My Journey With Anxiety

 This is the second post in this series where I talk about my various mental health struggles and symptoms and how they have evolved over the years. Today, as you will know from the title we are talking about my journey with anxiety!

In the first post, we talked about my depression, how it started, the way it affected me over the years and where we stand today. You can find that post here.

I have spent my whole life battling anxiety, it has been an ever-present feeling in my life, when I was a child I would often talk about how my stomach hurt. I talked about feeling sick frequently. Looking back on those memories now, I think it is safe to say that I was feeling anxious. That lump in your throat, the deep sickness you feel in your stomach, even going as far as vomiting and having the runs. These are all symptoms of anxiety that could easily have been mistaken for sickness by my younger self. 

This is why it is important to teach children, especially young children, about feelings. It is important to teach children that it is okay to talk about how they feel, no matter what they feel. It is important to ensure that children in your care, no matter if you are a parent, teacher, nursery childminder or anything else for that matter, feel that you are a safe person for them to share. 

Not only does this help children to better understand what they are feeling, but it can help them to build skills to process and deal with their emotions in healthy ways. Also in the event that something untoward were to happen, the child would be much more likely to feel comfortable enough to confide in you. This could save a child's innocence or even their life.

This was the way it was for the majority of my childhood and early teens, I didn’t really understand what I was feeling. I’m not sure if it was my age, the fact I’m autistic or maybe a lack of education on feelings when I was young. No matter the reason, the outcome was the same, I was finding myself struggling most days with something that I just didn’t understand. 

It was only around the age of 14 I would say that I started to understand exactly what it was that I was battling for so long. Through talking to a counsellor at school, he was the first person to really point out to me that it was probably anxiety. Me, being the kind of person I am spent a significant amount of time researching on the internet.

This was enlightening, for the first time, in many years it was light a lightbulb shone the light on my soul, my very being and my entire life experience. It was a beautifully sad moment in my life. In many ways, I felt as if I had discovered myself, but then, I was filled with anger. Why was it only now that I was discovering what this was? Why was it only now that I could begin to fight back, to start my journey of self-discovery, to start learning to cope with how I was feeling? 

Unfortunately, as it turned out, it wasn’t just that simple. There was no real easy fix to the situation. It was not simply something that I could turn off. I tried a number of things over the years. It started with my counsellor, he tried to teach me ways to calm down. Breathing exercises, counting to ten, all the usual basic things. None of these really worked for me. I ended up having one coping strategy, and that was to run away from the situation. 

Throughout school life, I ended up simply walking out of classes, time after time I just got up and left as I just couldn’t deal with how I was feeling. I never really got much support from teachers in my younger years, they simply left me to my own devices. How I ever learned anything in primary school I shall never know. 

This “solution” to my anxiety continued for much of my life. Throughout high school, college and even university to some degree. We are now in my 20s and I’m struggling my way through university. By this point, the adult mental health team are on the case and I’m finally getting some medication. The medication is mildly effective for depression. It doesn’t really make a huge difference really but it probably saved my life at the time. But the anxiety is still pretty unkempt. 

It would be some time, in fact, it would be another half decade before I finally get my anxiety in check, I tried a number of things throughout these years. Person-centred counselling, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, and other forms of social, talking and occupational therapy. All were given to me by the mental health team but none of them really helped in the long term. 

In the end for me, it took me getting to a point where I wanted to take my own life in order to finally get the help that I need. Even after this happened I spent 5 weeks in the hospital and that didn’t help me. But what did help me was the access that this gave me. I finally got to see the correct people. I was diagnosed with periods of psychosis and intrusive thoughts. This as it turned out was the source of my anxiety, and it was treating this that would come my salvation. 

In my case, the salvation that I needed was one simple medication, an antipsychotic. It took three tries to find the one for me that would work. I did try different dosages, times of day, and delivery methods. But in the end, I settled on a liquid antipsychotic. Chlorpromazine, for me it has been a godsend. There was no other way I would be able to be as settled as I have been over the last couple of months. There was no way that I would be here now, creating content in the way I do. I was consumed by my anxiety. 

There are still some days when I struggle, and there are still some situations where I am anxious, but that is natural, hell it's even normal for most people. At the end of the day, anxiety is just another emotion and is in itself not a mental health problem. It is when anxiety starts to interfere with your everyday life that it becomes a diagnosable problem. 

That is where I spent much of my life, struggling, not really understanding why I was struggling, but struggling nonetheless. I’m happy that we finally found something for me that works, I’m happy that I finally found a doctor that listened and tried to understand what I was saying even when I didn’t understand it myself. 

So, how are you all feeling, I know this was a somewhat heavy topic and I happily invite you to share your thoughts and feelings in the comment below. 

Thanks for reading,

Spec.