My journey to overcoming anxiety. Part II: My trigger.

Anxiety is debilitating. It can literally make you feel ill, and unable to function.

But here’s the thing, you can get through anxiety. You can even overcome it. How do I know? Because I think I’ve done it. And if I can do it after years of debilitating anxiety, so can you!

Throughout this series, I will tell you my story, how I personally began my journey of breaking the cycle of anxiety, and hopefully, by reading it you will be given a sense of empowerment. Because that’s the issue with anxiety, isn’t it? It leaves you feeling so powerless over your own mind.

Now, I could go through each gory detail of the next few years of my life (from my last post in this series), but I don’t think I will. It’d simply take too long. But I’ll give you a simple outline.

The following were contributing factors to my generalized anxiety disorder:

1. About 9 months after I gave birth to my son, I began experiencing postpartum depression. I, being very afraid of mental illness, denied it completely. It was, of course, abundantly obvious. Unfortunately for me, I’m quite good at not be vulnerable and hiding what’s really happening inside of me-as many of us are. We are all skilled mask-creators when we feel the need to be.
2. Perhaps, PTSD (Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder). Trauma stemming from childhood was affecting me, how I viewed the world, perhaps how my very brain was even wired.
3. This past trauma was triggered by another event in which…I was trying to leaving my neighborhood one night after dark. Some little thugs decided to form a line across the street in front of my car. They started to shout at me to get out of the car. GET OUT OF THE CAR! A counselor later told me that this event probably triggered all of the mental and emotional issues stemming from my past trauma.

Now, I should probably mention at this juncture that days, literally days (maybe one), before I gave birth to my first child–there was a shooting in my neighborhood across the parking lot from my apartment complex. I walked over to the window, wondering what had happened (I didn’t grow up in neighborhoods where shootings happened), to have my husband begin shouting at me to get away from the window.

And this place, where I get shouted at to get away from the windows, is where I was bringing my son.

I had a very difficult time reconciling myself to that fact. But when you don’t have a lot and you have to fight for everything you have, sometimes you don’t have a choice about where you live.

I mention this shooting because even though I got away unharmed during the street incident, the city I live in is considered one of the most violent cities in America. And my 12-month-old son was sitting in the backseat when it happened. All of these things were in my psyche somewhere, if that makes sense. And, if I’m not very much mistaken, there was another shooting (right across from my apartment complex) not very long before I was accosted by the thugs on the street. And, of course, we had the drug dealer living across the hall from me.

But this is all okay. It’s made me who I am. It’s made me a fighter. It’s taught me to fight through fear. And I really haven’t gone through anything nearly as bad as other people I know…but this isn’t anyone else’s story. It’s mine. I have a right to feel how I do, to process, and to then, and only then, move on.

And if you’re going through something, no matter the why of it, you have a right to process and experience too.

All of the things above contributed to my anxiety. The childhood trauma, the postpartum depression, the stress of my living conditions, and then finally the trigger.

The night I was accosted, I called my husband (after I called the police) and I told my husband I was moving out of that neighborhood. Now, my husband has been through some crap and has lived in some tough neighborhoods, so to him, what happened to me wasn’t that big of a deal. But I was done. I was done with the shootings. I was done with the drug dealers across the hall. I was done worrying about my infant’s safety. I was done being afraid to go outside. I was done with that side of town.

And within a few weeks, we were moving, and I was having debilitating attacks of anxiety. These attacks were like panic attacks on steroids. They just didn’t stop. They just lasted for hours upon hours.

I started to lose hope, but I was going to be okay.

I’ll tell you about it in my next post.

 

Note: I want to point out that everyone is affected by trauma differently. Some, may walk out of a war zone affected, but somehow able to cope and move on. Some, can actually be traumatized by verbal abuse. Everyone, because of the different physiology, pre-conditions, developmental stages, and psychological health, is different, and experiences and copes with events differently as well. And that’s okay. 

 

Have you ever experienced anxiety or panic attacks? Comment below! (Hey, I told you some of my story; you can tell me some of yours! 🙂 )