This is very long, but bear with me. I have thirteen years and counting of triumphs here to tell. =) Recovery ISN'T impossible. I promise.
While I and my family now realise that there had been signs as far back as we could remember, the real trouble hit when I was 16. It was 2 weeks before my first time taking (cue dramatic music!) FINALS, and I was lying on the couch watching a movie on Lifetime with my mom. And out of nowhere I suddenly knew, beyond any doubt, I was going to be sick. I burst into tears, raced for the bathroom, shaking, hyper-ventilating, bent double with cramps, and stayed there for two hours. My mom was frantic, especially since I kept up a hysterical mantra of "something's wrong; this isn't right!" the whole time. Back then I never cried and was always calm, so my panic alone convinced her that something was indeed very, very wrong, but there was nothing she could do to help me. I'd been afraid of vomiting for years, but suddenly that fear had taken on a life of its own.
This happened every day, sometimes 2 or 3 times a day, where the panic would hit and would just keep going until I was so exhausted I physically COULDN'T maintain the fear. I got through those last 2 weeks of freshman year, my teachers as worried about my drastically out of character attacks as my parents, and just lost it. My whole life just disappeared. I had full blown panic disorder, agoraphobia, and emetophobia, and I was completely housebound. In just 2 weeks.
Fortunately, my doctor recognised my symptoms as being almost text-book for anxiety. Unfortunately, I couldn't leave the house to see a therapist and get a definitive diagnosis and treatment. I likely don't have to tell anyone here what those first weeks of summer break were like. The confusion, the fear, the dread, the shame, the exhaustion. I was so afraid of the attacks and the nausea that I stopped eating anything but half a bagel a day and began obsessively drinking ice water from my gray mug. It had a handle, you see, and didn't sweat, which meant there was no chance it would get slippery and cause me to accidentally spill it. I couldn't handle the idea of being without that ice water, even for the few minutes it would take to refill the mug.
By some miracle, I never became clinically depressed, and my whole family was behind me 100%. I don't know what would have happened without them. It was even my dad who found me the Combatting Stress and Depression Program program. He was watching t.v. one day and saw an infomercial for it. My dad hates infomercials, and has never bought a thing from a t.v. advertisement before or since, and yet he didn't even hesitate to buy it on the spot. You'd need to know my stoic, practical dad to really understand how much that means to me still.
And again, I was luckier than a lot of people here. Even though I went from what I had thought was normal to a complete shut-in in about 14 days, the sudden onset really pushed home what was happening to me. There wasn't any doubt about the fact that I had only 2 choices: get better or die. I couldn't tolerate friends, the outside world, and I was even losing the house, one room at a time, to fear-associations that would trigger attacks just by being in those rooms. My life was one long, exhausting ritual meant to appease some merciless, sadistic thing inside my mind. I only weighed 100 pounds to begin with, and half a bagel wasn't enough to live on, so I was dropping weight rapidly. I was killing myself through fear, and that just was not acceptable. I threw myself right into Lucinda's program and didn't let myself look back. I couldn't afford to.
I'm not going to lie. It was really, really hard. And like Lucinda said I would on the tapes at the time, I thought it was impossible that I would ever look at a panic attack and think it no big deal. These things had ruined my life almost over night, sucked the life right out of me; how can you think that no big deal!? But I kept at it, kept trying. I learned things about myself and my way of thinking that were downright terrifying (I still remember the moment I realised that I could not even bring myself to think "you did good," my ability to self-praise was so poor), but also empowering. I learned that even though I was my own worst enemy, I could also be my own best friend. What I had done to myself through negative thinking I could undo and fight.
More, through the exercises and the sessions I realised that who I had always thought I was wasn't really me. I had always been quiet, introverted, controlled, and shy. I had friends, but I was very much a follower with them. Timid. But when I listened to the relaxation tape and tried to see myself "as would like to be" I realised that I was so much more. My whole personality had been a result of what amounted to years of quiet, internal abuse. And as my own abuser, I had the power to stop it. In an odd way I realised how much power I had, and how strong internally I had the potential to become.
