Hello I am Michelle and here is my story.
The reason that it became really important to me to help other people with anxious feelings is because many years ago this happened to me.
Sometimes, when I look back now, it can feel really difficult to remember what it was truly like for me at the time the symptoms were really strong, what I do remember was it was a very dark time which tested my strength and courage and caused me to question if I would ever feel well again.
When I objectively look at my own life experiences, I was always conditioned to feel fear in a negative way. I experienced an abusive and volatile environment as a child and as a teenager was bullied at school while at the same time coping with my parents going through a very messy divorce. I lived in that environment for many years and often felt frightened and unable to open up or make sense of how I was feeling.
It was on my daughter’s birthday that I felt the feelings intensely for what seemed like the first time, only then was it that I remembered them, they were familiar to me from that time as a child and I had instinctively felt those memories as soon as I felt them this time, but only now did they come with a label that defined them – Panic disorder and depression.
I honestly felt like I was in some way dying. It was impossible to relax, I felt agitated and terrified at the same time. My head was full of the most dreadful thoughts, it honestly felt like I was no longer me. I just wanted to re treat from everyone and everything while at the same time being terrified of being alone.
Trips to the doctor began, they gave me tablets but when they didn’t work, I became even more convinced that there was something very wrong. I remember being very sensitive to sounds and could not read or watch anything for fear of it tipping my emotions even more, each day felt like a year and became all about hanging in there.
In the most acute stages, it was impossible to work or to concentrate on anything much at all.
I remember sitting up at night alone, watching the big clock in the kitchen and willing myself to get through another minute, it’s weird but there must have been something somewhere inside, a tiny flicker of something that barely whispered come on you can do it, it won’t always be this way. This was in fact the beginning of my journey and although I didn’t know it at the time, also my purpose.
For me it was start of a twelve-year quest for answers. I don’t believe this to be the case for everyone but remember at that time the help was even more limited than it is today.
At some times it was manageable but at others it was so severe I could not function at all. I became an endless visitor to medical professionals. I tried many different medications, I don’t mind admitting that I drank alcohol to numb my feelings and when that failed to work, I tried vitamins, diets, self-help books, relaxation and meditation.
Finally, in desperation to find a way to remove this feeling I paid £1200 to hire a celebrity Hypnotherapist who came to my house for two hours as he was convinced it would take less than that time to completely cure me. Incidentally he didn’t cure me, he left leaving me feeling much worse. Not only was I not cured, I was also £1200 worse off.
At times, from the outside I looked OK from the perspective of those around me, but inside it was different. I have gone to great lengths to hide the way I was feeling and appearing normal meant everything to me. I have quit jobs before anyone noticed or just didn’t see friends until I felt well again. Over the years have lost or given up fantastic jobs, I have lost good friends because I isolated myself so much that they just stopped contacting me. I became a master of hiding it but in doing that the only one I continued to hurt was me.
Eventually, I came to understand that I was the only one responsible for making me well again and I began to search for the answers I needed and work out why I was making myself worse and not better.
I decided that whatever I found, I would share with others and try to stop them falling into the decline that I did.
I guess I reached a point where I was no longer able to carry on in the same way, something was not working and a part of me felt like the pain of staying the same was now more painful that any pain I may experience trying to change.
‘Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom’
(Viktor Frankl)
I think that anxiety is misunderstood, I also feel that to treat it effectively you have to have experienced what someone else may be going through, at least with regards to how an anxious feeling may feel, because I can’t pretend to know it all, after all we are all different people whom have experienced life in different ways
What I can tell you is this:
No pill will ‘cure’ you in an instant (And believe it or not that is not a bad thing!)
The medical world treat anxiety as a symptom (But not with bad intention)
This is a learned reaction to an emotion, you are not condemned to a life of pain, you just have to go about tackling this in the right way.
Ultimately, change can only come from you and knowledge is power. Getting the right advice as early as possible can shorten the time that you are suffering as you don’t develop the habits that keeps you there.
I hope your visit to my site really helps you in your journey, it has become my passion to properly educate people about anxiety disorders and depression and provide the answers that often have evaded them in their quest to understand what is happening and where these feelings are coming from.
I want to help you; you are strong and you hold the answer.
Trust yourself to heal.