It's been 6 years but the memory of my first panic attack is as fresh as it happened yesterday. It was my first day to my job after graduation and I was travelling to work on the metro train. Suddenly, I noticed my chest was getting tightly grabbed from inside, there was no pain just [...]
TW: Abuse, Eating Disorder, Suicidal Thoughts I am 18 years old, but I feel as though I am just finally figuring out my place in this world and my identity. All my life I have lived with social and generalized anxiety disorders, as well as depression. It was not until I reached high school when [...]
Oops, I Left My Anxiety At Home When you have had anxiety for as long as I have, it kind of becomes a part of your identity. Life without it feels great but strange and unfamiliar at the same time. My most recent episode of crippling anxiety resulted in being prescribed a ~very~ effective medication. [...]
Recovery is Non-Linear Recovery is non-linear. Anyone who says that getting better is a straight line - I want their secret. I want to be stable, but what does that mean? It means sometimes being unstable, wobbly, broken in particular ways. We shatter and come together. We hurt and we heal. We scream, cry or [...]
My kid knows how to ground me. If you don’t know exactly what grounding is you are probably one of the lucky that don’t suffer from anxiety. I do suffer from anxiety quite badly. I frequently get panic attacks, sometimes out of nowhere it seems. But my seven-year-old, he knows how to ground me. He [...]
*trigger warning - self-harm* I thought only teenagers did it. But here I was sitting on the floor of my room at 38-years-old with a scissor in my hands. A grown adult. The first time I drew blood was this past January. I was ashamed right after I performed the act. How could I do [...]
It’s time we stop making jokes about Xanax being a housewife drug. Here’s why: I stood at a standstill in the packed CVS line. People flooded passed the ‘Prescription Pick Up’ sign, and down the aisle. I was the end cap of this madness. I was there to pick up my anxiety rescue medication. [...]
Anxiety Bees In my head there lives a little bee with anxiety. Sometimes he nicely walks around wiping down counters but most of the time he is buzzing and fussing and fighting and making a big old mess. I’m not sure when he moved in. I didn’t exactly invite him or any of his friends [...]
I don’t want to be disabled but I am. I have multiple disabilities. I don’t even know if I like the word disability. Dis-ability – it’s so negative. In the 1990s when I was growing up, you insulted another person by “dissing” them. When I hear the word disability, I feel that I’m being dissed [...]
"I'm just beginning to see, now I'm on my way."- The Moody Blues Merriam-Webster offers several definitions of the word “shock.” Two, in particular, stand out to me: 1) “a sudden or violent mental or emotional disturbance/something that causes such disturbance, and 2) sudden stimulation of the nerves and convulsive contraction of the muscles caused [...]
