Submitted By BoranMax905
A few years ago I had a mental breakdown. I spent over a year basically bed ridden and during that period, I vowed if I ever recovered I’d make a free guide detailing everything I did to get better.
I have been anxiety free for a few years and finally got around to building that guide. I tried to paste it all here but the word count was too much.
“I don’t want to die but I can’t live like this anymore.”
Slumped in a bed months into severe anxiety and depersonalisation, I had reached a point I didn’t think would exist for me. For a period of time I felt the overwhelming urge to end my life. My whole world was falling apart and I didn’t know what to do.
My anxiety began with a pain in my neck. A gnawing pain became a constant annoyance. As a competitive martial artist injuries have been a regular issue, but this was different. I remember being in training and being hit with a wave of vertigo. I felt like a sailor at sea in gale force winds, my world was quite literally spinning.
I excused myself from the mat and made my way home, the feelings of vertigo temporarily went away, but the neck ache continued.
Days went by and my neck ache remained, one night after returning from training I was lying on the bed and reading the news. Out of the blue I was struck with palpitations… I had experienced a few panic attacks in my teens, over a decade earlier, but this was something else…. I was sure something was very wrong. I took myself to the bathroom, I was shaking, sweating and my heart (and mind) were racing. In that moment my life changed, panic took over.
I went straight to the Emergency Room and explained my issues. Immediately the doctors diagnosed me with severe vertigo from my neck issue and explained that my high heart rate could have been brought on by that… if you’re reading this article I’m sure you can see where this is going, the heart rate wasn’t being caused by vertigo but it would take a while for me the realise that.
The next few weeks were a blur, I couldn’t leave my bed after a few days and these bouts of high heart rate were becoming more regular. My bedroom was spinning and I was convinced I had a brain tumour or something equally as sinister.
I presented at the Emergency Room on numerous occasions. I went from competing in a combat sports competition to crying in an ER toilet within 3 weeks. No doctors could help me and they were dismissive.
Finally after weeks of hospital appointments and ER visits, one doctor sat me down and asked me if I thought it could be anxiety. I was so upset that the doctor wasn’t taking my suffering seriously “anxiety isn’t this bad, something is really wrong with me!” I snarled back at the doctor before returning home dejected.
Days went by and I had a dawning realisation that maybe the doctor was right and eventually I came to terms with the diagnosis. I thought a label would help me, but things just got worse. I had a number of “oh my god I’m actually dying” panic attacks and eventually I had to leave the city I lived in and move in with my girlfriend and her family.
The next 6 months were the worst of my life. The panic attacks became less frequent but they were replaced by 24 hour constant anxiety – at one point my left leg twitched for 7 days straight.
The thing about the brain is it has some unusual protection mechanisms. After this severe constant anxiety happened for weeks, it was as if I had burnt myself out, I had no more anxiousness left to burn and that void was replaced with crippling depersonalisation. I felt completely otherworldly. I felt like there was a pane of glass between me and everyone else in the world, I knew that I was alone and no matter how much I tried to explain to people they just couldn’t quite understand how I was feeling.
If you’re reading this I’m sure you know how hard it is to suffer with anxiety and how isolated you feel while you’re going through this. Even with loved ones supporting you, it is hard for them to truly empathise unless they have felt the abnormality of severe anxiety.
My anxiety continued for a further year before I began my comeback story and in this guide I am going to give you practical advice that will set you free. During my illness I read every major book in the anxiety niche and while I benefited from some I always felt uncomfortable that people were putting recovery behind a paywall so I vowed to share my steps to recovery for free and now that I have been anxiety free for a long period of time I am ready.
No Comments