I wanted to escape this crushing anxiety I had sitting on me all the time

Anxiety and I have a long-standing relationship. We have been together for my whole life… I only realized it when I became an adult…
When I was younger, my family and I would take these amazing trips down to the coast for a family beach holiday. We would pack EVERYTHING in the car, from food all the way through to entertainment! My sister loved tanning on the beach while my mom and I would plant our feet as deep in the sand as possible to give us more stability as the waves hit us. It was the best time! After being beat senseless by the waves, I would join my sister and catch a little sun. I would always freak out and get really annoyed about the sand being on my body. I would worry that I was going to tan in spots… That was my first dance with anxiety. As I got older, I had more to worry about.
In grade school, I had major anxiety about my reading and spelling abilities. In high school, I would have anxiety about my school work. I would convince myself that every single little task was life or death. By the end of high school, I was constantly anxious. When It came time to apply for university, I was so anxious about the application process that I convinced myself that I would not be accepted if I made one tiny mistake on my forms, such as spelling something wrong. I was so anxious about it, my hair started falling out.
See how close my anxiety and I were getting? By the time I had started working, anxiety was running my life. Telling me where to go, which route to drive, which people to avoid, what to wear, what to eat and how to eat it. I couldn’t even leave the house without having a pep talk with my anxiety to just be cool! Then came the financial worries. This had anxiety written all over them! A gift, I suppose… I was so worried about money and the idea of not having any that it was almost all I could think of. Every month, as the bills had to be paid, I would sit in my office and have a tiny panic attack. Even after it was over… I still felt it.
Once I lost my job, I was basically made of anxiety. It took me a while to realize how badly it had messed my life up. I had lost relationships, friendships, my happiness, my confidence and I lost all trust in everything. Something needed to change… My relationship with anxiety needed to change. I wanted to be able to stop myself in the middle of an anxiety conversation in my head. I wanted to be able to tell the difference between rational thoughts and anxious thoughts and I wanted to be able to rationalize those anxious thoughts. I needed to do this so I could get some confidence back… but I really wanted to do this so I could take control of my life again.
It was an extremely difficult thing for me to do, seeing as anxiety lived my life for me and made every decision for me. I was now suddenly faced with all these decisions and all this noise in my head. I knew I had to create some sort of thought process to make decisions with. One that would shut the anxiety up for a while.
I spoke to my boyfriend about this and asked him to please help keep me in check and to remind me when my anxiety is taking over. I know it isn’t the conventional way. but it helped me. I would think out loud whenever I was with him and ask his advice and opinion on many things I was struggling with. He would then continue to ask me if these thoughts were logical and rational, where I got these ideas and thoughts from or how I reached an irrational decision or conclusion.
This method worked pretty well for some time… but mostly when I was in a good mood and in the right frame of mind. If I was having a bad or off day, these questions would lead to huge fights and leave me feeling insecure and alone. I could see that this method would only work if we both had an in-depth understanding of anxiety. We both made an active effort to stop and understand a situation before questioning it and discussing it.
This has been such a huge help for me in the past 6 months. Even though my life has spun completely out of control over the past 6 months, I feel more in control than ever. I feel like I have some sort of life again that I control! I have been able to start accomplishing my goals, but the thing I am most proud of… My ability to reach out and ask for help. With the love, support and help of my boyfriend, I am now able to keep my anxiety at a distance. I am in the most terrifying, uncertain and stressful time of my life… yet I feel more in control than ever before. I feel free for the first time in a long time, and that feeling alone is worth every struggling step it took to get me here…
