Anxiety is a funny old thing, sometimes you know exactly what you're anxious about, and other times everything is actually fine but your brain didn't get the memo.
I have struggled on and off with anxiety and panic attacks for pretty much most of my life, in a time when it was never really spoken about let alone dealt with in a medical setting. There wasn't much conversation around mental health, nervous systems why you might feel like something was wrong when everything looked fine from the outside - you just got on with it.
Because nobody really talked about it, I didn't understand what was happening. I thought that maybe this was just how I was built. You learn to push through it and tell yourself you're fine. Until you're not.
My anxiety came to a head in 2021, I had a three year stint of everything going wrong.
I had a major surgery in 2019 after a year of illness, shortly after that my husband had a stroke and then just as he was recovering my 24yo daughter was diagnosed with cancer.
Being treated in the New Zealand health system was difficult. For something so common anxiety can be surprisingly hard to get proper help. I was referred to counselling but struggled to find someone that actually knew anxiety the way I experienced it. I was prescribed Lorazepam, a quick fix and for a while that felt like the answer.
Moving to Australia I noticed a very different attitude towards anxiety. Lorazepam isn't something doctors are keen to use routinely due to high dependency issues. I went it alone again until I had a meltdown in a supermarket, which sounds ridiculous - but there was nothing ridiculous about how I felt right in that moment.
I couldn't cope, my anxiety had completely overwhelmed me. It was one of those moments when you realise you can't keep doing this so I booked myself into my new doctor who evaluated me and concluded I had high level anxiety and mild depression.
I was prescribed a very low dose SSRI,, and honestly it changed things for me. Not overnight but slowly I noticed I wasn't reacting to everything the way I had in the past. Things that would spin my mind into overdrive became easier to manage, for the first time I felt like there was a bit of space between what was happening and my brain suddenly going into panic mode. Now I'm much more aware of when I'm heading down the rabbit hole and I've learnt to slow down instead of living ten steps ahead in my head.
For me, learning about anxiety later in life was a light bulb moment. You can be getting on with life while your head is doing a hundred different things at once, you don't always realise how much energy you're using to manage it. Understanding the feelings, the overthinking, always being on edge - there was actually a reason behind it.
I think it's important to say that medication isn't for everyone, and there isn't one answer that fits for everybody. What works for me may not suit another. Talk to people and listen to their experiences. There are natural approaches available, being natural doesn't always mean it's better. It's about finding out what works for you.
I'm much more in tune with how I need to manage my anxiety these days, and I personally find a mix of low dose medication and natural works symbiotically for me.
If you've struggled with anxiety, you're definitely not alone. Simply understanding can be the beginning of feeling a whole lot less alone.
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