Anxiety Aware

This week is the UK Mental Health Awareness Week and this year's foc is on being anxiety aware. Visit their website here.

Anxiety is something I feel well qualified to talk about having found myself at it's mercy for the last 3 years. I'd experienced the odd panic attacks over the years, mostly at school but nothing major. Then around the summer of 2011 something odd happened. I found myself constantly terrified, unable to breathe, churned up stomach, feeling shaky and wanting to curl up in a ball and hide.

I'd experienced depression before, but had been clear and off of antidepressants for over a year. And besides this felt much different. I'd never felt struck down by terror constantly before. Looking back I'm not surprised anxiety had crept up on me, I'd lost my Grandad, ended my 6 and a half year relationship and a friend had become ill.

For the next 2 and a half years I was Anxiety's slave, no i'm not exaggerating. Leaving the house was an ordeal in itself, I would have to march myself out of the door just to go to work. I would be in a calm mood when suddenly my stomach would get that dreadful lurch, my chest would tighten and I'd spiral off into a panic for no reason.

The other anxiety side effect was the constant worrying, weird obsessions and sheer exhaustion from all the fear. I would spend all day and evening worrying about friends and family, deliberately keep myself awake at least an hour after I knew they had gone to bed, should they need me, check my phone constantly throughout the night in case there was a message needing my help.

Going out and socialising became a nightmare. The idea of going to the pub (something I'd always enjoyed even during my first bout of depression) or even meeting people for a cup of tea felt impossible and so I simply stopped doing it.

The problem with anxiety is that for every 'cure' for an anxiety e.g stopping doing it, two new ones pop up in it's place much like the Hydra of Greek mythology. So for example I stop meeting friends at the pub because it's too scary, very soon I stop seeing them full stop because that too is terrifying.

Now you see how quickly anxiety takes over someone's life. The next step mine took was to go into mild OCD territory (I wouldn't dream of describing my anxiety as being OCD as it is an even more debilitating condition on it's own). I would be scared to sit in certain spots in the garden in case something bad happened, there were loads of these strange fears and compulsions.

I tried a lot of CBT techniques to tackle my anxiety and the renewed depression that it had bought on but my brain just dismissed it. The first thing that really started to help was the change of medication to mood stabilisers which treated my condition correctly as Bipolar and it's anxiety element.

I still struggle with anxiety, some days it still creeps up on me and freaks me out and makes me paranoid. I have to be careful not to let myself get excited about anything as it easily spills over into anxiety. I also have to be careful not to take on too much at any one time or to try to do too much in a short period, even back to back fun days out can leave me with, what I like to describe as, an "anxiety hangover".

I'm glad Mental Health Awareness Week has chosen anxiety as it's focus this year, as it can often be one of the less recognised mental illnesses despite it's life-altering effects. Anxiety is crippling and needs to be taken seriously.

Love Jen
XxxX