was so young I guess I just forgot about the
panic and became immersed in some other activity as the panic disappeared.
Fast forward six years to
September of my second year at University. I had started working out and
focused on my health. I had taken a workout supplement containing creatine,
vitamin B12, and a high amount of caffeine. One day after a workout I had a
massive panic attack that lasted for hours where I was unable to control my heart
rate. Shortly after this episode I began to experience panic in lecture halls,
social settings, and at random times during the day. The constant fear I had
created subconsciously kept me in the 'panic-anxiety cycle' where I would have
random, unannounced panic attack after panic attack.
I visited the doctor on campus
and he was quick to prescribe Ativan (Medical name is Lorazapam) and instructed
me to take the pills when needed. I was fortunate to have had an older sister
who had gone through anxiety and panic attacks, which created the belief that I
could do this without medication. I actually threw the Lorazapam out after
leaving the doctors office. Within a matter of weeks I became extremely nervous
to sit in lecture, started to have trouble sleeping, and didn't want to
interact socially with others. I had to write my exams and midterms in a
separate room, as the anxiety was overwhelming. My self-esteem and belief in my
ability to do well at school diminished, I started to feel like my life was out
of control and the constant feeling of anxiety made me awful. This constant
anxiety cycle, which I had now made a daily habit, was draining my energy,
taking away from my full potential, and I began to drift into a mild
depression.
Although I never took any
medication, I started spending a large percentage of my time on the Internet
looking for some answers to what was happening to me. I ordered different
Anxiety "Help" programs off the Internet and tried them out, but they
just didn't seem to get rid of the panic. Although I suffered for five long
years, anxiety has made me a more emotionally fit person. Even though it was
difficult I began to be honest with myself. I learned that I am a perfectionist
something I slowly began to let go of. Although it is a very destructive
emotion, I believe that people who have anxiety are highly intelligent and have
to the POTENTIAL to use or "Channel" their anxious energy to improve
their life. Essentially you "FEEL" more than the average person and
although this may seem awful at the moment, I believe that when you recover you
are able to FEEL happiness and joy on a different level than the average person
as well.
So if you are like every anxiety
sufferer you want to know the ANSWER, what is the answer to get over your
anxiety?The desire to recover which is a positive thing can also be very counter
productive. What I mean is that when I use to suffer I was so upset with what
anxiety was doing to my life, to my relationships, to my ability to just feel
fucking normal again that it motivated me to get better. I had a VERY strong
desire to improve my emotional condition and even though I was scared as hell I
was going to find an answer. However, I was putting pressure on myself to get
better week after week, just to try and do more things each day that scare me
in order to stop avoiding certain situations. I was unaware that this
"pressure" that ONLY I was putting on myself was keeping anxiety
around.
If there is one thing I want you
to understand from this first entry is that although you may be determined to
get better the pressure you are putting on yourself to get better may be making
you anxious as well. An old belief that I use to have was that anxiety could be
ignored, suppressed, and I wanted to get rid of it. I had to fight my anxiety,
and claw my way out in order to overcome it.
As I increased my understanding
of what was happening to me, I began to see that since anxiety is an emotion
that everyone then there is a certain level that WE ALL experience. I wanted to
never feel anxiety again in my life, to never get nervous ever again.
The issue was that I had high
inappropriate anxiety that had essentially not made me the old person that I
use to know. The whole time I suffered I was trying to get rid of it and not
think certain thoughts. The answer to getting cured is to let the emotions and
thoughts, of whatever symptoms you have to just be. When I first started to
just be with whatever emotion I had it was difficult because it was
uncomfortable. My guess is that when you feel anxious you try and do everything
or anything to make yourself feel better. Why not letting the emotion or
thoughts be there as long as they want, there is no pressure for them to leave.
Start to carry on with your the rest of your activities, but remember when you
start to feel anxious you may not realize that you are putting pressure on
yourself to get rid of the feeling. Try and identify when you are putting the
pressure on yourself and instead fully accept the emotion and truly not have
ANY desire for it to go away.
Taylor Henderson
