I know I sound like a broken record and I keep talking about my anxiety, but as I read an article about stress I realized that blogging is something that helps me de-stress and assess my feelings and junk. I've been keeping a journal/blogging since I was 13! I always feel lighter after I post my thoughts, even if they aren't necessarily "deep" or meaningful. So, here is my final (maybe) post on my anxiety and how I am feeling overall!
My "first" panic attack was this summer, at a dodgers game, with literally thousands of people around me. Through these past months I have thought about it and the more I thought about it the more I realized that, for some weird reason, whenever I go out to places with large numbers of people I tend to freak out. This wasn't always the case, it just happened recently and I don't know why. That explains why I felt "sick" when I went to Knotts Scary farm last Halloween, or when I felt sick the last time I went to Disneyland with my friends and they thought that I had a severe case of the mud butt from that cheesy omelette but in reality, I was freaking out! This is obviously before I knew I had anxiety and the entire time I was having a mini panic attacks. I usually avoid going to events that involve me being far away from home or being with a large group of people.
After being diagnosed with mild anxiety, it was hard for me to watch movies because I would start to panic in the movie theater. ME, a movie theater employee, couldn't watch movies because I was afraid. That's part of the reason why I didn't see very many movies this summer. I remember wanting to see Iron Man 3 since I like that RDJ. So, on my day off I went to the local cinema and purchased a ticket. I was there by myself because I wasn't sure how I would react. I got in the theater and things were going good until the part where Iron Man has a panic attack, which reminded me of my panic attack. Suddenly my throat dried up, I couldn't feel my right arm and my heart started beating super fast so I left the movie. I couldn't even sit through a 2 hour movie without freaking out!
At some point during the summer my sister came to visit and she told me about how she used to fear large bodies of water. She got over it by consistent exposure to the ocean, she also told me to drink tea and relax. So, I did as she said and decided that the only way to overcome my fears was to face them. I forced myself to watch more movies. At first it wasn't so good but slowly it got better, so now I can go to a movie and not even freak out about it. In the back of my mind some irrational fear is still there but I'm so absorbed by the horribleness of movies now-a-days that I don't even think about it.
My second fear to conquer was the fear of being away from home. For a while I couldn't even think about going anywhere besides school and work. I barely liked leaving my house to get food. Shortly after my diagnosis Vince took me to Downtown Disney. Barely 10 minutes into the car ride I felt my mouth dry up and my palms get sweaty. At this point, I was listening to meditation CD's and learning new ways to deal with anxiety, so I tried doing that on the way to Earl of Sandwich. By the time I got out of the car, I was shaking head to toe. My heart was pounding and I felt like I was going to collapse. It was such a horrible feeling! We got to Earl and ordered food and I ate it and the crazy thing is that...nothing happened. Vince asked me if I wanted to walk around, which I absolutely didn't, but I said yes so we walked around. On my way back to the car I was more calm, I wasn't shaking any more and the drive back wasn't as bad.
I did little things like this to get over my anxiety. Recently, I drove from OC to SD and I only panicked once through the whole trip, and that was only driving to the location. I also drove back from SD and I didn't panic once! This past weekend Alice and I went to San Marcos to visit family and it wasn't until we were half way home that I realized that I didn't think about my anxiety or freak out about anything! I even managed to watch a movie, go bowling and go to a chuck-e-cheese birthday party without freaking out, while I was super sick with a cold! To normal people (I'll call them normies) these things are no big deal, but to me it is a big freakin deal! It's the first time in months that I've felt like a normie.
A fictional character on TV said once that after they did something horrible, it took them a year to recover. This stuck with me because I thought about how I am only NOW starting to feel normal when I haven't felt well since the summer. The thing that people don't understand is that anxiety doesn't show up out of nowhere, it's years and years of thinking a certain way that causes people to freak out. So how do you expect it to go away quickly if at all? I feel like I have made TONS of progress with feeling better, but I do not feel 100%. Things still scare me and sometimes trigger panic in my brain! I can't make anxiety go away but I am learning to think about it differently. I'm learning to de-stress (or trying to anyway) and that a lot of what I feel isn't real in the sense that I am in no real danger, the danger lies in my head and if I don't think about it and bring it to the surface, it wont bother me any more.
Today is a big day for me. Today I am going to Disneyland for the first time in almost a year. There will be thousands of people, there will be rides that will make me scared, there will be delicious foods that I will eat and I am going to conquer all of it! I am wearing my new Disney shirt to school today to remind me that new beginnings happen every day. The way we chose to live our lives ultimately falls upon US, not the situations we perceive to be stuck in. Live every day to the fullest and don't be afraid to eat dairy because if might give you explosive diarrhea - there are pills for that.
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