- suzannedenigris
Ep 8 - #anxiety
In this episode I talk about how I don't think anxiety was even a thing growing up in the seventies, how my husband leaving me triggered something inside me and brought me right back to my childhood and how gaining more of an understanding of how my mind works has allowed anxiety to have less control over me.
There was no after school program. No car line for getting picked up and dropped off. There were no packed lunches in bento boxes with hydroflasks. There were no family vacations or picnics in the park. There was no allowance given. There were no explanations or discussions or sharing of opinions. There was no routine or consistency. There was alcohol. There were drugs. There was because I said so. There was shut up before I give you something to cry about. There was chaos. There was dysfunction. And there was abuse.
When my husband told me he was leaving me, I was crushed. Not only did I feel blindsided and like my pride was shattered, but something inside me was triggered. This was yet another transition. A sudden, unexpected change. And it was out of my control. It somehow brought me right back to my childhood. It was as though the lid was blown off the jar of awful feelings I had tucked away and pretended didn’t exist anymore. My anxiety intensified.
When I started following certain hashtags on social media like anxiety, therapy and childhood trauma, I found that there are entire communities of people out there that think and react and feel exactly the same way I do. I learned that health anxiety is a real thing and not a special kind of crazy that I invented. I’ve learned that most of my reactions are because of coping mechanisms I developed in order to protect myself. Gaining more of an understanding of these things has allowed me to drop the judgement of myself for not being what I thought was normal.