This time next week, I’ll be speeding across the countryside on a train bound for one of my biggest nightmares—a writing conference in a big city. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted and everything I fear all wrapped up into one massive panic attack waiting to happen.
But let me back this train up to some sort of beginning. Seven years ago, every day felt like a nightmare. I couldn’t sleep at night. I constantly lived with symptoms that told me I was on the verge of a heart attack or a stroke. I was literally killing myself in a career that I had never even wanted but that I felt like I had to keep excelling at anyway. On top of all that, I was a few weeks away from my seventh maternity leave and being made to feel like I should be doing double the work each day to prepare everything my replacement would need while I was out on leave, but I didn’t have the energy to care about the unfair expectation.
This time, I was finally going to take a full three months to stay home with my baby, and I couldn’t wait.
Still, my anxiety was debilitatingly high at the end of that pregnancy (as it had been with every other one). It got so high that I felt numb, like I was buzzing around outside my own body while it walked through my days without me. But at 39 years old, I still didn’t know that I even had an anxiety disorder let alone that I was experiencing the effects of it. Sure, I knew that I got nervous about things that didn’t seem to bother other people—like so ridiculously nervous that I had to silently fight with myself not to pass out in ordinary, everyday situations—but I told myself it was just because I didn’t like the feeling of passing out. I told myself that if I could just keep fighting through that dizzying rush of a cold sweat, eventually I would grow up, I would get stronger, and my nerves would go away.
I was wrong about all of it.
Nobody talked about anxiety disorders when I was growing up. When they did start talking about them, it was always a bad thing, a negative stigma that no one who was in their right mind would have any trouble with. Obviously, I wanted to be seen as someone “in my right mind”. So, I kept my experiences to myself, fighting oh so hard to stay pulled together on the outside. Little did I know that by bottling up my anxieties for almost four decades, I was making things worse.
The summer after my seventh child was born, it all finally came to a head. I had a massive panic attack that left me wondering if I would ever be able to function in my own house let alone leave my house again. My doctor wanted to put me on meds, but I opted to start with counseling which led me to make some serious lifestyle changes.
Fast forward to next week’s train ride, speeding me through the countryside toward the conference—this thing that I’ve wanted for so long and that I’m finally doing for myself. It’s bringing all of those anxiety struggles back into play, but it doesn’t have to be like it was. For one thing, this time I know what I’m dealing with, and knowing that I have an anxiety disorder has made all the difference in my ability to live life. For another thing, thanks to the counseling and lifestyle changes, I no longer live at debilitating anxiety levels on the daily. This allows me to handle short, controlled bursts of higher anxiety producing times better—though not without a plan and some help/support.
So, what is my plan? Honestly, I am preparing for the worst. It has been a while since I have put myself in such a high-anxiety situation, and it has already been effecting my sleep for the last few weeks. I have notified a few others who will be at the conference about my struggle, and I have given them a copy of my self-care plan. By being proactive, I am doing what I can to make the best out of this situation for myself. That doesn’t mean I won’t struggle. But even if anxiety rears its ugly head, even if I am fighting through panic attacks in transit or at the conference itself, and even if I don’t sleep a wink the whole time I’m there, by preparing myself for the worst case scenario I know that things will turn out better than they ever could have this time seven years ago. And that’s a win that I had never hoped would ever be possible.
Kristen C. Strocchia—Children's Writer & Speaker 