Have you ever burst into tears or locked yourself in the bathroom because your heart felt like it was going to explode and you couldn’t control your emotions?
Anxiety is an awful thing. It feels like the curse that just keeps on giving and giving long after the gift’s supposed value has faded away. My anxiety started when I was about 15. For years, I dismissed it, thinking it was just nervousness and that I shouldn’t worry about it too much. But as time wore on, it simply became a bigger and bigger problem.
Once at work, I actually DID go and hide in the women’s washroom because I was so anxious about a presentation I was scheduled to give. I had rehearsed it over and over ad nauseam, I had it memorized and had it reviewed and critiqued by a professional. I had agonized over the PowerPoint presentation until I could do it in my sleep.
But, when The big day came, I was absolutely paralyzed with fear
Why? Well, for one thing, I was up for a promotion, and that depended on my presentation. Additionally, my boss’s boss was there and he was going to be evaluating me, too. He was sitting in the first row of the audience. The presentation was also a rehearsal for a larger presentation I was going to be making at an upcoming provincial conference.
As I stood trembling in the bathroom stall, sweat poured down my back. I could feel my brand new purple silk blouse being destroyed by the second. The voice in my head, the one that constantly told me that I was never good enough, was shouting in my mind so loudly it drowned out the hammering of my heart. I had an almost overwhelming urge to urinate or throw up. It was the worst panic attack I had ever experienced.
I stood there shaking for what felt like an eternity until the cold sweat started to subside.
Two weeks later, I sat in my therapist’s office recounting the story and begging him for help. He prescribed Ativan, a drug that falls in a class called benzodiazepines which, unbeknownst to me at the time, are highly addictive. Taking Ativan certainly calmed my anxiety for a while but I soon found myself hopelessly addicted to the drug. Even thinking about trying to stop taking it threw me into another anxiety attack. Each one felt more difficult to manage than the next and I soon began to feel hopelessly trapped by both my anxiety and my new addiction.
I had been struggling with my BPD diagnosis since high school and had been in traditional talk therapy for years and none of it seemed to help. I had even spent a year in a famous psychiatric hospital in the United States which helped but none of it offered any real and lasting, fundamental change.
I was finally referred to a group that taught me something called Dialectical Behavioural Therapy or DBT
DBT is regarded as the gold standard treatment protocol for people with Borderline Personality Disorder because it teaches us specific kills we never acquired while growing up. These skills include things like distress tolerance, distraction techniques, mindfulness, how to be a good friend, and acceptance.
During the course of my DBT program, I learned about something called mindfulness
I began to do my best to practice mindfulness on my own and I began a twice-daily practice of meditation after purchasing a CD that contained timed, guided meditations. I soon discovered that practicing mindfulness really helped my anxiety symptoms, much to my surprise. Why?
Mindfulness helps with anxiety symptoms because it keeps you in the moment
Staying in the moment is crucial when dealing with anxiety because the stress of anxiety comes from either thinking about past events and what happened, how you could have done it better or differently or it thrusts you into the future with a litany of “what ifs.” In both cases through the use of mindfulness, you learn that those “what ifs” are problems that do not need to be solved at that exact moment.
I was able to learn how to tame my anxiety monster, put a harness on him, and send him back to where he belonged whenever he threatened to come nursing out of his lair. It took me about a year and a half of diligent practice each day but it worked. I put all this mindfulness expertise into a Mindfulness in London course. In six weeks you will learn everything I used to get my anxiety under better control, Mindfulness in London will get you on your way to a better happy, less anxious life.
I teach women how to love themselves from the inside out.
#loveyourself
#choose yourself
#womansuperpowers
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