I wanted to tell my story in the hope that it will help others who are suffering.
My anxiety started a few months after I had my fourth baby. It was the school holidays and I was sitting in the garden watching the girls playing in the sunshine and admiring my beautiful baby girl sleeping in her pram. Everything should have been just perfect but I had this continual churning in my stomach, I felt on edge all the time and had a constant lump in my throat. I probably would have ignored it but a few days later I was walking along the seafront with the children and I had a panic attack which left me feeling dreadful. A few weeks later I had another one in the theatre. I just wanted to run home and cry, I was sure I was going to die. I decided to visit my doctor to seek help and that was the beginning of what turned into a nightmare that lasted ten years.
My GP told me that the reason I was feeling this way was because I had something from my past in the subconscious that was troubling me and it would not go away until I faced it. The practice provided hypnotherapy and she advised me to have a few sessions. These sessions did not help and only fuelled my anxiety as I could not seem to discover what was troubling me. After several sessions my GP became frustrated with me telling me that I was the only person so far that he had been unable to cure with hypnotherapy.
Over the following months my visits to the GP became more and more frequent. My anxiety had reached an extremely high level and was with me constantly. The worse time was when I woke in the mornings. I just could not calm down and would rush around the house like something possessed, constantly crying and wracked with fear. I tried to find out as much as I could about anxiety and discovered helplines which I started to telephone continually during the day seeking help. I no longer was leading a normal every day life. Each day was spent trying to find a solution to my problem. I had a part-time job which I loved but because I was having so much time off they asked me to leave and I lost my job.
It was becoming harder for me to go out. Everytime I had to go and collect the kids, or go shopping I could feel myself getting more and more anxious and many times I would end up having a panic attack. Then one afternoon I finally cracked, I could not stand it any more. I phoned my husband in tears begging him to come home from work. We went to my GP and I broke down in the surgery. Finally after almost a year he agreed to let me see a psychiatrist. She told me that I was suffering from GAD and prescribed me some medication and made an appointment for me to see a psychologist. My husband was not happy about me taking medication and this caused me more anxiety as to whether or not to take the tablets. By now he was becoming increasingly frustrated. At first he had been very supportive but now was thinking the same way as the doctor, that it was something that I had done, or something that had happened in my past that was causing me this problem.
I started to see the psychologist. My whole life was scrutinised and I started to feel a failure. The sessions never really seemed to help, if anything they made me feel worse. After about 13 sessions she told me she would not see me any more, saying that I would not help myself by owning my own anxiety. I did not even know what she meant by this and did not know which way to turn.
Months followed with no improvement. I was stopping and starting medication. The decision whether or not to take it was causing more anxiety. By now I was also suffering from intrusive thoughts. The content of these scared me so much I would spend hours on help lines or seeking reassurance from friends. It was suggested that I needed a job or a hobby to fill my time. I knew this was not what I wanted, I had longed for a fourth baby and all I wanted to do was spend time enjoying her before she went to school. But I took an evening job in the hope that it would give me something to focus on. Looking back it probably made me even more exhausted. I would spend the day trying to do the household stuff, look after the kids and then in the evening go to work, at the same time as fighting my anxiety and trying to get rid of the thoughts.
Things at home were not good. There were many rows with my husband and he was threatening to divorce me if “I didn’t stop”. Oh if only I could have, if only I knew how to fix myself. The NHS was not going to help me any more as I had had my quota of counselling so I decided to pay privately to see a psychologist. It wasn’t long before I could not afford these sessions and in any case they did not seem to be helping at all.
It was one Easter when I finally cracked. My daughter’s boyfriend was staying with us and I was told “I had better behave myself”. I knew exactly how I was going to feel when I woke up in the morning and was so worried as to how I was going to hide my anxiety. When I did wake up I decided I could not cope any longer, rang my GP and asked to be admitted to the local psychiatric hospital. When she agreed I felt a huge sense of relief. I was going to go into a psychiatric hospital where they would understand my problem and find a cure for me – wrong. I spent a week there the whole time of which I never saw a single medical professional. The day was divided into attending different therapy classes like art and craft, woodwork, pottery. There were no therapy sessions as I thought there would have been and after a week I saw a psychiatrist who prescribed some different medication and agreed that I could have a visit from a member of the mental health team once a week.
Things continued to get worse. I was driving home one day when I spotted a police car behind me. I thought if I just stopped my car in the middle of the road the police car would stop, and they would get me the help I needed. All they did was take me home and phone my GP for an appointment.
