Sunday, December 17, 2017

Anxiety Explosion

This September I took prednisone for an allergic reaction to fenugreek leaves. Unfortunately, the doctor prescribed a rather large dose, and within 24 hours, I had taken over 120mg of prednisone, which I do not recommend for anyone. At all. It's best, in my opinion, to avoid prednisone, if at all possible. My doctor likened it to a nuclear bomb going off in your body. That nuclear bomb broke my anxiety regulator and released the anxiety goblins.

Although I have had some anxious tendencies in the past, I haven't ever experienced anxiety attacks like I have in the past two months. A couple of times at night I purposely woke up my boyfriend out of fear that something was wrong. I went to the emergency room so many times that the last time I went, the doctor didn't run any tests and suggested I talk to a psychiatric nurse instead. I felt angry and upset yet a bit embarrassed and humiliated. The doctors at the emergency room were "starting to refuse to treat me" or at least that's what I told myself. The truth is the doctor saw that I had a problem, but it wasn't the problem I thought I had. I wasn't dying. I was having an anxiety attack.

It's hard to admit that I have an anxiety problem. I don't quite fit the GAD diagnosis since I've only had symptoms for three months, but once three months turn into six, I'll fit the diagnosis. The point of my starting counseling was to hopefully stop the anxiety and prevent it from turning into a disorder. While the anxiety has gone down, it hasn't stopped being symptomatic.

The largest anxiety that I have is health anxiety, followed by relationship anxiety, then followed by general anxiety. I don't want to be one of those people. You know, the people who talk about their anxiety, almost as if their anxiety rules their lives. I don't want anxiety to rule my every move, but not talking about and pretending that it can't possibly be anxiety is causing somatic symptoms. I have tingling hands, heart palpitations, lumps in my throat, constant throbbing tension headaches, but I denied that I have anxiety. After all of the doctor visits, I can no longer deny reality. I have anxiety.

Lisa Scott over at The Worry Games suggests that we should be proud of our anxiety, but I'm not proud of it. I'm really upset that I have this type of personality that lends itself to anxiety in the first place. I was angry at my parents for passing their anxious genes to me and not teaching me good mental health practices. I was angry at my bosses for making me work so much and possibly making the anxiety worse. I was angry at myself for not seeing anxiety for what it was earlier in the process.

But now that I've made some peace with the anxiety, I've started to come down from that tense high, and now, I can breathe a bit easier. I feel I still have a long way to go, but at least I'm no longer waking my boyfriend at 3am, asking him if we should go to the emergency room because of heart palpitations. I can't say that I'm proud of it, and I still see it as a hindrance rather than a gift, but maybe one day I'll see it as my ally instead of my enemy.