How I Started To Overcome My Challenge with Anxiety
By Sean Clarke
It’s fair to say that my challenge with anxiety has always held a firm grip over my life. It was only in recent years that I decided to say enough is enough and I finally was willing to do something about it. I have had General Anxiety Disorder (GAD) most of my life. I’m now 28.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been to my doctors, spoken to family members for assurance and been on medication for over two years for my anxiety disorder.
Although some of these things helped, I’ve always had a niggle in the back of my head. That niggle was the anxiety that would push back into the forefront of my mind when I stopped using these coping methods.
What every anxiety disorder ‘sufferer’ wants and craves is to ultimately feel ‘normal’ – all of the time. We don’t want to feel anxious ever. We’ve had enough.
That’s what I wanted, I wanted a way to stop my anxiety for good. Full stop.
I write this to give you, the one challenged with anxiety… hope. I have tried to craft a really helpful post, one that I wish I could of found when I was in the depth of this anxiety disorder.
The aim here is to inspire but also to give you useful information that could change the way you think and therefore be a tool for you to use in your recovery.
So, I think it’s important I give you some background into my anxiety. Here’s the short version.
How It All Started
My anxiety story is not too different than most. It all started at school, around the age of five. I was a shy child, unsure of myself and not confident at all. Yes I can remember being that way even from that young age!
Of course, it did not bother me too much because after all, I was very young and I put it down to my lack of life experiences.
Soon enough I was going into double digits. Still shy, I would fit in to an extent but never be outspoken or show confidence. Little did I know at the time but I was starting to experience mild anxiety. This was around the time I began to question why I felt the way I did and was very confused by it.
Like many others, my teen years would prove to be the hardest. I was still experiencing mild anxiety in the form of social anxiety and wanting to stay inside the house during the summer holidays.
It was when I finished school and started college that my anxiety went from 5 to 10+.
Now I was 17 years old.
One day when I was walking down the road to catch a train to college, I had a huge feeling of fear that consumed all of me. It was like every feeling of anxiety and fear I’d felt like as a child had built up to this very moment.
I was having my first anxiety attack. It was the worst feeling I had ever felt. I became paranoid of passing cars, others walking around me, and I froze.
I immediately turned and made my way back home to my mother.
I quickly made my way back home and broke down into a sobbing mess. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I think it’s important to be completely honest with you about how it made me feel so you know how badly I was effected.
I thought I was going insane. For real!
It was at this moment my mother booked a doctors appointment and a couple of days later I was sat in his office trying to explain how I felt.
I found this to be a very odd situation to be in. I was trying to explain to a stranger how I’d felt my whole life. How do you begin to describe that?
Everyone’s life experiences are different, we all see the world differently, so would the doctor be able to see where I was coming from and help me take the steps to recovery?
He ended up giving me a prescription for antidepressants. I was fairly happy with this because I thought they would help me. They did.
They helped me to feel less anxiety and discomfort in my day to day environments. The problem was, it wasn’t just the anxiety that faded. It was all of my emotions.
My antidepressants caused my emotions to fizzle away. Happiness? Nope. Sadness? Nope.
It was bizarre. I was like a zombie, not being able to emotionally react to situations like most people would. The goal for me was to stop this anxiety dead. That was accomplished but I was confused as to why all the other emotions I enjoyed had gone too.
Other issues with my meds would also occur regularly. If I missed my dosage for a day or two (I know my fault!), I would become grumpy or even angry. Not much fun for those who lived with me.
After years of feeling like a zombie and floating through my late teens in a blur, I had enough of the medication. I thought to myself – ‘ do I want to rely on these for the rest of my life?‘
I knew the answer was no. I also wanted to experience the other emotions I enjoyed to the full. So, I started to take myself off the medication.
I won’t lie. It was tough. Each week I’d take less and less until finally I was medication free.
Did the anxiety come back? Sure, but I was ready because I anticipated it to come back. On the flip side, the other emotions I hadn’t felt for so long came back too.
Not wanting to spend the rest of my life an anxious mess, I started looking into alternative ways to lower the anxiety. I was never after a ‘cure’ after being on medication. This was because I’d learned that I can’t just pluck anxiety out of my mind without disrupting my other emotions whether good or bad ones.
I just wanted a way to lower these anxious thoughts and feeling back down to a manageable level. The same level of anxiety that everyone else felt.
Here’s what I discovered that worked for me:
- Becoming self aware
- Mindfulness
- Reconnecting with myself
Here’s What Happened
I realised I had been drifting through life with no direction, pulled from idea to the next. I’d always been floating from one thing to another.
It was this uncertainty that was part of why I was anxious. Without an aim in my life and not doing anything for myself to grow I knew I was on the road to nowhere.
I’ve always asked the big questions in life. ‘What is the meaning of it all?’ I wasn’t doing anything that gave me satisfaction or drive. I was floating through the system but didn’t know what I wanted at the end of it.
During school, I took part in everything, however I never had an idea of what I wanted my future to look like. I’ve since learnt that that’s okay. Many people don’t know what they want to do with their lives.
At the same time, it’s that lack of direction that can feed anxiety. You’re simply existing but you’re not living. I then started to reconnect with my passions.
At school I loved art. After school, I ignored it even through I had a talent for it. I started to understand the things that we enjoy doing naturally can make us feel extremely fulfilled and healthily excited.
If there is something you enjoy doing that you don’t have to force yourself to do, you have to stick with it. I’ve learned that giving your life a meaning is the only meaning to it all.
Forcing yourself to do something you naturally don’t like isn’t going to work for you. You’ll give up and stop trying to do it.
Art is not something a guy like me would normally carry on doing after school. Having a family and working full time doesn’t leave much time for drawing. In fact, many people would think that it’s juvenile.
‘Real life’ separated me from what I craved doing. From what gave be fulfilment and direction.
I call this stuff ‘soul food’. It’s reconnecting with yourself and playing.
It’s what you as a person love to do. The thing that gives you a real buzz. No matter how obscure it is, don’t worry what others think. If it makes you come alive, do it – because your mind needs it more than you think.
Since I fed my soul with the food it was hungry for, my anxiety started to ease off because I’d given myself a purpose to be happy. To create and enjoy what I was doing. Harnessing my skill and doing what made me feel like I was doing what I had really always wanted to do.
‘Feeding your soul’ is only one part of the equation that helped to to overcome my anxiety disorder.
I’d love to share with you more on other techniques I used and still use to manage anxious thoughts and feelings over on my site. It’s a real, honest environment for sharing ideas on managing anxiety and keeping mental healthy habits.
You can find me here: http://www.projectenergise.com
Here’s to your success – Sean
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