A Bad Mental Health Day Shouldn’t Diminish The Progress You’ve Made

’Cause, let’s be real, we all have them

The last time I had a particularly bad anxiety day I was fortunate enough to have a friend in my life who extended use of his couch and Wii. We played Mario Kart until the laps around Rainbow Road led me back to who I am when the haze has cleared.

Each moment where I wasn’t thinking about my anxiety made me stop counting my breaths.

A bad mental health day robs you of a lot, but at the top of that list is the loss of a safe space within your own mind. Your one goal is survival. Feeling safe enough to articulate what you’re feeling comes second to knowing that your next breath is following directly behind this one.

So I was lucky. He’d created a safe space for me that at the time I wasn’t capable of creating for myself.

But, his couch isn’t an option anymore and the bad days don’t bow to this fact.

Yesterday, I had my first panic attack in a year. I’d felt the anxiety creep up on me maybe 30 minutes before it got bad. And instead of doing what I’ve essentially been trained to do when I feel this coming on, I ignored the signs.

“I’m good,” I told myself.

“I’m the happiest I’ve been in a really long time,” I thought as I sat in a Starbucks and sipped my white mocha drink.

“I’m not going to have a panic attack, I’m just not.”

But then I did. I felt the goosebumps take up residency on my arms, my heart seemingly remembered every boy who has ever given me butterflies and multiplied those beats by a million, and then the room started spinning.

I’m scared of panic attacks and I’m scared of embarrassing myself in public places, so let’s just say that for me having a panic attack in a Starbucks is right up there with getting stuck in an elevator or being locked in a public bathroom.

I remember staring straight ahead as I closed my laptop and stuffed it in my bag. I put on my headphones and focused on the lyrics playing in my ears. Gavin James pleaded to an ex on “Two Hearts” and I prayed that his voice would reel me back to this moment.

There was enough space left in my mind to know that I had to stay with my body long enough to make it into an Uber. The bad thoughts, the self-harm, hadn’t taken up every inch of my mind yet. I had a window, so I respected where I was and I told myself something that probably reads as irrational to someone who has never found themselves this deep:

“You’re not going to die right now. You’re definitely not going to die in a Starbucks.”

What I was feeling was incredibly real, but it didn’t mean that the worst possible scenarios my mind was conjuring had to become my reality. I just needed to calm down enough…just enough.

My breathing didn’t betray me this time. I counted deep and even breaths. I praised myself with every moment I got my eyesight to focus.

I walked out of the Starbucks and waited for Rajwinder to pull up to the corner of 93rd and Broadway. In the time it took me to walk from the corner and slide into the backseat of his Prius I became my worst enemy.

“This feels like taking steps back,” I whispered to my best friend on the phone. “I was doing so well.”

I was hours out from one of the worst afternoons I’ve had in a while and I’d let anxiety tell me stories of how I was coming up short. What’s worse is that I believed them.

When you feel that weak, that dependent on others to remind you who you are, you trust that any stories being told to you are accurate. The thought of telling your mind your own stories is seemingly impossible.

Except for as impossible as it may seem, it’s imperative.

Yes, part of me did feel like this was a setback in an otherwise forward-facing recovery. But who says that one day (or a million of them) has the power to overturn all of my good ones?

Yes, the tears I cried as soon as I walked into my apartment were very real. But crap, give me a second to pat myself on the back because I got myself home all by myself, didn’t I?

Yes, the fear I felt that anything could have happened outside was overwhelming. But nothing happened. And if it had, fine, I would have crossed that bridge once it had been built.

I found peace in that, this isn’t a reflection of who I am, it’s a reflection of where I am right now.

I shouldn’t have ignored what my body was trying to tell me. I made a mistake.

I thought that I could force my will on something that is out of my control and my anxiety reminded me that it had other plans.

I cannot control whether I have a panic attack. Leaving the Starbucks when I started feeling anxious maybe would have found me having the panic attack in a different setting or would have lessened the triggers, but it wouldn’t have removed the reality that I live with anxiety.

This is real.

If you need proof of how debilitating a single afternoon of bad anxiety can be, ask me about my restless night of sleep and the long to do list I’m working through that includes all of yesterday’s missed work.

But after you ask me about that, also ask me how I feel 24-hours after that panic attack.

I feel like for as much as I would appreciate his couch and Wii, I like that not having them helped me acknowledge how far I’ve come.

I’m doing alright for myself. The progress I made isn’t dependent on someone else creating a safe space for me. As I looked down into the darkest, scariest moment, I was able to talk myself from looking down and looked up instead. I had a panic attack and I survived.

I had a panic attack and I created a safe place for myself.

I had a panic attack and texted my best friend because she’s a safe place.

I lived up to goals I’d set for myself two years ago — I’ve learned how to respect where I am, instead of hating it. I’ve learned to accept that it’s okay to play favorites when what you need is to feel safe.

It’s okay to think about all those you wish you could text in a bad moment, it’s okay to feel sad that they’re not there. It’s also okay that you’ve found people who are. That with every day of learning to live with *the feels*, you found a family that reminds you you’re safe when your mind tells you otherwise.

Because, for as much as they can’t help me out of the mood anxiety puts me in, they can be the people on the other end of the phone who don’t make me feel like an obligation when I’m at my lowest. They’re the people that I text, “So, I had a panic attack…do you think I should have Chinese for dinner?”

Because sometimes progress is acknowledging a bad day, in a safe space, while talking about the importance of protein in dinner options.

*********

I’m the founder of toodamnyoung.com. I’m a writer, editor and entrepreneur. You can find my personal essays on Medium + other writing on MTV, Forbes and Popsugar Latina. I also co-host Creating Espacios, a Forbes Podcast.

Follow along as I condense essays into 140 characters: https://twitter.com/vivnunez