I started suffering from anxiety when I was around 16. I'm 27 now but never really found a cure for it until I was about 23. I would suffer from severe anxiety attacks to the point that I was unable to socialise and found it difficult to complete everyday tasks.
For me a period of anxiety would last 1-2 weeks, completely exhausting me and eventually bring on a episode of depression. The depressive state would last 1-2 months before eventually lifting and I would be seemingly back to normal again.
When I was about 23 I had an anxiety attack that was so severe that it threw me into a mental breakdown, which was followed by a long and very dark period of depression. However, out of that event I was really able to grasp and understanding of my anxiety/depression and ever since have always been able to stay well and not slip back into the cycle that i had been going through for so long.
As I became aware that my thoughts were the cause of my anxiety, not necessarily the situation at hand, I was able to disregard these patterns of thinking that seemed to be the catalyst for these episodes. It seems to me that anxiety and depression is completely connected to distorted patterns of thinking, whether they are worrying about the future or dwelling on a past event, whatever it may be the thinking is negative and fearful and generates stress and anxiety which ultimately leads to periods of depression. So being able to recognise these patterns of thinking and knowing they are the trigger for anxiety is incredibly powerful (has been for me anyway).Whenever I feel an episode of anxiety starting to come on I simply know that my thinking is out of whack. At this point I simply try and stay present, stay in the here and the now and completely disconnect from my thoughts. It can be a difficult task initially, but every time I do it I feel the anxiety slowly dissipate and eventually subside completely. Whereas in the past I would mull over the thoughts in my head which would drive the anxiety up further and eventually throw me into a state of depression.
Today I have no worry or fear for my anxiety or depression, I feel like I truly understand it and see what the cause of it is. For me it is distorted patterns of thinking and identification with the thoughts (believing the thoughts to be true). As soon as I became disconnected from them and conscious of what was happening I was free from the cycle of anxiety/depression that has caused me immense suffering for many years.
