Anxiety

I was recently diagnosed with anxiety and mild depression maybe six months ago. It's still something I'm trying to understand. I'm someone that does her best to make the best of everything that comes my way and in life, in general. I have my down days like most of us. But for the most part I like to be happy go lucky and do my best to go with the flow. I know like is unpredictable -- in more ways than I'd like to admit.

Life has its ups and its downs and it's about moving forward, so I believe. But because life is life things can and do happen and for me those things in life that happened was going through cancer three times and two just that were very close together. Then one of my two (beautiful) cats died (at the age of seven) and then my beautifully wonderful mother died due to the covid-19 virus and while I was going through cancer the third time. To say like was not great at that time is an understatement! But I had to stay strong as though as heartbreaking as it was with the loss of my cat and most especially my mom I still wanted to live. And live I did!

However, post cancer -- post chemotherapy didn't just come with issues that affect the body but also with issues that affect the brain. For me that was not understanding why I would get anxious and my mind would race with all kinds of thoughts. Thoughts from what is going to happen to the planet if we use so many batteries for electric cars -- like is the sun going to be able to handle it? Yes, my mind would literally think things like that! It was as if the thinker that I kind of always been turned into a super overthinker. I would wonder about the future and if cancer was going to come back. I would think about death more because funny as it may sound, I never saw it the way I saw it until my mom died. It was as if I saw -- death -- as real in a way I never really did before!

Anyway, all those thoughts or overthinking was not something I understood and definitely not something I liked. And so, I finally decided to see a psychiatrist at the VA hospital. Something I probably should have done back in 2021 ; however, better late than ever -- I truly believe that! It was a good thing that I went too as the doctor helped me understand why I was feeling the way I was. And how I can try and get help for it too. Because I didn't want to keep feeling and overthinking the way I was. I wanted to try and get some control with it as it felt as if it was controlling me.

But here's the deal -- medication is not the way for me. I am not a big fan of medication to begin with but I just would rather try and deal with things in other ways or at least try to before going the route of medicine. That takes a conscious effort though and I wasn't doing that. Yes, going to the gym and increasing my fitness helped. And even getting more into my writing helped. However, I wasn't doing things like mindfulness breathing techniques and even praying more and it showed as I would still have those racing thoughts as I laid in the bed.

One night, not that long ago, I decided to try the medication and IT DID NOT GO WELL! I don't know why but I felt sick with nausea. I was dizzy. I had heart palpitations, and it really scared me. I thought "how is that anxiety medicine seems to be bringing on way more anxiety?" I had to do what I can to calm myself down, but it took a while. But eventually I was able to sleep. The next day I felt hungover and had the dry mouth too. Not cool!

I spoke with some friends that have anxiety and take medication for it and they both said they had never experienced that before. One of my friends said that taking that medication can take 4 to 6 weeks to start working and it's not well to take while one is in having like an anxiety attack. And that may be true but let me tell you I DO NOT want to ever go through that again! Ever!!!

That is why I will now focus on other alternative ways that don't involve medicine to help me reduce the anxiety. Things like mindfulness breathing and listening to stuff that helps calm the mind. It is my hope that this will work and if not that I make sure to speak to my medical team at the VA and maybe get me on some other medicine that won't ever have me feeling horrible. But hopefully I'll be able to understand more about what anxiety is and how to do my best to control it and not let it control me.

If anyone out there also deals with anxiety let me know if there are things that you do to help, make it less. For those out there that feel anxious but aren't sure why please consider talking to a doctor or a therapist and remember you are not alone and there's nothing to feel embarrassed about. Knowing something is not right and getting help is the best way in order to understand what is going on and is in the right direction to feeling better. I never really got that, and I have a degree in Psychology, but I so get it now! Working on me and getting better is WAY better than being in denial or just ignoring the things that go on with me, psychologically. #bet 😊