Going Through It

Anxiety. I now had a name for the intense fear, worry, panic, increased heart rate, and constant knots in my stomach that I had been living with for as long as I could remember. I had hoped knowing what I was dealing with would lessen the symptoms and I would start to feel better.

I did not continue to see the therapist that diagnosed me with anxiety because I didn’t feel any relief after seeing her. I felt like my anxiety episodes were manageable and so I continued through school.

Within a week after graduating high school my boyfriend left for 13 weeks to bootcamp for the Marine Core. Though our relationship was incredibly toxic I loved him and had been with him since my freshman year of high school. We spent every minute together so the minute he left I fell into my anxiety. I did not do well with the huge change of him suddenly being gone when he was there with me every day before. I missed him so much and didn’t know what to do without him.

I wrote him every day he was in bootcamp; it was the only way to communicate with him since phone calls were not allowed. Eventually, my anxiety lessened and became once again manageable. Thirteen weeks was a long time and gave me time to be on my own. I slowly learned to be okay without him, and that felt good.

I felt my anxiety had pretty much disappeared since I had not really dealt with any episodes in a long time. Once I could connect that my anxiety would appear with change, I was able to prepare myself better before it would start to creep in leaving me feeling like I had it all under control.

I met my husband when I was 20 and we started dating when I was 21. We were married two years later. Again, I felt really good and strong about my anxiety. I anticipated possibly feeling anxious on our honeymoon because I had never been on an airplane before and going to a different country without any familiarity scared me.

Just as I thought, as soon as my husband and I got to our hotel, I freaked out! I told my husband I wanted to go home. I began to cry feeling this very intense feeling of fear and anxiety looming over me. My husband was so great and supportive he said, “Okay, lets look for a flight home”. After all it took to get to our honeymoon, I didn’t think he would be so quick to agree to leave, so instead I told him, “No, I don’t want to ruin our honeymoon, let me try and calm down and see how I feel in a bit”.

We took a walk on the beach and got some drinks. I was soon able to calm down and thankfully my anxiety diminished and then was gone. We got to enjoy our week together without my anxiety creeping back in.

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