Hi All
My name is Craig, and I am 36 years old. Be warned, I can talk for England!!
I have been suffering from what I now know to be anxiety. Heaven knows it took me years and years to actually realise it. I can't be sure of the exact cause, the catylyst, but I did smoke cannabis for 12 years which I think ended up having the impact. I gave that up in 2006.
For around the last 8 years there have been ups and downs with it but during the downs I just thought I must have a mental disorder or "must be going mad". I have been constantly looking for reasons why I felt the way I did and I guess got fully embroiled in the "anxiety cycle". Worrying why I am always worrying! I only realised it was anxiety when I stumbled on a book called "At Last a Life" by Paul David. That was a real eye opener for me. Reading it was full of revelations and common sense reasons for everything I was feeling.
I guess I have always been a little sensitive, maybe someone who gets nervous quite easily, but I don't remember any prolonged periods of anxiety in my life until around 2006. I remember this year because it was the year my partner fell pregnant for the first time. This was the first time I remember any negative, unwanted thoughts creeping in to my head. I was really scared by this. The first one I remember is my partner coming out in to the kitchen while I had the knife out on the worktop. She was around 7 months pregnant at the time. It's a small kitchen and she was creeping past me and I remember the thought of "Oh my god, what if I lose control and grab that kitchen knife and hurt her with it!" Afterwards it was like, "Whoa, what was that? Where did that come from?". I knew I would never do it but the panic and fear of what if I did was palpable.
That carried on over coming months and years. So many unwanted thoughts creeping in to my head. Watching the news about a Peadophile ring thinking "Oh no, what if i'm a peadophile, I have a young daughter now." That thought took over my thinking for a long time. Everytime I changed her nappy or got her dressed it was there, in my head, just sitting in the background, unsettling me, tainting all what should of been nice moments to share with her. That one has gone now, but it'll be something else now. The latest one is "Oh no, what if i'm gay? That could ruin and break up my whole family and shatter everything"!
I have realised what I have to do to try and recover now. I need to ignore these thoughts and give them no respect. Try not to "try" getting better and let what will be, be. Something I have found helps is talking about my feelings and also reading and understanding that other people have the same issues as me. This re-inforces the idea that I am not going mad and that others suffer the same. I realised this when I read in a book about a lady who had a little one about 6 months old. She suffered with unwanted thoughts and told us about the time she was pushing her buggy down the street and saw a knitting needle on the floor. She had the thought that she might pick it up and hurt her child with it. I burst in to tears and wept like a baby after reading that. It was partly feeling sympathy for her but mostly because of how much I could associate with it and it kind of lifted a lot of weight off my over worried shoulders.
Anyway, I won't go on anymore because now i've signed up I am sure i'll be rabbitting a whole lot more on here over the coming weeks!
Hopefully I can be of some help to others on here as well as getting some support for myself as I venture on the road to recovery!
Best wishes,
Craig
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