So I returned home to exactly the same situation as I had left. New drugs which did not seem to help and a family who by now had had enough. The visits from the mental health visitor didn’t help; she just seemed as frustrated with me as everyone else had been. It was decided that maybe the whole family would go on holiday to give everyone a break. I was nervous about this as I knew my anxiety would come with me. The intrusive thoughts had by now completely consumed me. It was like having a constant chattering in my head; I was incapable of thinking anything else. They were so frightening and sometimes of a suicidal nature which terrified me. I often used to bang my head against the wall in utter frustration. One afternoon I couldn’t contain my frustration and threw a can of drink across the room. My suitcase was duly packed and I was taken to the nearest bus station and put on a bus home while the rest of family carried on with the holiday.
When they returned one of the kids happened to mention this incident to the mental health visitor who informed us that she would have to report this to social services in case the kids were at risk. Through all this I had never laid a finger on the children. A meeting was called. I went along convinced that everything would be ok as my husband would support me. How wrong could I have been? It was suggested that I move out of the family home and he fully supported this. I did not know what way to turn. By now I was doing three jobs in one day to keep busy and was so exhausted. Some good friends of mine offered me a place in their home. They were non judgmental and told me they would be happy for me to stay there no matter how bad my anxiety got. So I moved in with them but by this time my husband had found a rented property and moved out with the children.
What followed was something that I would never in a million years have thought possible. I was beginning to calm down a bit with my friends. I had started a new medication which they encouraged me to give a try (without reading the list of side affects which they took so I could not see). My husband started to look for a property to buy telling me that he was intending to sell the family home, and filed for divorce. He took me to court to try to get custody of the children and also tried to stop me seeing them. Looking back now I really do not know how I got through it. I had lost everything. My husband, my kids and my home. It took months of me fighting to change the situation until I decided to give in and start to build a new life for myself. Because my anxiety was more under control my two youngest daughters asked if I would move back into the family home with them which I did. I did not know what the future held as I knew I could not afford to keep the house on. A few months later my husband had a break down. Being able to relate to how he was feeling I agreed to look after him and after some time he begged me to agree for us to try again. So he moved back with the family but unfortunately I had stopped my medication and in no time the anxiety and thoughts were back.
I tried for almost a year until I could not go on any longer and asked to see a psychiatrist. She was the only person in almost ten years who seemed to understand me. She talked calmly about why she thought I was struggling so much and suggested that I went back on the medication to enable me to put into practice the strategies for managing my anxiety that I had been taught. I went away feeling more positive than I ever had. Within a few months I was feeling better but I was still spending a large percentage of my day on the telephone to help lines which I could not live without. I needed their support. At this time my daughter was leaving to go to Australia for a gap year. As I sat in the airport with her I thought am I still going to be like this when she returns. Am I still going to let the thoughts and feelings rule my life. I realised I was not moving forward. So I made a decision that from that moment on I was going to live with all the uncomfortable feelings, let the thoughts chatter on in my head, but I was going to do the things that were important to me. I had been volunteering in a mobility shop which I loved but so many days I had had to leave because of intrusive thoughts, running to seek advice from somewhere.
So I returned to work and from that moment on I never spoke to anyone about my anxiety. I did not run to the telephone although the temptation to do so was so strong. At first the anxiety got worse but over the coming weeks I realised I was having more and more periods of “normality”. Waking and getting out of bed was becoming easier. In fact 8 months later my daughter was ill in hospital and I had to fly to Australia alone to be with her. Of course I still had bad days but they were becoming less frequent and even the “bad days” were no where near as bad as in the beginning.
Well that was all nearly five years ago now. I stayed on the medication for two years before I slowly came off it. I went on to buy the mobility business with a friend and ran it between the two of us. I now enjoy spending days at home by myself doing the things I love, something I could never have done in the past as I would let the thoughts take over and end up running to someone for help. If I choose to I have a “lay in” some days, something I could never have done when I was in the midst of my illness. My daughter stayed in Australia and last year got married. I used to worry how I would cope on their wedding days. Would they want their Mum at their wedding, would I be an embarrassment to them? Now I am able to talk to them about what happened to me and they can understand. Two of them suffer from anxiety themselves and can now be sympathetic and understanding as to what I went through, and I am able to help them.
I hope this will be of some help to anyone who is suffering and give hope that you can overcome anxiety and don’t have to feel that way forever. One psychiatrist told me she had never met anyone who suffered from intrusive thoughts as much as I did. At the time it did not help as it just convinced me I would never overcome it. When people used to tell me that only I could help myself it scared me so much, as when you are feeling so bad you can’t see a way out. But my advice to anyone suffering is, don’t let it rule your life. Accept the feelings, let the thoughts chattering on but pay them no attention. The more you try to get rid of them the stronger they will become. It sounds so easy but I know it isn’t when you are in the midst of it. Believe you can do it; I never stopped believing that one day I would. I lost ten years of my life, and missed my daughters growing up. If this helps just one person then it will have been worthwhile. Good luck.
Reply With Quote
I'd like to chat with you further! You're inspirational! xx
