Anxiety.. Only an emotion.

[Gypsy22]

Anxiety.. They say its only an emotion. What an emotion to experience.

 My name is Gypsy, I'm 22 and live with my partner and two daughters. My eldest girl is 3, my second is 4 months. My partner suffers from depression and anxiety and has autism. I am his carer. Mostly days are good. I wont lie we do have bad days, hell we sometimes have terrible days, but who doesn't right? I'm undertaking a tafe diploma, whilst caring for my family and on the odd occasion working part time for our families business. 

Through out my life I have had highs and lows, some lows lower than most. My early childhood wasn't so pleasant and I guess I allowed that to shape my personality and behavior growing through my teenage years, acting out, doing wrongs. Never the less after a long time and a lot of learning curbs I seen the light and turned myself around and here i am now on the right path with my beautiful family by my side.

Sounds wonderful right? yes, but I hide within a secret. I suffer from anxiety. Full blown Anxiety. I have major attacks, I cant see straight, my heart palpitates at a thousand beats per second, my body shakes and quivers, my whole entire world as i know it comes to a holt crashing down around me, smashing into tiny broken pieces.

What do I do? Well, after some nasty attacks I came forward and I spoke up and sought out help. At the start it was extremely hard and talking about it made my attacks even worse but eventually it got easier and I can now prevent myself from reaching peaking point (well, most of the time.) I found talking to some one anonymously at first helped, the beyond blue counselors have been more than helpful guiding me through various techniques to except what it is and how to combat the fear. Then I mustered up enough courage to talk to family members about how i was feeling and what it was that set my emotions off. Now I have finally summoned the strength to share my thoughts with the rest of you.

Each day is a new day and im taking it day by day. I try to keep my mind occupied but night times are the hardest. So here I am writting this to you all trying to keep busy. There isn't really a point to my story but I thought I'd just take a step forward in shaping my emotions and taking control of them face on by writing this tonight.

If anyone has any tips on how they conquer their anxiety I would love to know. Or even if you just want to share your stories here with the rest of us that would be awesome too. Thank you for reading.   

[Beltane]

hiya and welcome to beyondblue.

Thankyou for sharing your story! It is wonderful to see people come here to share stories of positivity, courage and hope- as yours is!

you have certainly done well in all you have done to battle your anxiety- seeing counsellors, reaching out to help. As you say- taking it day by day!

Writing is certainly a good way to keep busy. If you enjoy writing, you might like to do more of it- perhaps even write a novel where characters or themes are based on your experiences. I wrote a novel like that and self-published it as a Kindle book on amazon 😄

What you say about anxiety being "only an emotion" as in interesting point of discussion. Anxiety is a normal part of the human experience, just as is sadness, disappointment, fear, anger- all those emotions that we class as "negative" and try to run away from. Sometimes we only add to their power by being so scared and avoidant of them. I do a therapy called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and thats heavily based on accepting that negative emotions are part of life and its how we respond to those emotions that determines our coping. If we respond with fear and avoidance, those emotions become even more troublesome- if we respond with acceptance, commitment and determination, we suddenly see that the monster isn't so big and bad after all.

But anxiety is certainly a very powerful emotion, and for many of us here at BB it is more than the "normal" levels other people face- it has magnefied into such a huge, threatening, life-altering force that it becomes classified as a mental illness, as its no longer in the realm of what is "normal human experience".

But that's the point of therapy and medications after all, isn't it? To help us get our anxiety back to the "normal" and acceptable levels that people without mental illness have. We accept that while anxiety is a normal part of life, it doesn't and shouldn't be at levels that cause such negative impact on our lives, and we must learn coping skills to prevent it from causing that negative impact.

I find that as time goes on, our needs as people change. What therapies worked a year ago may become tired and old, and we need new techniques as we grow and change, and face different challenges. You might try CBT, then switch to ACT.. you might try different therapy books, different lifestyle changes, different ipad therapy apps...
The world of possibility is huge 🙂