It’s #TimeToTalk about my health and death anxiety

*Long read*

I have added to this blog several times over the last year and a half, but haven’t finished it. Either something on social media prompts me, or a conversation with someone about it.

Today is #TimetoTalk – a campaign to get people talking about mental health and this is a story about me and me mental health, so it seems pretty fitting to finally publish it today.

I feel that I should put a disclaimer to say that this might be triggering to some people, or you may just find it comforting that someone else has experienced something similar to you.

This blog you’re about to read is a final mash together of two drafts I put together – the first in July 2017 in the midst of my anxiety – which if I had published that as it was would read very differently than it does now. When I worked on a second draft, in May last year during Mental Health Awareness Week, when I was very much planning to publish it, I almost forgot how bad it had got. I’m in a much better place now, thanks to therapy – which I’ll go into later.

Now before I dive in to telling my story, I must point out that this is only my experience. Everyone experiences varying levels of mental health issues. Mine is about my struggle with anxiety, but even under that broad umbrella there are so many different variations. Mine is particularly related to health and death, which isn’t uncommon, but again is experienced in varying ways by different people. That was basically a really long way of saying everyone has a unique experience with their mental health.

I’m not sharing my story for sympathy, nor to care for trolls who might tout how it’s nothing compared to what other people experience. It’s just me, sharing my experience to hopefully help people who have or are experiencing it themselves, and to help those who are lucky enough not to have suffered with poor mental health to try and understand it.

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I remember my Facebook timeline being populated with posts about mental health in the past – mostly people sharing infographics or ‘talk about it’ posts during awareness weeks such as this. I always saw mental health as this thing that was important – I’ve known people who have really struggled with it – but never saw myself on the receiving end of it.

Really, my anxiety “started” at the beginning of 2017, but thinking back to particular memories during my life hint that it may have always been around – like watching TV with my parents at around the age of seven, when the weather popped up warning of an impending hurricane and I was scared we were all going to die as a result. Or when I was in my early teens on holiday in Devon and Cornwall with my family, suffering from immensely bad constipation which left me feeling so ill I thought I was going to die (luckily a laxative sachet fixed that one), or that time I had a panic attack on a boat trip, or on a late night car journey. Even in science at school where I was terrified of being near chemicals. I remember in one class we were doing some sort of experiment and were told we shouldn’t look directly at a flame, but it was perfectly safe to look at it through this blue sort of glass block our science teacher gave us. I looked away completely as was so scared of being blinded by it or it blowing up in my face.

But those fears came and went, until about two years ago.

Anxiety in paradise

It was just as I was setting out to spend 10 weeks volunteering in Kenya, that my anxiety well and truly kicked in. Arriving in Nairobi, my roommate and I both took our antimalarial tablets, and within about two minutes of each other threw them back up. (I later discovered that had been due to two things – 1. taking it on an empty stomach, and 2. lying down after taking the tablet, something you’re not supposed to do for an hour after taking it). The panic set in. What if I couldn’t take the tablets at all? Surely I was going to get malaria?

Anxiety about my health and dying cast a shadow over my entire 10 weeks in Kenya. Although I still had a wonderful time, it was tainted with several moments every day where I was worrying about something related to my health. Was it from being somewhere completely new? Was it the distance from a 24 hour hospital (a 40 min-1 hour trip)? Did they have ambulances that could get to me in time if something happened? Would I get the same medical care here that I would get at home? Would I ever make it home? Would I see my parents again? These were the questions that plagued me. There was one particular illness I was worried about contracting – rabies. I have no idea why this particularly worried me – perhaps because I had heard in the past it was near enough an instant killer (which turned out not to be true). My host Mum told us on our very first day there that all the dogs had been vaccinated against it, but it seems reassurance had no bearing on me. There was one particular instance where some new puppies appeared on our host home lot – had they been vaccinated? When one licked my foot and some white bumps appeared (and none of my housemates were home yet), I spent hours trying to access the internet to google the symptoms and breaking down into a panic attack before calling my team leader for advice. She called a doctor who said it sounded like an allergic reaction to the saliva of the dog – a hospital visit the next day confirmed this. Being in a country where there was the potential of all these new killers – malaria, rabies, snake bites, cholera…I couldn’t understand why I was like this – I hadn’t been like this in Costa Rica two years ago where there were similar threats, so what was different now? Was it about the length of time I was away for? These questions constantly floated around my head in worry.

