My Anxiety Gives Me Anxiety.

Hello, my friend.

As I have mentioned before in my blog, I suffer from anxiety disorder.  If you don't know what that is, it means I am easily stressed and scared nearly all of the time.  Not just a normal kind of stress or scared.  No, it's abnormal scared and stressed, as in - I feel like I'm going to die.  It activates the primal part of my brain that tells me to fight, flee or freeze.  It will never go away, but I am able to live with it and , with help, am able to overcome my sheer panic to live a decent life.

Add into that PTSD and it's easy startle fun-ness and you get the splendor that is me.  Am I a veteran you ask?  No. And frankly, I find it rather annoying that some people believe it is something only people who have been to war can get.  No.  P is for Post as in "after".  T is for trauma.  Trauma includes any event that has occurred to you, be it sickness, rape, abuse, or any type of danger that can make your brain think you're going to die or suffer bodily harm. S is for Stress. D is for disorder as in mental illness.  PTSD is not curable and it never goes away.  You simply learn to function with it.  As to why I have PTSD, we'll talk about in another post later on.

Now, back to the anxiety.  I happen to have agoraphobia with it, but there are actually different types of agoraphobia.  While one person may fear leaving their house, mine is a bit different.  Mine involves the fear of crowds or larger groups of people.  I am unable to go to concerts, outdoor crowded events of any kind like festivals, or even stores that are packed on a Saturday afternoon.  I have tried on numerous occasions to just go with the flow and what happens is a full blown panic attack.  As much as I would like to pretend it's not there or I can just act normal if I wanted to, I can't.  This is a real mental illness.  There is no cure, only work arounds.

Let me describe what happened on one Black Friday at midnight in a Walmart.  I tried to go with the flow.  Everything seemed fine, people were calm and then the buzzer went off and what happened can only be described as piranha attacking a chunk of meat. People were scrambling, grabbing at stuff, bumping into me, yelling, screaming, trampling.  You could not move without pushing a huge wave of people.  It was at that very moment I realized I had made a grave mistake.  I freaked... the fuck... out.

I bolted and just started running away toward the door, pushing people trying to get out.  I felt like I couldn't breathe and I'm pretty sure I had this look on my face:

I was crying and I'd lost my only lifeline, my husband David, in the crowd.  I haven't gone to another Black Friday sale again, nor will I.

Some days I am better with the anxiety than others.  Some people try to avoid the stress, but I really love going to the farmers market to get fresh veggies, hear live music and see all the handcrafted food and treasures.  So, I try to arrive earlier than other people so it's not too crowded.  Even then, I can get overwhelmed and begin a meltdown.  Thankfully, my husband is very understanding and he can recognize when I'm becoming panicked or overwhelmed and he reminds me to stop in a quiet corner, take some deep breaths, calm down and then continue on if I am ready.  If I can't calm down, we leave, but that rarely happens.

Along with the anxiety comes a really embarrassing problem.  Sweat.  Not just like a dab here and there.  No.  Anxiety Renny has buckets and buckets of sweat that drench hair, face and clothes and make it look like I just came from a water park or a shower.  The sweat from the anxiety makes me more anxious so I sweat more.  It's the circle of liiiiiiife...  no, I mean the it's the circle of sweaaaaaatttt.

There's medication for that, you may say....  YES!!! There is!  But it makes you addicted to it and I think we already read how pills are bad for an addictive personality such as myself.  I used to take those anxiety pills.  They are horribly addicting and also bad for you. I use Saint John's Wort sometimes, but it does nothing for anxiety, it's more for my chronic depression, but more on that later.

So, this leads to what medication DOES work for my anxiety.  Nicotine.  Something else that will likely kill me and is bad for me, but I control the dosage, I don't have to go to some quack to prescribe it to me.  I don't have to talk about my feelings to some stranger.... oh wait.  lol  I use a vapor and I buy my e-liquid from online sellers who make it themselves with vegetable ingredients.  It doesn't smell as bad, but it also doesn't work as well.  It's a lesser of two evils sort of thing.

If you too suffer from anxiety, I would love to hear from you.  If you can relate or need an understanding friend, here I am.  :)

As always, with love,

<3 R