Anxiety - Body and Soul
Part 1 of 3 Hello Beautiful Ones,
I love you.
It’s been a while between blogs!
Life is busy and moving incredibly fast.I’m even turning 25 next year. No I’m not…My kids are a mix of near adults and pre-teens and the hairs on both the adult heads are getting more grey as each day passes.
Also, we take collagen now. Like real old people do. I asked my 90 year old Nana today, how old she felt – “ Not a day over 21 love.”
Time is a vapour. A simultaneous thief and gift.
So I’m gonna head right in to this convo: #Anxiety .
#Depression .
Yuck.
I wish I knew their names 20 years ago. It was weird growing up in the 90’s with quite a common heredity predisposition to #Anxiety , yet having no clue whatsoever as to what was going on in my body. Since a diagnosis later in my life, I have spent the best part of the last 15 years wrestling with God about my own journey through #GeneralizedAnxietyDisorder ( Generalised #Anxiety Disorder). In the very beginning I screamed to Him, punched walls in frustration, removed myself from social settings, blamed God, blamed myself. It wasn’t until I got some real revelations about God and some real education about my condition that healing truly begun. Here is a little bit of my story so far.
The Back Story :
Since I can remember, #Anxiety has been a part of my life, of me. I wasn’t just scared of the dark, I lived in constant fear of death of a loved one, of being alone, I had #PanicAttacks all through primary school which worsened in high school. I grew up assuming this all-consuming sensation that took over my body and left me exhausted and petrified, was normal. It didn’t have a name until I was 23 and gave birth to my first child Samuel. Sammy had some complications during birth and his heart rate dropped rapidly putting his life at risk. At a time that my Mum expected me to completely freak out and lose my mind with panic- I actually went numb. My body decided it was too much and shut down to protect the amount of #Anxiety my body had produced. Post-Natal #Anxiety Activated. Looking back- knowing my condition then would have changed everything.What followed was 3 months of the closest thing to hell I have ever experienced. I couldn’t eat for 3 months, I was given nutrient shakes (vom) made by my family to keep me going. I couldn’t sleep for 3 months. I know that sounds strange and extreme, but it is what it is. My body and nerves were so over-sensitised that sleeping wasn’t an option. Sleeping tablets did nothing. I found myself in the emergency room at hospital with heart machines monitoring potential heart #Arrhythmia / heart attack. My body shook with constant adrenaline for weeks, essentially, in a constant #PanicAttack for the first month of my child’s life. Thankfully my family loved on him like no other love I have seen.
As I began to see doctors and receive therapy and education I learned that what I had my entire life wasn’t a spiritual attack, it was a physical condition. Just as is #Diabetes , #Hypertension etc, my brain chemistry came in a certain package from birth and I now had to make adjustments, accept treatment and medication to help me live the best life I can. It was the best thing I have ever done in my life.
My journey with #Anxiety and God really began here. Years of wrestling where God fits into #MentalHealth and where #MentalHealth fits into me and who I was created to be.
Here is a few things I’ve learned along the way:
1) #MentalHealth is a result of chemistry not a flaw in character.
It is so easy to integrate the 2 but something so significant that I learned is that brain chemistry is as physical as #BoneCancers . If you came home with a broken leg or an open wound- you would be taken to the closest hospital for assessment and treatment. It feels emotional because brain chemistry is the control centre of emotions- that doesn’t mean what you are experiencing is made up or “in your head”- it is literally in your body and sending signals around your core system to feel and experience real symptoms. This is why deep breathing ( 4 seconds in the nose/ 4 seconds out t