I spent many nights, having what I later identified as panic attacks, at the dinner table where I couldn’t eat my food for a while because I was so het up, my leg restless beneath the table. I constantly asked for reassurance from my housemates about something new I had discovered, or something that was persistently worrying me. I constantly checked my pulse and to feel whether my glands were swollen – this was something I did at least once a day. I couldn’t turn it off and it was affecting my life.

When the time came to leave Kenya, I was sad to go but was equally looking forward to not worrying about my health any more. Funnily enough, on returning home, literally the day I got back I had some discomfort at the back of my tongue which turned out to be oral thrush – a side effect of my antimalarials which I still needed to take for the next four weeks. When I’d gone to the Doctor to get it sorted, I also mentioned to him about this floaty headed feeling I’d been having during my time in Kenya. Was it a side effect of the tablets or was it just anxiety? Maybe it would all be okay when I’d finished the course of tablets.

Matter of place

For the next week, as I readjusted to my surroundings, I felt like I was almost floating above everything – walking around in a bit of a daze.

Naturally, as any hypochondriac does, I googled it. Of course I then worried I had one of several different illnesses it was associated with, but I also found some forum chat about ‘floating head anxiety’. It resonated with what I was experiencing.

I even remember an evening during that time when my mind went into overdrive with worrying thoughts to the point where I was rocking back and fourth to myself,  fearing I was going mad and was going to end up in a mental institution.

People were starting to notice –  my sister noted that I didn’t seem quite myself, that I was much quieter than usual.

It took me a while to readjust to the UK again, but I started a temporary job that kept my mind busy and I started to feel freer from all of these thoughts and feelings. Being with other people generally kept my distracted from what was going on in my mind.

However, there were moments that it crept back in. This tended to happen if I’d read, heard or watched a story told by a friend or on the news about something that happened to someone. I turned over these stories in my mind; would I drink too much caffeine and die too? Or maybe I’d get a horrible headache the next day which would actually turn out to be a brain aneurism? Or choke on food and die?

Not a day went by that I didn’t worry about dying.

Panic

Then the panic attacks started. On the train on a way to a job interview, I felt like I wasn’t breathing properly. This lasted at least half an hour.

(When I originally wrote this blog I said this: “I try to remember a time when thoughts these bad didn’t plague my brain, and I long for that time to come again.”)

Months later, the wake-up call and final admittance that I needed help came after one particularly bad panic attack.

At the time, I was sitting on the top deck of a bus. Something came over me. Although I can’t remember exactly what it is that made me plunged me into the panic attack, it was usually triggered by not feeling quite right- then zoning in on that. Although I’d had panic attacks in Kenya (although I didn’t realise that’s quite what they were at the time), this was different. I wanted to get off at the next stop and run, but also felt as if I couldn’t move. I have no idea how, but I didn’t take action on this panic attack until I got off the bus, which must have been about 40 minutes later. I couldn’t quite figure out what had just happened. Was I having a panic attack that entire time, or had I managed to calm myself down? All I remember is the moment the panic attack first kicked in, and then getting off at my bus stop and immediately dialling my Mum’s number.

My Mum is often my first port of call for many things – cooking advice, asking whether a piece of clothing marked as ‘hand wash only’ is actually okay to put in the washing machine, or asking what she thinks of these trousers I’m thinking of buying.

This wasn’t the first time I had rung her about my anxiety – in fact not long before this panic attack I had rung her as I was feeling off, and actually ended up having a panic attack whilst I was on the phone to her.

She was the person who told me I needed to get help. She told me that she didn’t want it to affect the way I live my life. That made me emotional – the thought that I might have to turn to a professional in order to gain some relief from all these feelings and thoughts I was experiencing.

