My Anxiety Story

I had probably what most would consider a great childhood and life. I have never been depressed (clinically) a day of my life and was successful in basically every endeavor I participated in. Now don’t get me wrong, life has put me through the wringer its fair share like most people. Including a major car accident with a drunk driver that claimed my best friends life. Life is life and we all go through or see terrible things eventually. But for the most part I had my life goals on track. I did suffer from some minor health anxiety if something weird was going on with my body, but that’s about it.

Things started to go wrong when I decided to smoke marijuana on new years day after previously not smoking for over a decade. I had retired from marijuana because it made me anxious and paranoid. I foolishly tried it again after my girlfriend had brought some over. Initially, I was not concerned and I started to relax. I lay down and soon became quite aware that I had bitten off more than I could chew and was simply way too high. I felt like I could feel every sensation in my body and this is where the overthinking began. As the high started to escalate into flat out being uncomfortable I started to wonder “what if I got so high that I would be high forever?” Logically, I knew this was not possible but what if I had somehow broken my brain and would be stuck like this? I tried to quell my thoughts with logic that it was just weed and I would be fine, but unfortunately my amygdala was off to the races.

Intense anxiety, fear, and panic hit me as I started to fear that I would be stuck high forever. I was working at a fortune 50 company and I deeply valued my perceived traits of being charismatic and sharp. So what if I ruined it all over getting high and was never the same? To conclude, I had an extremely terrifying panic attack and was high for almost 2 hours. My hands and feet were literally ice cold in my warm apartment from the panic. The next day I no longer felt high which gave me comfort but I was still a bit off. I felt shaky and more anxious than normal. All in all it took about two weeks for me to get back to normal but I did have a few more panic attacks in the process.

The real driving force of my fear was “what if I did something to my brain and now developed a mental disorder?” I had a couple high school buddies who were into drugs and after freshman year in college they came down with severe mental health issues like schizophrenia & bipolar disorder. After monitoring my cognitive functions closely for two weeks I relaxed since I had not developed any symptoms. Fast-forward about four months after that I had a very stressful life situation come up. It brought some anxiety that I had not dealt with before. My personality type is that of someone who is confident, a top performer, perfectionist, and creative. So it felt weird that this life event had me feeling more anxious than usual. I am normally someone who strives in stressful situations but I felt unease. I chalked it up to stress and moved on.

In September of 2018 things took a turn for the worse. My birthday was coming up on the 20th and I had planned a trip to the Caribbean to enjoy beautiful weather and relaxation. Hotel & plane tickets were already booked. September 5th came about and I had just gotten home from work and I felt a sudden sensation of sadness. This was about the 3rd time in a 3-month period that I felt it randomly and was not sure what was causing it. As an analytical person I naturally thought to meditate and figure out what was causing unrest in my mind.

Keep in mind, I am a spiritual person and have what I believe to be a close relationship with God. So meditation comes naturally and easy for me. When I dug into my thoughts I could not find anything causing the emotion so I gave up and tried to go about my day. The only issue was that I literally could not stop being aware of my thoughts. I was oddly trapped with a feeling of being hyperaware of my thoughts and it was extremely uncomfortable. I slept it off and the next morning I woke up to the terrifying realization that I was still hyperaware of my thoughts.

At work I could not concentrate because I was stuck in my head wondering when I would stop being so aware of my every thought. I was having conversations and was half focused on the conversation and half focused on why I was so aware of everything in my head. It frightened me to my core and made me wonder if all the panic attacks and stress had caused me to begin to lose my mind. After a week of it not going away I started to get terrified that this would be my reality forever.

I spent countless hours on Google, quora, forums, and reddit trying to figure out if this had happened to anyone else. Online, I ran into a few disorders that made me think my life was over as I knew it. It sounds dramatic but anxiety can cause catastrophic thinking and distortions. It also didn’t help that the Internet makes everything sound hopeless!

This is where I first learned of anxiety disorders. Particularly GAD (generalized anxiety disorder) and OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). Initially, I was scared because I was hyperaware but then it kind of transformed into me thinking I was going crazy. The way anxiety works is it leads you down a loop of what if situations. These what ifs never turned out well in my mind. I would read about an anxiety or a certain mental health disorder and I would start to believe I had or would develop it within the next couple of days.

I literally thought I had everything from schizophrenia, to bipolar disorder, to OCD, to GAD, to panic disorder, and finally PTSD. I could not believe that I had gone from a perfectly mentally healthy individual to this within a two-week time frame. The scariest part was that my obsessive thoughts about being aware had completely consumed me. It was so powerful I believed with all my heart this would last forever.

At my lowest point I had to call out of work because I was in a state of constant fright. I started to see a therapist with the encouragement of my girlfriend. Hearing a professional tell me that she did not believe I had some major psychiatric disorder, but merely anxiety made me feel a little better. I was stunned and bewildered that anxiety could be so intense. She believed I was developing GAD. I was determined to beat whatever I was fighting and starting learning about CBT (Cognitive based therapy) and ERP (Exposure response prevention) techniques.

I bought a couple of highly recommended CBT based self-help books, “overcoming unwanted intrusive thoughts” (by Martin N. Seif and Sally M. Winston) & “the power of now” (by Eckhart Tolle). These books helped initially because I realized this was somewhat normal and taught me how anxiety works. It made me realize that I was likely not losing my mind but really was just developing an anxiety disorder. Everywhere I read online was that anxiety disorders are basically manageable but unlikely to be cured. It gave me minor comfort in that at least it was manageable but still made me sad that this would be my life now. It took some time but I speak about how I actually overcame anxiety in pre-recovery and recovery. If you have heard enough and are ready to book your free 30-minute discover call, click below.