A year and a half ago, I was diagnosed with GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder). Many people don't understand this disorder. I know I didn't before it happened to me. Oftentimes people think that a person with GAD is just a person that worries. A lot. While this can be true, it's not the kind of worry that average people, in their every day lives, feel even in excess. The worry that a person with GAD feels is so severe that it is beyond control and it interferes with functioning.
Most of the time I feel like no one (except maybe my husband and those who've been through it) understands it. But, as is the case with any mental disorder or hardship, understanding from others is tremendously important to the sufferer's rehabilitation. When no one understands or even tries to empathize with another person's hardships, it is truly isolating, and that can be truly debilitating. I realize this might not fall under my blog title (it's not like anyone reads this anyway), but I just felt pushed to write about it. Probably because my husband just left on a plane (you'll understand later)
I have always been a worrier. Some of the ridiculous worries I get now I can remember starting when I was in elementary school. At twelve years old what did you worry about? I worried about falling off of mountains I didn't climb, getting so fat I couldn't leave my couch, rape, infectious diseases, and getting diagnosed with cancer (at my next doctor's appointment), just to name a few. After 9/11 happened, I wouldn't fly until high school, when the idea of going to New York City outweighed the possible consequences. Now every time I (or anyone else) get on a plane I think it's going to crash, be hijacked, or run out of fuel. At ten years old I worried about what it would mean if there was no God. Could I blink out of existence? What did that feel like? When I stopped breathing would I feel it? What if I died before I got married? What if I died before I had kids? What if I never got married, because I was too ugly to be loved and then I died and never got to experience life as a married woman? What if I got married but my husband died? How would I survive? What if I got married but I died? Would my husband think it was his fault? Would he get remarried? Would he love her more than me? Would that mean I didn't get to be with him in heaven? What if there was no heaven and I never got to see any of these supposed husbands ever again? What if I never got to see my mom ever again? What if she died?! Is my mom going to die soon?!
That's a tiny trail of thought from a 9-18 year old me. This was not fun, but as far as I know, it was not GAD. However, I did not go to therapists for fear they would send me to an asylum or take advantage of me sexually and no one would believe me, because I was nine years old.
Most people don't realize when this stuff is going on inside others' heads. We appear normal on the outside, either because we are very good and are worried (worried? who us?) about people thinking we are crazy, or because no one spends enough time with us to get a full picture of what's plaguing us.
Then two years ago it all came crash banging down.
It was after I moved home from Washington. There was a family crisis that consumed me, and my fear and worry about it became so intense that it started to rub off onto other things. Those worries became bigger worries which became bigger worries which became so consuming that I stopped sleeping. Doctors looked at my sleep, confused. Maybe I should see a therapist. I took Ambien for sleep and on it, I got about 2-4 hours each night. Each hour or two I would wake up, have a panic attack, and maybe fall back to sleep. All day I worried about how I would sleep the next night. My reaction time slowed immensely. I couldn't pay attention in class. Suddenly, what was once easy took me 10 hours to finish. My stomach was constantly on edge. What normal people feel when their lives are in tremendous peril (that butterflyish, stomach hurting, stress response) I felt all day long, sometimes for no reason at all. I had a panic attack at least once a day for several months. At one point I went catatonic for a few hours and my husband had to stick me into a hot shower to wake me from my stupor. Every hour felt like a day, and every day felt like a year.
Those thought trails I explained a few paragraphs earlier got worse. I was going to fail college (I had a 4.0). My husband was going to die every time he left the house (he had only been gone for 15 minutes, or he only had to drive 5 minutes to work). The school was going to have a shooting. Every plane would crash. My mom wasn't answering her phone---she must be in serious condition. If I didn't sleep I was going to die. I was never going to sleep again. I was too tired to exercise like I used to. I was going to become obese, and my husband was going to stop finding me attractive. I was going to get pregnant (I was on birth control) and I didn't have money for a baby. We were going to become completely poor, because I would get pregnant, or we would lose our jobs, or my medications were too expensive, and then I was going to lose my home and be out on the street. If I asked my dad for help he was going to disown and hate me, because he would be disappointed that I needed help. My husband was going to get so tired of my anxiety he was going to leave me, divorce me, cheat on me. I didn't want to hang out with friends. I didn't want to go out. I didn't even have control over my outward expression of my feelings anymore. I developed a sleep deprivation induced depression. I began to hope for an end, not by my own hand, but by one of the accidents I feared. Maybe a car would hit me? Maybe that plane would crash? Maybe I could put my husband out of his misery. I told no one about this part, not even my therapist. I was terrified that my problems weren't really that serious, that I was taking much needed time away from other, more severe mental cases.
And where oh where was God in all this I would wonder? My journal is full of pages that say, "God please help me. Please help me stop feeling this way. Please help me be somebody different."
I almost gave up on ever being me again.
Then I asked my husband for a blessing (I guess this does have to do with being Mormon, but not on purpose), and as he was putting his hands upon my head he said that I would know what to do to help myself. And whether or not you believe in my church, or even God, is not relevant. I had a feeling. You can choose to believe it was God or believe that it was some power I had within myself. I choose to believe it was God, because I like that thought. My feeling said that I needed to tell my therapist that Something that I was hiding: The Ultimate Scary Thing. If I told him, all would be well.
After 6 months of the same thing day in and day out, after I finally admitted to my therapist that I was thinking that dying would be a good thing, I got the blessed diagnosis: I had GAD. It was blessed to me, because it meant that something could be done. It meant I could be in control of myself again. It meant I could live again. It meant I wasn't completely and totally insane (just a little insane). It meant there was something wrong with me, not just that I was "overreacting" or "a drama queen" like I was so often told. It meant that there was a REASON for me to be feeling the way I was feeling. It meant that I wasn't alone, because other people had this too.
I wasn't alone.
Isolation is a terrible punishment, but rising from its ashes is freedom. I started the medication I had been so against for months of therapy. When I told him what I was feeling, he said that he believed it was something I had to do, even if I was scared. Right away my body responded--- the key to my locked door. Within a week I was sleeping 6 hours a night. Within a month 8-9. This gave me hope. My brain actually needed a jump start. I wasn't just being hysterical for no reason.
After my sleep increased, the depression went away. The anxiety became manageable. It never went away like my depression (I still have some ridiculous fears and panic attacks every few months), but I will take manageable. After the medication, my head was free enough to finally use what I had been practicing all along in my CBTherapy. I finally began to feel like I had control over my own thoughts. I finally stopped worrying about what others thought about me. I could be more me than I had ever been in my entire life. My family noticed the difference in me, and after months of not "getting it," thinking I was just being lazy or overdramatic, something clicked inside of them. There had been something seriously wrong with me, and they knew it.
I can honestly say that the last year has been the happiest of my life, and GAD made me that way.
A month and a half ago I went off of my medication. My anxiety has increased, but my sleep has not decreased, and my depression has not come back. Today, my husband got on a plane to go find us a new house where he will be going to med school, far away from everyone we know. I cried, because I worried that he would die and that I wouldn't be able to see him again. I can see some of my symptoms returning in anticipation of our new-and-huge life change, but I have also seen myself rise from the fire and return from a dark place once before. Even if I do have to go through it again, I believe that God was with me all along last time, waiting for me to figure things out, waiting for an opportune time to help me. I've got my husband, and a more understanding family, and I know the name of what I've got.
This time I will not be Isolated.
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