What Anxiety Takes Away ~GUEST POST ~

~ This week's blog post is another guest post, this time written by my wonderful mother. Next week's post will be a response to this one, but for right now I will let you read her words. ~

I must admit, the concept of anxiety is a completely foreign one to me.  I mean I get anxious sometimes; doing new things, going to new places, it can be scary sure but I don’t think I am going to die. 

"When Peter Parker tingles in the face of danger, it's called his 'spidey-sense.'
But when I do it, it's called 'generalized anxiety disorder.'" - Brian Gordon

I have experienced some depression in my lifetime.  There have been some very dark times and the doctor even put me on meds at one point. I was a stay at home mom with 2 little kids, we were in a new city, my husband worked a lot and there was no family close by for support.  I needed a little help.  When I told my parents, I had been diagnosed with depression and was on meds their response was that I needed to find a way to pull myself out of it.  Lucky for me that happened in a fairly short time frame.  I was off the meds within 6 months.  It was tough but I got through it. So, the idea of mental illness was not a foreign one.

The year my husband turned 40, he was diagnosed with anxiety.  He eventually was put on some very strong meds.  The year was 2001.  The Twin Towers had just fallen, my uncle had just passed away and we attended that and 2 other funerals in a month, I just started a part time job after years of being a stay at home mom, we had agreed to have a hockey billet stay in our home and, shortly there after, my mother-in-law had an accident with a brain injury.  My life had been turned upside down.  Trying to juggle 2 kids and an extra person in the house and a new job was enough but on top of it the meds made it so my husband would come home and go right to sleep.  So, I was single parenting on top of everything else.  Needless to say, I resented the whole “anxiety” thing.  I needed him to be strong for us and to be the husband I was used to him being, to “just pull yourself out of it”.  It was a difficult year and a half until he found some tools that helped him.  It continues to be a struggle for both of us.

When my daughter went away to university I wasn’t sad because I knew I had raised a strong, independent, talented woman who was going to take the world by storm.  I still believe she is all those things.

However, she started to struggle right away.  I pushed her to keep going.  “You can do this” I would say.  “Maybe you should try to talk to someone” I would say.  She made it through her 4-year program but when it came to light that she too suffered from anxiety and panic attacks I didn’t want to believe it.  No, no, no, how could this happen to my strong, independent daughter? She lived far enough away that I didn’t have to believe it.  Nothing ever happened when I was there visiting or when she came home.  Maybe it wasn’t that bad? I never saw it. It was easy for me to just put it in a dark corner and not deal with it. 

"Who people think can have anxiety: shy introverts.
Who can actually have anxiety: introverts, extroverts, shy people, social people, ANYONE, OK? ANYONE CAN."

I had grown to hate “anxiety”. My husband and now my daughter.  Who and what else is this damned disease going to take from me?

Samantha wrote a piece earlier this year for Bell Let’s Talk Day and posted it to Facebook.  It was a serious wake up call for me.  I knew she had anxiety and panic attacks, but what I didn’t know was the details of how that manifests for her.  She shared these details in this post.  I understand why she did not share them with me, she didn’t want to disappoint me.  I didn’t feel bad about that.  It was that I felt completely at a loss to help her.  From that post, I came to realize that I needed to take it out of the dark corner and deal with it, for her and my husband and for me.  I needed to be supporting her in this fight.

I approached a friend who worked in mental health to get some guidance.  She told me (twice) there was nothing I could do to help her except to support her.  That is not what you want to hear as a mother.  You want to be able to fix your kids’ hurts and this disease doesn’t have a fix.  That was tough for me.

I learned the hard way.  Depression, anxiety and panic attacks should not be relegated to the dark corner.  I had to let go of my hate and resentment. It is still hard for me.  I have shed a lot of tears as I have learned about what my daughter goes through.  I am sorry I did not support my husband more when he was suffering.  Unfortunately, I had to do what I needed to do to survive at the time and that was wish it away.  It doesn’t go away even if you ignore it. 

"sometimes it feels like everything is going to pieces
sometimes I feel like I'm going to pieces
even though I feel bad, I want to make other people feel better
everyone deserves the change to feel good." - Beth Evans

I am fortunate that both my husband and my daughter have found ways/tools to help them cope.  I sometimes must remind them to go back to those things and that is about all I can do; walk beside them, support them, listen when they want to talk.

It has taken me years to get here. I hope that anyone readings this blog that may find themselves in a similar situation is able to learn that lesson faster than I did.

"Courage does not always
roar, sometimes courage is the
quiet voice at the end of the
day saying,
'I will try again tomorrow.'"
                                                                                            - Mary Anne Radmacher