Although I’ve been pretty open and honest about my anxiety with everyone in my life since, my Mum was my only real empathetic shoulder through this period, and I don’t know what I would have done without her. My Mum has unfortunately suffered with anxiety for most of her life, so understood exactly how I was feeling. I have told her this many a time, but still not enough, so Mum if you’re reading this, thank you. Thank you encouraging me to get help, checking in with me, and always answering my phone calls where you had to deal with me crying on the other end. I know that can’t have been easy for you, to see your daughter going through what you have and not being able to be there for physical comfort. Thank you being my lighthouse.

I got home after my attack, and just laid on the sofa absolutely exhausted. All I knew was that I didn’t want that to happen again.

Time to change

Within a week, I’d made an appointment with my GP and described how I was feeling. He told me I could self-refer through the NHS, and signposted me to the place to do that. Within another week, I’d received a letter from them inviting me to a phone consultation where they would assess which of their services would help me best. They recommended face-to-face Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and two weeks I had my first appointment.

CBT very much focuses on practical changes you can make to the way you think and behave, as opposed to getting to the bottom of things in your past that may have contributed to how you are now – other types of therapy may take this form, but not CBT.

You break your problems down into sizeable chunks, and you work on breaking the negative thought cycles which are the basis of anxiety and depression.

You can read more about CBT on the NHS website here.

I started off having weekly sessions, but these slowly got further apart over the three or four months I went to CBT.

I quite enjoyed the routine I got into, going along every week and having someone to talk to. But I still wasn’t totally convinced – and met one of the tasks my therapist set me with skepticism.

Some of the things that I had been doing during this time of high anxiety was checking my pulse, if my glands were swollen, if I was shaking, feeling my forehead to see if I had a temperature, and googling symptoms amongst other things.

She suggested that I keep track of these, and write down how many times I did each per day. When she suggested it, I took the attitude of “well, okay, but I really don’t think that’s the problem here.” I didn’t even think I did them that much.

But after a week of keeping track, I realised that I was doing some of these actions up to 10 times a day. That’s not normal. As I had to keep track, I was more aware of when I was doing it. I went back to my therapist with my tail between my legs, realising that maybe this was contributing to my negative thoughts.

Over the next few weeks, I worked on reducing the amount of times that I did these ‘checks’ and along with trying to tackle my negative thought cycle in my sessions, I was doing it a lot less.

My CBT sessions were getting further apart, and I could see a massive improvement in my anxiety. I can’t quite remember how I felt once the sessions came to an end a few months later – perhaps a bit nervous, but I think I’d proven to myself that I was capable of managing my anxiety, and only time would tell how to go from here.

Reflections

I can confidently say, a year after my sessions ended, that I’m much better for having them. Reading back my original blog about my anxiety, written in the midst of the worst spell, I can’t believe how far I’ve come.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still an anxious person. I still worry about my health, I still think about death, I still sometimes have panic attacks – but the difference is that I can manage them. I can recognise the symptoms of an incoming panic attack, and can stop it in its tracks. I can reassure myself that it’s all in my head, and that I’m not in any imminent danger.

I have good days, I have bad days. Last year I got ill with glandular fever and lyme disease which took me a fair while to recover from and had lots of bad anxiety days in the following weeks.

It doesn’t ever go away, but I can live my life without the feeling of impending doom 95% of the time. It’s always a work in progress, it’s always hard work – but bloody hell, it’s worth it.

I admitted things to my therapist I hadn’t even admitted to myself, let alone anyone else. The CBT that I had doesn’t work for everyone, but I truly believe that talking to someone about what you’re going through does help in some way, if only a tiny bit. I am thankful that I’ve had a good experience with how my mental health has been handled by the NHS – I have heard stories of people that have had quite the opposite – but don’t give up. A lot of people won’t understand what you’re going through or be able to help, but there will be at least one person out there who does. Don’t put it off, even for a second. The longer it goes on for, the harder it is to deal with and unravel.

It is worth it, you are worth it.

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Some useful resources:

> NHS – how to access mental health services

Time to Change

And a song I recently discovered by Logic about his experience with anxiety, which really spoke to me.

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Featured photo: Gemma Correll