I know if I were you, I wouldn’t want a 10-page long ramble session about someone’s life story. I’m assuming you clicked on this because either you or someone you know is experiencing disordered anxiety. I only hope to provide some insight through sharing my experience and I will be linking the sources that quite literally changed my life down below. With that being said, I want to make this as impactful and direct as possible so that it will hopefully leave you with some insights of your own. Here it is.
Briefly About Me
My experience with disordered anxiety was intense. I’ve struggled with anxiety since I was 9, but for the last 2 years, I couldn’t leave the house. I couldn’t get in a car, use public transportation, go to grocery stores, do anything really, you name it. It got to the point that I would have a panic attack walking 5 minutes up my neighbourhood and I would have to turn around. Now, that’s crazy, right? Not as crazy as actually thinking you were going crazy and feeling unreal, which is also a very common symptom of severely disordered anxiety. So, what were my labels: Agoraphobia, Panic Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Derealization and Depersonalization.
That was me at 22 years old. But, about a week ago, I celebrated my 24th birthday with people I love in crowded restaurants, movie theatres, and bars. I’ve been going on long drives, and planning trips. Weirdly enough, it feels like those last 2 years never happened. Though, I reflect on those years quite a lot to this day, which is what inspired me to write this.
So, What Happened?
The experience of being homebound freaked me out so much that I looked into every method, tip, and solution under the sun. From CBT to CBD. From SE to IFS. From A to Z. I did them. Some of them did help to a certain extent, and they had the right idea because they attempted to steer me away from my thoughts and bring my attention to the sensations in the body, but it wasn’t enough. I would go right back to what I was doing: overthinking. I would spend hours in my bedroom feeling like I was close to a solution, without having made any progress in reality. The reality was, I was just in my room… thinking. I thought I was on the right track to finding an answer to conquer anxiety and finally leaving my house again. Little did I know, that anxiety was not a problem to be solved, and not a problem at all.
What do I mean by that? Now, before I go into what was effective for me, I want to set a bit of a realistic expectation. Recovering from anxiety is not a one-size-fits-all situation. Everyone is different, so take what you need and leave the rest. Medication was not part of my journey but it can be a wonderful tool for many. We can all reach the same destination by taking different paths. We are all unique and so our paths will be too, but recovery is possible for everyone. I am simply sharing my personal experience.
I outline anxiety in a really simplistic manner and that is done intentionally. Simplicity was key, in my experience because overcomplicating anxiety made me resist the discomfort and prolonged my suffering for years. As I was recovering, I had many moments of pain and discomfort, and it was a gradual process where I had to experience something several times until I believed everything I was taught. We all want a quick solution but we usually learn through repetition, and experiencing the challenge firsthand. You’ll face the same lessons repeatedly and that’s perfectly normal. That is the point! Every small step back towards your life, despite how it feels, is a step towards coming back to yourself. So, what does that look like?
What I Learned
Let me start this off by saying, our body is always working in our favour, even during a panic attack. This sentiment alone sparked monumental shifts in my recovery. I hated panic attacks, they were the bane of my existence. My intense fear of panic is what kept me homebound. I even forced myself to face my fears and be willing to feel panic just so I would not feel panic — didn’t work, of course. Force doesn’t make sense here because that adds more pressure which disrupts our nervous system even more. I truly started making strides in recovery once I stopped fearing panic attacks. This is what I learned about them:
- Panic attacks are adrenaline rushes. Adrenaline pumps through our body to keep us alive, not to kill us. In times of danger, it is our superpower by numbing our pain and giving us super strength, and energy for the situation. When the adrenaline is needed and used, a panic attack wouldn’t occur. Adrenaline has a function, it is working in our favour.
- Leading to my next point, the only cause of a panic attack is a whole lot of overthinking. Think about it (no pun intended), if adrenaline is put to use in the right circumstances, there is no space to think, we just act. The blood rushes to the big muscle groups in the right circumstances, we don’t have to plan, we don’t fear the adrenaline itself. We don’t have a panic attack.
- So, this means, it isn’t the grocery store causing your panic attack, nor is it any external situation. It is always your thinking about the experience, or your overthinking about it.
- Our system is designed for the “now”, it is not sophisticated enough to realize the brain is imagining a scary scenario. Therefore, panic attacks can work as an alarm that we are unintentionally misusing our system and our imagination. It works as a wake-up call to come back to reality.
- Our bodies are constantly healing and regenerating. So, all we need to do is trust in our natural healing system to bring us back to balance, more on that later.
- Our brain is a pattern recognition machine that uses information from the past to predict the future. It’s simply doing its job. It can’t comprehend what it hasn’t experienced yet. It doesn’t even make sense a lot of the time, it is so impersonal and random. There is nothing new to learn from a repetitive machine, we can take it less seriously.
- When there is nothing to immediately act on, it can feel uncomfortable. The energy seeks release, but we often misinterpret it as dangerous, leading to a panic attack. Panic attacks are simply a fear of fear itself. The discomfort is a good indicator that you are safe.
- We can overthink and stress ourselves out about symptoms so much that we can dissociate, disconnect from our surroundings, and feel unreal. This is also a signal that our brain is tired and in need of rest.
