harborshore (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
harborshore) wrote2011-11-20 10:17 pm
harborshore) wrote2011-11-20 10:17 pm
odd little anniversaries
It's been a strange week. I haven't been doing especially well (semi-difficult news and continuous uncertainty will do that to the anxious heart) but today I realized something. A year ago, I was sitting in a subway station sobbing because I couldn't get myself to walk down the hill and join the conference dinner I was supposed to be at. The same dinner is happening in a week, and I'm fine with that. This weekend I joined my coworkers for a dinner and then a bunch of local bands in a pub, and that was mostly fine, too. It's been a year, and what a year it's been.
I wanted to talk a little about what that means. I'm using myself as an example, and I'm absolutely not saying my experience is universally applicable. At all.
Most of you know I have had and, to a certain extent, still have anxiety issues. I get panicky and everything ratches up to 120 mph and it's hard to handle, once I let it get that far. But it used to be much worse.
The anxiety issues were, by and large, brought on by the depressive swing I had after literally everything in my life changed for the worse at the same time (in other words, as my therapist put it, "Had you NOT reacted to that, I would have been concerned"). I'd had tendencies in that direction my whole life (writer's block usually had me frantic until someone--often Kitty (my ex), in college--talked me down and reminded me I could do this), but it never used to grip me like that. I'd get nervous, not hysterical or panicky.
So I've been living with that kind of hair-trigger response to certain scenarios (failure--or what I perceive as failure--being the worst) for about three years now. The first bad downturn was in the fall of 2008, and then I had another one in the fall of 2009 which was bad enough to seek out help. I spent spring of 2009 working very hard in cognitive behavioral therapy, writing my MA thesis and crying and crying and panicking every other day. But it got better.
I got better. It was hard work to get here, and I'm lucky in that I never needed medication to keep the worst of it at bay (though there are moments when I wonder if it wouldn't have made things a little easier on my family, because they spent a year being frantically worried--something I didn't see at the time, because this kind of thing makes you self-centered (understandably so, of course) and I'm only getting it now when they freak at the sign of anxiety episodes). Cognitive behavioral therapy was a godsend (for me! I'm not suggesting it's a magic anything for everyone); it taught me I wasn't abnormal to be reacting the way I did, I suddenly had explanations for the way my head was acting up, and that lent me the strength to work on it.
But it was hard. Every one of you who are working through something similar or worse, you're all stars for doing so, you can absolutely do it, but oh, remember to give yourself credit for how hard it is. Fucking exhausting. And I still have the same mental responses, in a way, but they're so much better. Everything is so much better because of the work I did. The difference between "I'm freaking out and I don't know what to do" and "I'm freaking out, yes, and this is why it's happening, and this is how I'm going to deal" is immense.
And that's what I wanted to say. Because I was sitting here and feeling the odd flutters of anxiety hovering and then I realized what a difference that is, compared to when I could barely leave the house, compared to when I would cry over everything, when social situations sent me out of the room to shake against a wall outside. That's not GONE, I'm not fixed, I still call friends or family when it gets bad and last weekend I was crying on and off all Saturday. But. The difference is, again, immense. I have the tools to work through what my head does to me (and friends who are willing to let me lean), and that is a gift I sometimes can't get over. It's been a year, and what a year it's been.
I wanted to talk a little about what that means. I'm using myself as an example, and I'm absolutely not saying my experience is universally applicable. At all.
Most of you know I have had and, to a certain extent, still have anxiety issues. I get panicky and everything ratches up to 120 mph and it's hard to handle, once I let it get that far. But it used to be much worse.
The anxiety issues were, by and large, brought on by the depressive swing I had after literally everything in my life changed for the worse at the same time (in other words, as my therapist put it, "Had you NOT reacted to that, I would have been concerned"). I'd had tendencies in that direction my whole life (writer's block usually had me frantic until someone--often Kitty (my ex), in college--talked me down and reminded me I could do this), but it never used to grip me like that. I'd get nervous, not hysterical or panicky.
So I've been living with that kind of hair-trigger response to certain scenarios (failure--or what I perceive as failure--being the worst) for about three years now. The first bad downturn was in the fall of 2008, and then I had another one in the fall of 2009 which was bad enough to seek out help. I spent spring of 2009 working very hard in cognitive behavioral therapy, writing my MA thesis and crying and crying and panicking every other day. But it got better.
I got better. It was hard work to get here, and I'm lucky in that I never needed medication to keep the worst of it at bay (though there are moments when I wonder if it wouldn't have made things a little easier on my family, because they spent a year being frantically worried--something I didn't see at the time, because this kind of thing makes you self-centered (understandably so, of course) and I'm only getting it now when they freak at the sign of anxiety episodes). Cognitive behavioral therapy was a godsend (for me! I'm not suggesting it's a magic anything for everyone); it taught me I wasn't abnormal to be reacting the way I did, I suddenly had explanations for the way my head was acting up, and that lent me the strength to work on it.
But it was hard. Every one of you who are working through something similar or worse, you're all stars for doing so, you can absolutely do it, but oh, remember to give yourself credit for how hard it is. Fucking exhausting. And I still have the same mental responses, in a way, but they're so much better. Everything is so much better because of the work I did. The difference between "I'm freaking out and I don't know what to do" and "I'm freaking out, yes, and this is why it's happening, and this is how I'm going to deal" is immense.
And that's what I wanted to say. Because I was sitting here and feeling the odd flutters of anxiety hovering and then I realized what a difference that is, compared to when I could barely leave the house, compared to when I would cry over everything, when social situations sent me out of the room to shake against a wall outside. That's not GONE, I'm not fixed, I still call friends or family when it gets bad and last weekend I was crying on and off all Saturday. But. The difference is, again, immense. I have the tools to work through what my head does to me (and friends who are willing to let me lean), and that is a gift I sometimes can't get over. It's been a year, and what a year it's been.