How My Anxiety Disorder Made Me Mentally Strong
My mental health experience changed me for good.
April 1st, 2018
It started when I woke up in the morning with a really weird pressure on my chest as if there was this huge invisible rock sitting on it. I was feeling slightly breathless and needed to forcefully take deeper breaths to feel that I was breathing. I never felt anything like that before in my entire life and I thought it might be because of poor sleeping posture or a bloated stomach and I decided to go on a walk in a park nearby to get some fresh air.
I was at the park walking along with my husband when I started to feel numb in my legs and then in my arms. I started to feel dizzy and I could feel my heartbeat very fast. My husband made me sit on a bench and looked very concerned as he also had no clue what’s going on with me. I felt this intense fear come over me as if something really bad is going to happen. I started panicking and crying thinking that I am going to die.
My husband took to me to urgent care nearby to get me checked, the doctor conducted a few tests and observed my heartbeat and told us that my heart is beating irregularly and I need to go to the Emergency Room (ER) at the local hospital as soon as possible. This made things worse in my mind as I was now 100% sure that I was going to die.
In the ER I was monitored for half a day by three doctors and they conducted a bunch of tests from my blood work to heart rate variability. I started feeling better by the evening, doctors found nothing abnormal in my test reports and said everything was fine physically. They asked me questions about my day-to-day stress levels and if I went through any traumatic events recently. I was honestly confused with the doctor’s questions.
I simply replied — No, I am not stressed or have gone through trauma. A week ago I returned from a vacation in Hawaii where I had a great time.
They diagnosed me with heart palpitations and sent me home saying it most probably nothing and “just stress”.
I was simply not convinced that it was just stress that caused me to feel like I was going to die. I wanted to get a second opinion and wanted to find out what’s physically wrong with me.
I was jolted awake from my sleep with a racing heart and gasping for air.
After returning home from the hospital, I went to sleep right away and then suddenly out of nowhere I was jolted awake from my sleep with a racing heart and gasping for air. That was the most terrifying thing that I ever experienced and was not able to sleep again for the fear that I might stop breathing in my sleep. Even though I was tired and feeling extremely exhausted I was simply unable to fall back to sleep again.
This was the start of my sleep-deprived nights and my battle with this “unknown” terrifying disease.
I was too scared to stay at home or go out anywhere alone. So, I went to India to stay with my family and get a second opinion from the family doctor. There I underwent full-body tests from brain scans to echocardiography to rule out every possibility of physical disease. All the test results still showed there is nothing physically wrong with me. My Family doctor advised me to meet a psychiatrist as he thought I would get better help there.
Meanwhile, I was having these frightening episodes of heart palpitations, dizziness, and feelings of terror daily. I was barely getting in 2 to 3 hours of sleep per day and was feeling exhausted and extreme fatigue.
I had to act normal in front of relatives and even strangers as if I am alright and everything was fine.
My friends and family members were concerned about me as no one had any clue what was wrong with me and didn’t know how to help me. Everyone who knew about me gave me suggestions that did not make sense to me and mostly irritated me. In my opinion, they were trying to suggest solutions to the problem they didn’t even understand.
“Stop thinking! Snap out of it”
“You have everything you want what are you scared of?”
“You need to be mentally strong then you won’t face such issues.”
Apart from all these things going on, there was this taboo regarding mental health especially in India. I was advised by my family to not say anything to anyone about what I was going through as people would judge me. I had to act normal in front of relatives and strangers as if I am alright and everything was fine.
After much thought and hesitation, I met a psychiatrist and told him about my experience and he diagnosed me with Panic Disorder. He clarified to me that the episodes of fear that I was having recently are known as panic attacks. For the first time in months, I felt like I found some answers to what I was going through and that gave me a huge relief.
But I had so many questions, so I asked him, why did this happen to me? out of the blue? Am I weak mentally? Will I get better?
He replied, from what I have learned from you about your life and your experiences you have always been anxious even as a child. In my opinion, you have an overused stress response system that might have caused this disorder. Every stressful and traumatic experience that you have faced up until now has added to this situation. You are not mentally weak and it can happen to anyone, anytime. Also, you can get better as there are therapies like CBT that help you work with your thoughts. He prescribed me anti-depressants and counseling for three months and ended the session.
I have researched the benefits and side-effects of anti-depressants and decided to take them because for me benefits out-weighed the side-effects. When I took the first one the immediate effect I noticed was sleep, that night I slept for 12 hours straight after months of sleep-depravation. That was the first time in months I slept for that long without being jolted awake from sleep just because someone sleeping next to me moved their arm.
Over the next few weeks I have noticed that my panic attacks severity lessened day-by-day and stopped altogether after a month. Although I was happy that I was able to conduct daily tasks now without any interference. I was entirely not comfortable that I had to depend on medication to do that. So I spoke to my primary care doctor and came up with a plan to wean off the medication slowly over a month.
“The journey of thousand miles begins with a single step”
— Lao Tzu
One takeaway from the time I was on medication is that I was more relaxed, I didn’t care others opinion of me, I had zero anxiety when I spoke to strangers. I was very calm and confident even in cringeworthy situations. I took criticism well without taking it personally. I only did what made me happy and I didn’t hold back my opinion on how I felt about things. It was just me being me minus the fear and anxiety.
I loved it and kind of started to understand what anxiety had been doing to me all these years. It was awesome where I was mentally and I wanted to remain there even without medication. But I knew that when I stopped taking medication the anxiety would come back in full force.
After having experienced what it is like to live without anxiety, I knew what I had to change in myself to be the best version of myself. I needed to change my thoughts, behavior and lifestyle. I had to start somewhere so —
- I started seeing a psychologist for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) where I learned to notice my thinking patterns.
- I have established regular sleep and eating routines to have a consistent daily schedule.
- I started practicing yoga and meditation daily.
- I started journaling to record my panic attacks and other symptoms if and when they occurred.
I started incorporating these new behaviors, routines as part of my life among many other things and started working with anxiety to understand what stresses me.
April 1st, 2020
Today marks two years of me having an anxiety disorder. Even now I get panic attacks and anxiety once in a while but they are not constant. They don’t cause the crippling fear like they used to, as I have better-copping strategies now.
It deconstructed my narrative of who I thought I was.
I feel like I am a very different person now, so much so that I cannot relate to my old self anymore. I still remember how I was when this all started two years ago — I was an anxious, skeptical person who was very pessimistic and had less self-esteem. I was overly concerned about what people thought about me.
My anxiety disorder in a way shook me to my core and made me see myself, my thoughts and experiences objectively. It deconstructed my narrative of who I thought I was and taught me to —
Do what I love and find happiness in it.
See the silver lining even in the worst of experiences.
Not seeking validation from others.
Keep my self-esteem intact even when facing rejection.
Be grateful even for the little things like good night’s sleep and not take them for granted.
If you are going through anxiety or depression just know that this will pass and it can help you to become a better version of yourself as long as you work with it. In the future, you are going to look behind and be thankful for this experience because you know what they say — Every cloud has a silver lining.
