Although I don’t discuss it much, I have a long history suffering from anxiety, and I would like to open up about it in case anyone has been struggling with it themselves.
I remember suffering from a panic attack for the first time way back in 2006. I know, I’m 28 now, yes time is scary. Anyways, I was 8 years old and I had begun having serious fears of dying. If my memory serves me correct (it does) most of my fears of death came from being in the Catholic Church, which if you don’t know, those churches can be very terrifying.
I was 8 years old and I remember that first attack as if it were yesterday. I was in the car with my grandparents on the way back from an aunt’s house. I was staring out the window when suddenly a wave of fear and sadness consumed me. I began having crazy thoughts, “what if I die right now”, “what if my grandparents die and I never see them again”, “what if I don’t get to see my mom again”. To this day it still brings tears to my eyes to remember the overwhelming sadness I felt in that moment. I remember freaking out, panic breathing, crying. It was so bad my grandparents had to pull over on the freeway to make sure I was okay. That day genuinely changed my life forever.
For months after that, really the entire year of 4th grade, I had panic attacks either every day, or every other day. It was horrible. I remember it got even worse when I started having night terrors. I was, and still am to some extent, terrified of death, which was the main cause of my attacks. I was so scared of dying, I would panic myself into an outburst of tears and begging to see my family. My issues did begin to improve when the school recommended I enter counseling on campus. The counselors at my elementary school really changed my life for many years. I wish I could say ended my anxiety, but sadly that was not the case.
Counseling was successful in subduing my anxiety attacks, but not ridding them completely. Once the attacks became less frequent, my fear manifested in another way, Hypochondriacal.
Becoming a hypochondriac might have actually been worse than just having the panic attacks honestly. If you don’t know, a hypochondriac is a person who constantly worries about their health, and fears they have a serious life-threatening medical issues. This was me for basically all of my teen years, and really lasted from 2011 to 2021. My biggest fear was a heart attack. I don’t know exactly when, but at some point in my early teens I had come across the symptoms of a heart attack on some pamphlet in public, and immediately began thinking it could happen to me. I obsessed over it, constantly feeling my pulse, constantly asking my mom if I looked okay. I would feel chest pains that didn’t actually exist, It truly was terrible. The heart attack fears subsided when I learned about cancer symptoms online one day. The cancer fear days might be some of the worst days I’ve ever lived.
I began fearing I had cancer in 2017. First it was throat cancer, then testicular cancer, then colon cancer, basically anytime I learned about a new form of cancer, it would consume my brain and I would constantly have to check myself to make sure I was okay. This was the worst time, I mean it literally consumed my life. I would constantly have to ask my mom to check my throat, I would do phone visits with the doctor (I also suffer from white coat syndrome so I couldn’t just get checked). I spent so much time reading and obsessing over if I had cancer or not, it was horrible. It really is hard to put it in words how bad my fear was, and how much it consumed my life, but I think I can best sum it up like this; I would wake up in the morning, look in the mirror with a light at my throat for 20 minutes, use the restroom, stare at my urine to check for blood, check my heart rate, check my face in the mirror to see if It was drooping as if I was having a stroke, then I would go to school, where I would check my heart rate in class several times, go to the bathroom and check my urine again. I mean I was literally doing this same cycle every day religiously. Then in 2018 I was forced to quit my job as a delivery drive for a bit because I was so scared in the car while doing a delivery I would have a stroke and die, or have a heart attack and crash and die. These feelings terrified me so much. Sometimes they still does. But really what made things different for me was my actual diagnosis of high blood pressure in 2019.
When I was diagnosed with hypertension in 2019, it really changed my life. All of a sudden all those fears of a heart attack came back, and this time they could potentially be real. I began religiously checking my pulse and blood pressure. I would spend hours of my day with my neck at the artery in my throat to make sure my heart was beating a normal rate. So much so I would develop bruising on my neck. I would cry myself to sleep because I had visions of me dying in my sleep due to my heart stopping or having a stroke. It took me months to get passed that. Really years. I think what surprisingly saved me from the spiraling I was doing over that diagnosis was Covid.
I know Covid was bad for many people. I know too many lives were lost, and I feel terrible for all of those who were affected by Covid. For me though, Covid kind of saved me. When Covid started, I chose to quit my job in the interest of protecting my mother and my step mom because they both were diabetic, and Covid seemed to be a death sentence for anyone with underlying health issues at the time. Don’t get me wrong, the hypochondriacal tendencies definitely continued during that time. I would wake up every day and check my temperature every hour just to make sure I wasn’t developing symptoms. I slept with the thermometer next to my head just to make sure I could check myself. For 6 months I basically didn’t leave my room, and actually didn’t leave my house. I completely locked myself down. How did Covid help me? During that isolation I was forced to do the one thing I hadn’t done, think. I had so much time to think, literally all day. I thought about everything. I thought about why I felt so scared for so long, thought about what caused me to feel fear in the first place. I thought about the worth of being scared, like up to that point my fears resulted in nothing, was it worth it to even fear anymore? I started to think more logically about it, and eventually came to the conclusion that my brain was strong enough to logically think away the anxiety. That isolation was really groundbreaking for me. I felt so free after that.
Come 2021 and beyond, I definitely still feel anxiety, but it isn’t the same as before. All those times before would affect me in a way that made me stay away from friends, from work, from fun in general, but now, I don’t fear being out like that. I think I still have a lot of work to do, I mean literally the day I am writing this post I felt anxiety on my drive home from my dads house, but I still keep going. I still keep living, which is great. The biggest help I’ve had as well is facing all the things I ran from when I was younger, like how I never allowed myself to grieve over my grandparents dying, or how I had always felt some resentment over my upbringing, and some anger over other issues in my life.
The most important thing I’ve learned from my life with anxiety is to have empathy for those who suffer as well. I know how hard it is, I know how devastating it can be to feel fear over every little thing, so I feel like empathy is a must at all times. I know some people who know me personally will say how mean I am, but when it comes to serious mental health issues, I take it serious as well. Now, anxiety isn’t the only thing I suffer with, and my post 2021 life, really my life post 2015 has been one full of severe depressive episodes, OCD, alcoholism, attempted suicide, and more, but having dealt with anxiety the longest, it gave me the tools to deal with the other issues which I will discuss at length in other entries on this blog.
My hope is in telling the story of my battle with anxiety, people can see the number one way to combat it is to face it head on, and peel back the layers of your life to see where it all began. Although I am not cured, really there is no cure for anxiety, I feel much better these days because I am able to reflect on my life and my actions, and feel pride and happiness over realizing what I have already overcome. It is okay to be scared, and It is okay to face it at your pace.
