It's the loneliest feeling in the world to have a severe anxiety episode when surrounded by others. It is worse still when that feeling becomes completely overwhelming, when all of the public anxiety recovery tactics, that have worked for years, go down the toilet. That anxiety then breeds. Becomes uncontrollable. If I can't stop it, how do I leave the house? So I don't. I feel trapped. This makes me sad. I get blue and that feeling grows. I never want to do anything anymore. I feel worthless. I feel incapable. The fear of anxiety becomes an anxiety of its own. The sadness surrounding that anxiety quickly turns into depression.
This was where I ended up in April. My rescue remedy spray was a joke. My anxiety blanket, that had been helping most of the time, was only slightly taking the edge off. I wanted to sleep a lot, wanted to eat constantly. I was defeated.
I've had this condition all of my adult life. My mental and emotional health has been through so may different seasons. It's been a rollercoaster of epic proportions. There were so many valleys and peaks, so many wins and losses. Some seasons were triggered by life events, some were, as my psychologist tells me, because that's just how I'm wired. Mostly, I've learnt to live with it.
I share my story whenever I feel I can - if you've read any of my previous blogs, you'll know that. I share for myself. To let it go. But also for the messages I receive. The ones that say, "Thank you, I thought I was alone", "Thank you for putting into words how this feels".
Today I share from a place of extraordinary recovery. A place I don't fully trust. But a place that exists for me and is too hopeful, too important to keep to myself. I'm sharing my very short season of grief, about 5 weeks. A grief that has now dissipated.
This part of my story starts on Easter Sunday 2022. My family had gathered at my brothers house. We all pitched in helping to landscape the front yard. We watched on TV as my nephew swam his heart out at nationals, smashed his PB and earned an incredible national rank for his age group race. It was a fucking good day. After showers, we had nibblies and sat around together. As usual, my anxiety had hovered in the background throughout the day, but it the late afternoon, I felt my chest starting to tighten, felt my legs start to ache. My breathing started to come up short and I couldn't think. I escaped to the bathroom, as I have done countless times before. I went through my breathing exercises, I splashed water on my face. Jake had noticed. Of course he had. He brought me my rescue remedy & I all but swigged directly from the bottle. I breathed, I splashed my face, I took more remedy. It wouldn't let up. I started to shake, started to cry. Why wouldn't it just stop. Why couldn't I breathe. I needed to leave the bathroom, the house was full, someone would eventually come knocking.
I escaped the bathroom to find that almost everyone had gone down the back yard. Thank Christ. Charli was watching a movie on TV & I clung to that shit like a fucking life raft. Jake wanted to stay with me but I told him to piss off down the back, don't make it obvious something is wrong. Anyone who came in asked if I was heading down, to which I made the very poor excuse of staying upstairs with Char - my kid, who relishes family gatherings at her Uncle Lenny's and had already asked multiple times to go down the back. I told her to just watch a little more of her movie while I tried to get my shit together. My brother came in, made small talk about the movie that was on. I tried to chat. I could barely string a few words together. My whole concentration given to keeping my breathing even, and for heavens sake do not cry. Do not unravel. My emotions felt like they were being kept at bay by the most brittle of dams. One crack and it would just rush out with no hope of being able to staunch the flow. I'm not really sure whether my brother knew how not okay I was, or whether he just thought I was being a rude bitch. I did send him a message apologising for having such a bad day at his house, I hope he understood.
It was Charli, the delightful little beast, who fully gave me away. Begging to join the fun downstairs, I finally said okay. I gave her my phone - take some photos, be careful down the stairs and Mummy will be down in a few minutes. Little did I know the tiny rat went down and announced to everyone that I was crying, sad but I wouldn't tell her why. Fucking kids.
Upstairs, I am trying desperately to pull myself together. I was making small but steady headway. Breathe, rescue remedy, breathe, pick a muscle - relax it. Repeat. I was doing okay, still a bit shaky, but not yet calm enough to fit my usual mask, when my Step Dad from years gone by came up to help. After a battle of his own over the past 18 months, he was well in tune with my anxiety, that indescribable feeling, unless you know it. "Ashleigh Kate, what is it, hey?" He bundled me up in his arms and hugged me while the dam shattered, while I cried. He cried with me. Letting it out felt so much better. That wall, built to put a hold on my own anxiety, trapped me inside as well. The dam needed to break. It's just that usually, I can wait until I'm home. We chatted, I felt more human. And also so exhausted. An hour - maybe less? And I felt like I had run a marathon.
