I left my anxiety in 2007

I have always been a tightly wound person, a bit high strung at times and probably not the easiest person to get along with.....although I do not like conflict and confrontation, so I am positive that much of my feelings were internalized.....an extremely unhealthy way to exist.

I have a small number of friends, who know me well enough to accept me as I am.....they know I need lists to keep my life in order, that I am obsessed with keeping my house clean (I really enjoy cleaning), I need organization, thrive on schedules and basically put a lot of pressure on myself to keep things perfect.....this is completely self inflicted on my part.

I never felt that I had anything wrong.... with these idiosyncrasies, I just thought I was a super-organised-perfectionist....I was way off.

After my 2nd baby, I felt off, and after a horrible health scare that landed my 18 day old baby in Hasbro Children's Hospital ICU for some "unknown" reason.....I was definitely not myself.
I reasoned it to be because of the scary events, but I was never able to relax after that.

Fast forward to when my 3rd baby was born. Recovering form my c-section, I was quite ill and had to go back to the hospital, making the recovery period longer and more difficult for me.
Emmy had problems with feeding and had severe reflux, which really added to the stress of a new baby, toddler and teenager!

As I started feeling better and things were getting back to normal, I just wasn't feeling right. The initial weeks of sleep deprivation were past and we had established a quasi-itinerary in the house.....but I was feeling so uneasy about everything.

I wouldn't leave the house with the kids unless I was with Chris....and even with him, I was always on top of the kids and thinking that something bad would happen.
I feared that if I was driving, we would get in an accident and I wouldn't be able to help my kids or even worse, I would have to choose who to help...it was awful and I confined myself to my safe bubble at home.
I found myself doing and checking things over and over and my head was constantly spinning.
I would sleep, but I would be exhausted all of the time.

The worst of all of this was that I constantly irritable and would take it all out on Chris when he got home from work.
I could manage things with the kids during the day, I would force myself to give the kids the best of what I had in me, but when Chris was home, he would take the kids so I could decompress and sometimes I needed to release on Chris....it wasn't fun for him.
I am so lucky that he is so understanding and such an involved father....I don't know if things would have been OK if he wasn't.

My problem became clear when Remily confronted me with how much different I had become....up until then, I was in denial and thought that I was stressed from a bigger family and that I was holding it together.....I wasn't.
I had been keeping active, taking vitamins, using essential oils, drinking teas and natural supplements to help ease my "stress".
Around the same time that Remily brought light to my world, my cousin was hospitalised for a full blown anxiety attack....she thought it was a heart attack, scary stuff.....that was when I decided that I needed help.

So began the journey to realizing that I had anxiety and needed medical help to alleviate the symptoms. My doctor is a wonderful and compassionate woman and mother, who reassured me that this was not something that I created and that there is a way out.
It has been 6 months since I have begun this leg of my journey and I have come so far, I feel like I should.
I enjoy my life and my children and I feel good about me....blemishes and all!
I have begun to practice yoga again with hopes to really find my center.....I have dabbled in it before, but I am much more aware of what I can obtain from practicing yoga daily at home.
I have resolved to try new things this year....a way to make sure that I do not slip back to the security bubble.....I am really looking forward to this year!

Hello to a balanced, centered place of harmony and peace.....see ya to the depressed, anxiety-filled me of pre-2008!




*I want to add that blogging has been so therapeutic for me....so thanks for looking!