I am writing this as a bit of an update. The past few months have been a struggle. As someone with severe health anxiety, when I experience symptoms of any kind, I retreat into my shell, which means, when it comes to writing, well, there isn’t much of it. There is a whole lot of searching symptoms on the internet, catastrophizing and time wasted in stand-by mode. By stand-by, I mean, waiting to make sure I am not dying, mode.
When I am in a health anxiety induced panic, I don’t have time for writing, because I am planning my funeral, and wondering how my kids will get along without me. I joke, because it makes it easier to handle somehow, but the truth is that I actually go there. I assume the worst and I run to it, until maybe the symptoms subside, or a doctor tells me I am fine, after every test is done known to man, or sometimes, because I just can’t keep up with it anymore and am exhausted.
The trouble in me has always been there. I am finally learning how to deal with these thoughts and turn them into something rational. Ever just get sick of something or someone telling you what to do? Yeah, that’s where I’m at with anxiety. It was in check so well until this latest episode. I have had episodes of lightheadedness, which can be anxiety induced, and, interestingly enough, I have had increasingly fewer episodes as I accept them as anxiety. So I am back, or at least trying to be back, as I peak my head out of its shell.
I have been reading and working through an amazing book by Katerine M.B. Owens and Martin M. Antony, PhD, titled Overcoming Health Anxiety: Letting Go of Your Fear of Illness, and my friends, it has been so very helpful. I cried hysterically for an hour after reading the first chapter. It was so absolutely my struggle and it helped to not feel so all alone in it, and to know there was hope.
I am not going to pretend I am cured. I’m just a newborn colt on scrawny, wobbly legs, but I’m getting there. I am currently keeping an “Anxiety Thought Record”, in which I will record my thoughts and later challenge them. I’m also turning in, praying, reading, praying, praying, and praying.
I want to take just a minute to offer some encouragement to those of you who experience the same struggle. There’s a lot of shame in it, isn’t there? I suppose there is shame in any flaw, but this one is especially hard. It’s difficult to admit that you’re afraid. No-one wants to be the kid clutching their teddy bear in the corner, thumb in their mouth, eyes wide, pants wet, sobbing for their mommy. WHY did I have to be that kid??! I’m not. You’re not. We’re just afraid. It’s ok. Go find a mirror, look yourself in your terrified eyes, and say, “It’s ok”.
Culture and faith culture tell us strength is the absence of fear. So then what does that say about us if we fear? Sometimes we don’t even have a say. Something happens. We feel something. We hear something, and there we stand, surrounded by a thousand screaming demons. We want out more than you know. We pray like a desperate David and still…we’re there.
Friends, there is NO SHAME in your weakness. There is only the potential for growth and the ability to watch yourself sprout great strength. I’ve been overcome before. Interstitial Cystitis was the one time I worried I had something and I actually did. After years of fearing the worst; it happened. I was lost for a while. But you know what? I needed to be, so I could find my way to a new, better me. The new me was strong: burdened, but beautiful.
My faith was not the absence of fear but the determination to hope and continue to walk forward in a dance of grace and love. Here’s the bottom line. It was never MY fear, or MY strength, or MY anxiety. We can claim what we want. Not my fear. Not my anxiety. My strength came through walking in the life that I believe a greater God placed before me.
FRIENDS! There is so much beauty in the struggle! Sometimes I envy the friend who has never worried a day in their life, or never experienced the type of turmoil I go through. Then I consider all I have learned, and the depth of joy I feel in the moments that are full of good and grace and I pity them. Yeah, the dark sucks, but the light is blinding, and it is just around the corner.
Beautifully written sweet friend
Thank-you so much, sister!