Living with Anxiety: How Therapy Helped Me Reclaim My Life
Have you ever started talking with someone about your worries and fears in life, only to think, “They don’t understand what I’m going through. Does anybody else think about life the way I do?” Because I have, many times. My anxiety has tried to isolate me from people in my life, making me believe that nobody understands what I think, feel, or experience on a daily basis.
Anxiety may take us to the extremes mentally, emotionally, or physically, and can completely take control of our lives. But I am living proof that it doesn’t have to (along with the vast majority of anxious clients that I work with). Your panic and fear does not have to define your day-to-day outcomes.
This blog would be incredibly long if I went through all the different types of therapy modalities used to treat symptoms of anxiety AND elaborated on the differences with how each anxiety diagnosis responds to those modalities. It’s too broad of a spectrum to focus on, so I thought it’d be most helpful to share my personal experience with therapy and explore the real-life benefits of engaging in therapy.
So to back up some, I had my first panic attack at 9 years old. My pediatrician told me and my parents it was just an asthma attack and I was prescribed an inhaler. Over the course of my childhood and teenage years, my parents took me to a few therapists, we read a lot of self-help books, I even tried medication in high school, but nothing seemed to help my persistent feelings of panic and anxious thoughts. I was anxious about getting help to stop feeling anxious all the time. It was quite the vicious cycle.
Once I moved out and went to college, my anxiety started showing up in different ways, but I still tried to hide it the best I could so I would get the most out of my college experience. At about 19 years old, I came home for the weekend for a dentist appointment, knowing that I had to go back to campus later that same day after the appointment. Well that day it was raining. I had a bad record for panic attacks when it rained and there was driving involved (there was never a preceding incident for this phobia).
My anxiety convinced me I wouldn’t be able to make it back to campus by myself. My agoraphobia and panic symptoms took over my body and I began hyperventilating, on the verge of vomiting, and shaking uncontrollably. My dad drove my car, while I rode with my mom the entire hour and half drive back to college. Then they went back home. I’m eternally grateful for the sacrifices they made over the years because of my anxiety.
The following week I made appointments with the ECU campus counseling center to meet with a psychiatrist and therapist to address my anxiety. I couldn’t hide from it anymore. I had a great therapist who helped me learn coping skills and identify sources of my anxiety. I was also on a daily anti-anxiety medication for 4 years while in therapy.
For the remainder of my college experience, I finally felt in control of my anxiety. It gave me a new sense of confidence that I would be able to do more of the things I wanted in life, while still learning to manage anxiety. Therapy allowed me to speak openly and safely about what was on my mind, and genuinely feel understood and not alone with my thoughts.
A Turning Point: Therapy for Anxiety
In therapy, we learn how to understand ourselves on a deeper level and build awareness of how that plays a role in various aspects of our lives overall. We work on having a healthy connection with our body and nervous system, learning how to be more compassionate towards ourselves so that we believe we are worthy of healing. We accept reality as it is in the present moment, realizing that our worrying is only leading to more suffering. We discover our authentic self, embracing the anxiety as a part of us, but not our whole existence.
It is an incredibly vulnerable, humbling, and empowering process when we start to challenge the way we think and behave. Our anxiety convinces us for so long that life without worry is scary because we can’t control the outcome. That if we don’t worry about these things, then they may get worse. Or that we have to neglect our true self so that others will like us more. The biggest lie anxiety likes to tell us is that we are in some unknown danger, when in reality the danger is in the disconnection between our mind and body.
Therapy for anxiety helps you to feel connected to your body and more in control of your anxious thoughts. Therapy is about building a relationship with your therapist who understands what you’re feeling, but also seeing progress towards the life you want to live. With therapy, you don’t have to feel like anxiety is controlling your life. You can learn to take back control. You can learn to trust yourself.
Fast forward to a decade after that panic attack episode that led me to a successful experience with therapy and medication management, I am not fully healed. However, I have made tremendous progress and I get emotional thinking about how much I have grown in the past 10 years, but I am always going to be a work in progress. I feel more in control of my body when anxiety or panic does surface on rare occasions.
I have gained tools to work on preventing anxiety from consuming my thoughts and body, working to catch it before it worsens. I better understand myself as a human being, showing myself compassion and empathy when I get caught up in worry spirals. I know that I have come too far to go back to that scared and insecure young woman I once was. Being in therapy myself for anxiety, and being a therapist, has helped me gain an amazing perspective that I never thought possible in a life that was once overwhelmed with a sense of fear.
I got a tattoo when I was 19 years old as well, that I want to leave you with today. It reads: Let Your Fears Go.
If you’re wanting to better understand and control your anxious thoughts, reach out today and schedule a consultation.