By the end of the summer, I was able to go outside again. I went white-water rafting with my family. I slept over at my friend's house. And even though I had a bad panic attack the next morning in the middle of a restaraunt with her family, I was able to let it go and accept it for what it was: just a little bump on the road to recovery. I imagined that what I was going through was very much like someone after a traumatic injury, learning to read and talk and walk and just live all over again. More, to do it better. I accepted that it would take a very long time to be "normal," but that I would get there eventually and that my own pace was good enough. I think we are all like that. We live so long "unhealthily" that we really don't remember or know what it is to live "healthily," so it's like learning everything again from scratch when we finally try. I never thought back then that I would some day say that I was grateful for what happened to me, and the chance it gave me to remake myself into a stronger, better person.
High school was difficult, and I felt fragile so, so much of the time, but every year I would look back at how much I had changed and realised that I WAS getting better. I was able to express my doubts and fears now, admit to having negative emotions without feeling guilty, face the things that scared me (even if they still rolled over me at times, the fact that I kept coming back and facing them again afterward meant I was winning; gaining ground). I was eating again and had regained the 20 pounds I lost that summer, and I was starting to really come out of my shell. I faced a major hurdle and left my "safe" people and places to go to college away from home. First semester, my roomates and I faced a crisis with another roomate, and even though I went 72 hours without being able to sleep during the worst of it, we got through it together. I blossomed. I turned every hard thing I survived into a trophy to hang on my wall, to prove that I was strong, no matter what I sometimes felt. I became out-going, vibrant, confident. I took an outdoor adventure class my final semester and was the only one with the sense of fun and confidence to try the "giant's ladder" exercise the final day, even cajoling my classmates en mass until one agreed to be my partner for the two-person obstacle. And we made it to the top! I still have that photo of us, many stories above ground, to remind me that impossible things aren't. I graduated, moved to a new city to prove I could make it on my own, and fell in love with my now-husband. I completed graduate school and found a job I love absolutely, and am happier than I ever thought I could be. Once upon a time, I never thought a single one of those things would be possible. But I did them all.
I don't think I will ever be "normal," but I no longer really want to be, because it isn't important. I am who I am, and I'm happy with that. I think in so many ways that the extra effort I need to put forth some days just makes me that much more appreciative of what I have done and what I am capable of. I am still "high-strung" and filled with "nervous energy," but rather than internalize it and let it harm me, I now turn it into a kind of constant, bubbly joy! I make my "weakness" into my strength and use it to love the life I thought for a time I wouldn't be able to have with my anxiety. My husband once told me that while he doesn't understand why I struggle sometimes with things that are just... easy for him, he also has no doubt that he has never gone through anything like what I go through every day. I felt so strong when he said that; proud all over again with what I was able to do and what I came from.
I only have GAD now, and I have controlled it for 13 years and counting without medication, working with the chemical rushes my body still likes to throw at me frequently just because it is the way it is. But they don't overwhelm me like they used to. Do I still have bad moments? Yes. But are they anywhere near as bad as they were? Not even close. Who rules my life? I do. Do I still have work ahead of me? Of course! Will I ever be "the person that I would like to be?" Thanks to Lucinda Bassett and StressCenter for Stress and Anxiety's Combatting Stress and Depression Program program, I already am.
To everyone out there... please don't give up. You are so, so strong to have made it this far. It may not happen over night, but you will make it through. You'll have setbacks and bad days and relapses and trouble subjects, but you'll also have victories and good days and a richness that someone who hasn't seen how dark their life can become will never be able to have. I chose as my signature the chinese proverb "fall down seven times, stand up eight" because it always reminds me to keep trying, even long after it looks like I'll never succeed, because if you keep trying you eventually will be able to stand on your own two feet. And stronger for the trying.
All my best to you.
Thank you AA&D for 13 years and counting! =D
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Littlegraycat
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