Anxiety Warrior
It’s the question every anxiety sufferer asks themselves. “When am I going to get better?” And then when you are better, if you’re anyone like me, you are hypervigilant about your anxiety. Any tiny change to your daily routine or your medication regimen makes you nervous. “What if it comes back because the doctor decreased my dose of (insert medication) by .25 mg?” “What if I can’t handle a long work commute (if you’re like me returning to work as so many are these days…)?” What do I do not if, but when it comes back? You’ve actually gotten so used to feeling anxious that feeling well is foreign to you. You have to relearn feeling good, and in my experience it can take time. It takes a while before you accept that you can get better, that you have gotten better. So, why not shout it from the rooftops? Why not post stories on your social media accounts letting the world know you’re cured? Well, like I said before, you are probably hypervigilant, skeptical, and downright scared that this moment of wellness is only a fleeting one.
Anxiety has become your constant companion - that way of feeling that you can rely on. You have learned to operate despite feeling bad. You have even accepted living life uncomfortably because it’s easier and better (some experts even say!) than trying to push the anxiety away. So, what happens when your mood lifts or your medication starts to work? What happens when you finally peek out from under your umbrella of anxiety and see the sun coming out from behind the clouds and the birds chirping in the distance, and you suddenly realize one day that you don’t feel anxious? Well, just like you have accepted your anxiety and learned to live with it, now you must accept being well and relearn how to live again. Don’t just survive, but thrive!
As I’ve gotten to this good place multiple times before, you would think I would be expert at resuming life as usual, but I’m not - especially this time. This time was different- like getting hit by a bus, going through Postpartum Anxiety and Postpartum OCD, and pursuing treatment for so long and in so many locations. It was profoundly traumatic. So even though I started to feel better about a year ago and I’m just now starting to accept feeling better, I’ll never be the same person I was before this happened to me.
Of course I’m a mother now; I’m responsible for a human I can unabashedly say is the light of my life. But even more-so, I am someone who experienced severe anxiety and OCD for almost two full years. Even during my recovery phase (which I feel like 2022 was), it wasn’t a linear journey. I had periods when it would come back for a few days or weeks and completely freak me out. I would think again, “Will I ever get better?” And in the worst moments of hopelessness, I would imagine ending up in a mental hospital alone. That was my narrative whenever I would feel my anxiety creep back: I am going to end up in a mental hospital away from my home and family. But, alas, I won’t because, well first of all, I just wouldn’t meet the criteria, and second, things are very different now.
Now I know my anxiety better. I know what triggers it. I have an arsenal of coping skills. It’s up to me whether I choose to use them instead of sitting and ruminating with my old bff Anxiety. I’ve never been one for CBT and DBT but you’d better believe I hired a CBT therapist and started challenging my narratives and seeing my thoughts as leaves floating past me (this was difficult and sometimes I’d give up, but I tried). I got myself a lavender eye pillow (on sale in my shop!), and started repeating affirmations when I would go for walks or runs outside. One of my favorites that really works for me is, “I am a good person and I deserve everything good that is in my life.” It’s the truth. I am a good person and I have made good choices. I deserve all the good in my life. I do body scans and meditations occasionally (Go to Calm on Youtube and take your pick of meditations). I even ordered a few puzzles which I will admit I’ve yet to open- but they’re there, and I know there will come a time when I will use them to help me stay present.
I have my new, well not so new now, therapist who I am not ashamed to say is my lifeboat. I imagine her face sometimes when I’m feeling anxious and I ask myself, what would Dr. S say? She is so different from my old therapist who I had for 15 years that I doubted she’d be able to help me. It took about a year to build up the trust, but we did it. When she says my thoughts are just intrusive thoughts, I believe they are. When she tells me she firmly believes my narrative of ending up in a hospital away from my family will never happen, I believe her. She is the one that made me realize the loss of my old therapist during my postpartum period was a huge contributing factor to my anxiety. It was straight up traumatic. And to this day I still miss him. But I’ve moved on. I have a new care team- Dr. S and a psychiatrist I trust to prescribe my medication. They are my team. They are in my corner. Having a care team that you trust in place is so vital to getting and staying well. I can’t say it enough.
And of course, I have my family, and the friends I’ve trusted along this journey. (I know it might seem like I’ve been super public about this, but there are only about 3-4 friends who know everything that went down.) I guess what it comes down to is, if you ask me, anxiety never really goes away. It’s part of me, ingrained in my emotional makeup. But that doesn’t mean it has to be front and center in my life, define me and rob me of valuable moments. I don’t want to just survive. I want to thrive, and I have to fight for that. It’s not a linear journey but it is an upward one. And there is no guarantee that my anxiety won’t return, but if it does, it will return to a new person- a person with experience, a person with knowledge, a person with a team, a person with the skills to fight.
I don’t know when I started thinking of myself as an Anxiety Warrior, but that’s certainly what I am. And if you’re reading this, chances are you’re one too. So, fight on.