Anxiety can wreck a life, I know! I was desperate to find somebody who could offer anxiety therapy near me. It had to be in anxiety specialist who understood my situation, and I could trust could help me beat this condition. My journey through anxiety therapy began!
My Anxiety is in the family of Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I had lived with this for the past 14 years of my life. I felt like I had lived in a cage, no matter how nice my home, or town was. No matter how nice the people I had known were, I always felt trapped in a place called anxiety.
My anxiety was terrible!
The first anxiety specialist I went to seemed nice, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to feel safe there.
A panic attack was like the knife that cut my chest, into my heart. The anxiety was suddenly gone. The anxiety that I had had for the past 14 years became only fear. Fear that took the form of a heart pounding, and the feeling I would die without knowing what had happened.
I had to get over this.
Some people do not respond well to medication, but I had to have this gone. So I asked for a referral to a psychiatrist, who prescribed medication, I went back to that specialist and we had a very long talk about my life, and a lot of other things that had happened in my life, and I did not have much hope of getting any better without taking medication.
But I took it, I gave it to myself, I became my medication, I tried to take it away, to no avail.
I kept seeing the psychiatrist, and he kept telling me I was not, not OCD, and he kept telling me I needed medication to take it away. I was not taking my medication, I did not believe I was OCD.
And I had to get off of it, if it was only OCD!
A psychiatrist told me I was bipolar, and he was wrong!
So I quit taking my medication, which seemed to lessen my OCD for a while, but I needed to see someone who could understand what was going on with me, the real me, the bipolar, the OCD, they did not know what to do with me. They told me I was not bipolar, I was so confused.
The real me!
I went to a psychologist for depression and was given antidepressants to get off of them, which relieved my depression, but the drugs made me feel sick.
My doctor finally diagnosed me with Bipolar Disorder and a few medications to help me deal with it, which helped me to write down what was going on with me in an objective manner, and work to change it.
So I am learning as I go, now I am not as in love with my medications as I used to be. They do not feel like they used to, I have less urges, I have to work less to get things done, I have less energy, but I am doing fine, I just do not want to deal with OCD, it is not attractive, but I do not know what to do. I have learned from many sources that OCD is genetic, so I have to pass it along to my kids, so they do not have OCD as well.
I am in therapy now, I am not sure if I am on medication because I keep having panic attacks, I do not want to take pills to help me deal with OCD, or am I just reacting to my therapist?
I feel like I am on my meds all the time, I feel safe, I am not paranoid, I am not delusional, I have not lost my mind, I have just been in the dark for so long, and it is time to shine some light on the darkness.