When Anxiety Took Over
It all started when I was about 16, I went from being a very confident and outgoing person to a wreck, consumed with severe anxiety in an instant, it seems. My mum used to ask what it was I was so scared of, and the only answer I could give was:
Life, I was scared of life
It got to the stage where I couldn’t go out of the house much for years. I don’t recall how, but I got a job on the old YTS scheme in a very small greengrocer’s, then at Formdale as a sewing machinist. I had to leave there after about four years because my anxiety returned. I was so depressed and still only about nineteen years old.
During the relatively good times, I met a guy and fell so deeply and absolutely in love. We had a blast going all over the place on his high-powered motorbike. That explains one period of my life, the start of it, I suppose, but since that time I’ve continued to suffer the same symptoms. I can almost see a pattern now.
In short!!
Every new job I’ve had – panic mode for ages.
When I got married, I couldn’t eat unless I went back home. I only thought, Christ, what have I done? I was terrified I’d never cope.
Nothing Else Mattered
My daughter was born prematurely and was extremely disabled. She was in SCBU for weeks, with too many physiological problems to state, but the prognosis was that she wouldn’t see her first birthday.
From that time on, anxiety or not, I seemed to be lost in making sure she did, and nothing else mattered. She did sit up, I taught her to crawl and then walk, which she did at 4.5 years old. She is now 36, has profound learning disabilities, is autistic and registered blind.
My son came along, a very healthy little boy.
They say I suffered with PTSD, and I couldn’t eat again, going down to 7 stone.
I continued to have serious episodes of anxiety and depression and suffered as close to a full breakdown as you can come in 2018. My career ended there. I can’t remember anything from then apart from back-to-back, full-on panic attacks.
The anxiety was unmanageable without heavy medication, no sleep and not eating again. I was terrified and not coping one jot.
I No Longer Feel I Have to Hide
Mental health services were crap and put me in a box labelled ‘anxiety and depression’. I was desperate and searching for any other means or hope of recovery.
I found a private psychiatrist in Shrewsbury, had two courses of TMS and was told that I was totally on the wrong meds. His commitment to exploring me further and in more depth led to a diagnosis of Bipolar type 2. I still have consultations with him, and I can honestly say that he has saved my life.
I am closely monitored, but now I am actually enjoying life and, albeit in remission, understand myself much more than I ever had and no longer feel I have to hide.