- My favourite point: an adrenaline rush has a shelf-life of 8 minutes, and a half-life of 4 minutes.
Here’s Why This Was Relevant for Me
You think you want liberation from this anxious energy when the truth is, it wants liberation from you. This is why it keeps coming up; it wants to be free of you, just as much as you want to be free of it. — Paul David
Here is the thing, if you went to the doctor’s office, and they told you they were going to inject you with adrenaline but it would leave the system completely within 8 minutes, and start to fade within the first 4 minutes, how different would your experience be? Chances are, you’d feel the symptoms of the adrenaline but with a sense of security, then it would pass in 8 minutes. Would that turn into a panic disorder? It wouldn’t. The energy wants to move through you, it wants to be liberated from you too.
This is the case for every anxiety symptom — every painful symptom you currently have will gradually dissipate once you learn to trust that the body is always working in your favour, whether you realize it or not. It may take some time, and there may be days that are more painful than others, but that is a natural part of the process, it is expected. We are built to tolerate discomfort, have you ever been sore from a workout, or broken a bone? How different was your experience when you didn’t have to worry about it?
Understanding all of this brought a sense of ease and confidence in my experience. Now, it wasn’t a battle against anxiety, why would it be? Panic attacks and all anxious symptoms became neutral and impersonal alarms that I interpreted as a sign of my overthinking. It wasn’t the car, the place, the person — I just had distorted thinking running through my head. I slowly started to believe that my symptoms weren’t against me and that made a world of a difference in tolerating the discomfort. I understood that being in real-time danger would leave no space to overthink, because thinking does not keep me safe. That was mind-blowing for an over-thinker like me.
On a Deeper Note
I was taught how our bodies always return to balance, how it is designed to return to balance. When we break a bone, we don’t have to overthink it into healing, nor do we have to do that with the flu, or soreness from a workout. We can tolerate those feelings and still be involved with our life and what matters to us. They don’t become front-page news. We also don’t overthink to get our heart to beat, or grow babies. It happens on its own. There is less for us to do.
As I believed what I learned more, I started to be filled with wonder at how beautifully we are designed, in ways beyond our control. We are nature and nature is intelligent: forest fires work as beneficial component for a healthy ecosystem, planets can spin and orbit the sun, flowers know when to bloom and how to face the sun. There is no thinking involved. This sparked more ease within me. I trusted my body so much more to do what it was already doing, that made all of the difference. So anxiety was never anything to solve, it became a helpful alarm that I was using my head too much. I slowly started seeing how much life I had missed out on because I was so involved with my thoughts, and that kept me stuck, to a very serious extent. And if you feel stuck you need to do something different in order to yield different results. We can’t achieve this through overthinking. I do believe it is that simple.
These experiences are not personal to most people, but for some reason, people with disordered anxiety take anxiety very personally. None of us are doing this on purpose, it is a misunderstanding of the system. But, taking it personally is what kept me stuck. I took it so seriously, and I thought it was a real problem. I wouldn’t beat myself up for wanting rest and fluids if I had the flu, for example. Once my attitude around it changed, things started to change.
I reflected on how, when my car is freezing cold and I turn the heat on, I don’t suffer in the cold because I know the car will warm up soon. I like to think of panic attacks and recovering from disordered anxiety in the same light. Once our attitude towards it has a sense of ease and openness, the experience shifts. As I moved forward, each uncomfortable experience became an opportunity to see the truths I had learned play out in real-time.
What Changed Afterwards?
This had already sparked me to stretch out my comfort zone in the smallest ways. This time it wasn’t through force but through curiosity and a true willingness to get back to my life. I started doing the things that were important to me again, which was going on a walk, for example. I would feel that adrenaline rush and I would see it as my superpower strength fired off in the wrong scenario. The experience was not that scary anymore. So, I slowly abandoned myself to how I felt and went back to my life. I treated lingering symptoms the same way I would treat sore muscles. There was a lot of repetition here, and I thought “Oh, maybe I can do this. Oh, and then this? And then maybe this!” but it happened through a wanting to do it vs. forcing myself to do it to overcome pain. It was in the spirit that I was doing it in.
I started with walks which turned to going to stores, then restaurants, and eventually taking shuttle buses which took me 9 hours away from home. This sounds linear but I have to emphasize that it wasn’t. Each step forward — however daunting — became a milestone in my journey. Even when it felt like I was going backwards, which we never can by the way. So, what might that look like for you? Remember, nothing is too small.
Worrying and overthinking became irrelevant after learning that. I do believe it is that simple. I’m still human and I worry from time to time, but my relationship with this entire experience is drastically different. More importantly, I don’t fear my experience and it doesn’t dictate what I do. I like to see moments of worry and discomfort as opportunities to see my imagination at play and come back to reality. Looking back, from a calm and clear mind, I can really see the gift in it and my intention was to highlight that (even just a little bit) here. I hope this helped, friends!
Resources
To end it off, here are three resources that were the most impactful throughout my journey:
Lily Sais (@peacefromwithin) — alongside her free content — I highly recommend joining her community as well. It is affordable, you can speak with her directly, and be part of a supportive community.
Sarie Taylor (@sarietaylorcoaching)
Paul David (“At Last a Life” Book)