I went downstairs, played it as cool as I could now knowing my shithead kid had ratted me out. We had dinner, we played board games. It was lovely. It was then that another family member pulled me aside, told me they were going to buy me something from Amazon, get it shipped to my home. A something that would help me feel better. Give it a week, they said. I thanked them. I appreciated it. But I also internally scoffed. Years. Years of medications, hormones, blankets, remedies, psychologists, a psychiatrist that shouldn't be practicing, grounding exercises, breathing exercises, journaling, action lists. All of them worth their weight in gold (apart from that psychiatrist prick). All of them at one time another, worked. And all of them at one time or another, didn't.
The supplement that I was ordered arrived 2 weeks later. 200mg capsules
of L-Theanine. I started taking 2 every night before bed. A week went by.
Nothing had changed. 2 weeks, still nothing of note. I kept taking them, they
had been bought for me, after all. I would see the bottle out. I would say
thanks, I tried it but it just didn't work.
Week 3, Jake noticed I wasn't asking for my anxiety blanket as much. I started sleeping properly at night.
Week 4 - I am doing things for myself. Things that for the longest time
I have relied on Jake to do or to support me while I do. The simplest things.
Day-to-day things. Showering. Taking out the bins. Feeding the dogs. Cooking a
meal. Running out for a couple of extra groceries. I start to worry - I feel good... too good. It never lasts very long. I wait for the stumble, the inevitable fall.
Week 5. I'm well-slept, calm. I notice I'm not crying so much. I'm
having a bath for the bubbles, for the joy - not to ground myself in scaldingly
hot water. Music re-enters my life regularly. I'm not overwhelmed by each small
thing in my day. I want to go out. I want to do so many things. I contact that
family member and thank them from the bottom of my heart for saving my from the
absolute void I had come to live in. To accept.
Week 6. It hits. The grief. The realisation that I have spent so, so much
of my adult life restricted, anxious, depressed, struggling. A version of happy
that was enough for then, but it was nothing. Nothing compared to this.
Weeks 7-10 are spent rejoicing. Enjoying the freedom. Enjoying a re-found capability to live my life fully. Don't get me wrong - I've been anxious. I've been sad. I've been hella stressed. But it's been a PART of my day, not something consuming my day. I've had a handful of bad days in a sea of happiness, of rightness. A contrast to the handful of good days in a sea of struggle. And that joy perpetuates the grief. My god, I have missed out on so much. I have avoided joy out of fear. I have walled myself off from people and experiences because of worry I might be anxious. I have struggled through these years more than I ever knew and the realisation of that loss was acute. It hurt. It felt wasted.
I'm in week 11. Jake notice I have lost weight, something I have not been able to shift for years. I called bullshit. Until I noticed he was right. I wondered out loud how, I haven't done anything different. Then he tells me: I haven't been eating myself into oblivion every night. I have not been emotionally eating for weeks. I tell a lie - I emotionally ate after some work stress this week. But I stressed, talked, ate a fucking pie & let it go. Jake tells me that's how people usually deal with stuff, and welcomed me to a little normalcy. I'm here for it.
The fall has not come. The grief has given way to gratefulness. To living. It's made me appreciate what I now have and I will not waste a second of it.
I'm very aware that my seasons can always change again, and that although I am feeling the best I have felt in more than a decade, things happen. There may be slips and tumbles. But I am confident there won't be a fall. I don't think I will be brought to my knees by an anxiety attack in the middle of a family gathering again & that is so powerful, it fills me with so much hope, something I can hardly remember daring to have.
But the most beautiful part of this past almost 3 months is the realisation that my Husband, who has been with me through most of this, has never begrudged me my mental health. Has always supported me by being there, by taking the load where I could not. He has never once asked me to do better than I was, he always knew I was trying. Even when that trying looked like sobbing on the couch into a bowl of ice-cream. I am overwhelmed by his love, that it has been unwavering. He let this half-life be his, too. And I am so incredibly happy that I can bring more joy to our home, to him. That when, instead of wanting to stay home, stay safe, I want to find new adventures. I can see the excitement in his face.
I implore anyone, on whatever journey yours might be, don't ever give up - take the offered hand of those around you. It is so worth trying.
