For about 10 years, I suffered from anxiety and depression that affected every aspect of my life. At its highest points, life seemed hopeless and I felt wholly hapless. It was a time when almost nobody spoke about anxiety; it was a hidden disease or, as I used to call it, a debilitating state of dis-ease.
It did not seem to me to be a mental illness since its affects were so profoundly physical. Waiting in fear for that next panic attack as I suffered with general anxiety and disorientation which became the gateway to depression. The world felt totally unreal, wrong and unstable and I literally tottered from one mental crisis to another. It was like being and feeling mentally and physically nauseous in that its affects are far worse in the experience than in the thought and in the word.
I began by trying to exclude any form of stimulant - alcohol and coffee were out and healthy eating and exercise were in. It helped a little but then I became obsessed with cutting out all potential triggers. So, I started to extricate myself from every situation that would make me anxious - meetings with people, restaurants, travelling in a car or train (planes and the underground had long been resigned to history). At work, my desk had become my personal prison and every 20 minutes or so the anxiety and panic would become so unbearable that I would have to get up and pace around or hide in the toilet.
There were two incidents that live long in the memory.
The first was that I had been selected for a promotion and had been asked to attend an interview which I had been told was essentially a formality. I hadn’t got a wink of sleep (another trigger) and I had been pacing so much that my heart was hitting about 210
beats a minute (which I had leant was above the maximum heart rate for a man of my age). I had managed to get it down to a respectable 130 through doing some breathing exercises (taking my pulse has become another obsession and I had become a master of disguising the measurement of my heart rate).
As I walked through the door that wave of impending doom hit me as my heart began to beat like a juggernaut at full tilt so that I literally felt like my heart must explode. My breathing was rapid and shallow and so out of control that I just couldn’t get enough Oxygen in. The question that has been fired flew right past me and my mouth was so dry that I couldn’t voice an answer even if I had known what had been asked. I was blinking uncontrollably. I heard a far off voice ask “are you alright?”. It felt more accusatory than kind like a torturer cutting through me with a scalpel. I manage to answer “ yes” but the game was up. So I followed it up with “but I forgot that I have a client meeting so need to go”. I can still see the look on their faces which even today makes me cringe and feel ashamed. Anyway, I did not get the job and from that day whatever little confidence I may have had was long, lone gone.
The second incident was a date with a friend of a friend. She was great and I could already feel the first stirrings of young love. Anyway, it was to be our first proper “date” but all I could think about was how I could get through our time together without making a complete ass of myself. To cut a long story short, I had such a bad panic attack on the way to the restaurant that I had to return home. It was a time before mobiles so she had assumed that I had stood her up. I was too embarrassed to say what had happened so made up some amusing story which made me sound cool but callous. Anyway, we never did get to go on our date and I still think about what might have been.
So, there I was with my life in tatters having effectively extracted myself from almost every human activity that would require me to leave my house. My only solace was my PlayStation but that was drawing me to a deeper depression in my a death-filled life. I knew there was no hope and that anxiety and depression would be my solitary companions for the rest of my life.
But then, something happened (a different and gentler trigger) that was to change my view of my world and kick start a journey of building confidence in my body, my head and most importantly my heart. That is a story for another day.
But, for me, the key was in the etymology of the word confidence whose root means “with faith”. I had to find a way to begin to reconnect with myself and re-build trust and faith in myself and my abilities. To find who and what I was and why my mind and body were doing this to me. That they, and all the horrible gut wrenching experiences, were essentially my allies not my foes.
Love G xx
Will I ever feel normal again?
College life sucks.... Having a hard time making friends and connecting with others.
My heart is broken . 
How to deal with feeling jealous
Stepping Away from my Comfort Zone
