Anxiety & Depression Story
The goal of telling my story is to provide free help for people suffering with symptoms of depression, anxiety disorder, anxiety attack, panic attacks, mental disorder, and other related mental illness. This story is 100% true. I suffered with anxiety & depression symptoms for years. I was fortunate enough to overcome my illness & return to a normal life. Please remember that I am not a doctor, phsyciatrist or social worker. I have absolutely no formal education in any related fields. I am only speaking from my own personal experience. In telling my story, I am confident that I can help many people or their friend who are curently suffering with drepression and anxiety. This is my story.
I grew up without anxiety or depression symptoms
I grew up a middle class caucasian kid from a small town, USA. My parents were pretty conservative people. We attended church on Sunday as a family until I started working as a teenager. I found high school to be a breeze. I played football & partied often. To be like the other cool kids, I took up smoking cigarettes. I was luckier than most of my friends with the girls. I suppose most people thought of me as a pretty decent guy. To my knowlege, there was no family history of anxiety disorder, panic attacks or depression.
I think I was a pretty typical twenty something. I had finished my college degree a couple years prior & was working in my field. I was dating a lovely girl in her early twenties, dreaming about future plans. I had about 4 or 5 buddies who I considered close friends. On weekends, we would go out bar hopping & usually end up getting quite drunk. I had a roommate whom I had been friends with throughout high school. Overall things seemed like they were going well for me. There were occasional bouts of the blues, like when I broke up with a girlfriend. But, I hadn't yet experienced any real episodes of anxiety or panic attacks. It wasn't until my mid twenties when things began changing.
First signs of symptoms:
As I mentioned, a group of us were usually out at bars on Fridays & Saturdays. I noticed symptoms sometimes after a night out. About 4 or 5 o'clock the next day, I would get this bad feeling in my gut. It was the kind you get when you feel guilty of something. Yet logically, I had done nothing wrong. Why would I feel that way for no reason? I blamed it solely on the drinking.
Stress increased due to girl problems:
My stress levels increased bigtime when my girlfriend of five years left me. It was an emotionally devastating blow to me. I was making plans for our future together while she was making plans for our future apart. I spent many months agonizing over the breakup. It took me a couple of years to get to the point where I wanted to date again. I guess I was pretty bitter towards women for a while. In hindsight it was probably full blown depression.
Anxiety & depression symptoms are building :
I remember one day watching a television show on The Learning Channel about skin cancer. On the show, they talked about how you need to watch moles on your body for any signs of change. They showed one person who had a lump form under a mole. Testing proved it was a very aggressive cancer. Many people die within a matter of months because the cancer has already spread to other vital organs. Somewhere near the end of the show, I suddenly remembered that 5 years earlier I had discovered a lump on my back. I jumped up, went into the bathroom, took off my shirt & tried to find where that lump had been. Sure enough, there it was. Only now it looked like it had grown to be about as wide as a nickel. To make matters worse, it was right underneath a very dark colored mole. I was freaked out. I had forgotten about it because it was not easily seen or felt at the inside base of my right shoulder blade. What else could happen? Well you see, I didn't have any health insurance at the time. I started thinking, oh my god, what if it is cancer. I can't afford treatment. I would go broke.
After 24 hours of agonizing self pity, I decided I would have to get it looked at. I made an appointment with a local dermatologist. He performed a biopsy in his office. He removed the entire lump which was dug in about 2 inches into my back. He said not to worry. It just looked like a cyst. Still, it had to be sent to a lab to confirm it wasn’t cancerous. So, for the next week, I was a nervous wreck, constantly thinking what if? Test results confirmed it was not cancerous. What a relief. Looking back, I can see how my negative thinking made a bad situation ten times worse than it should have been.
The last straw:
The last straw which really put my anxiety on full steam was when I quit smoking. After the scare with that nasty mole, I promised myself I would get healthy. I decided I must give up the cigarettes. I went cold turkey. Twenty four hours later -----Bam! Massive panic attack. I was watching television with a girl I was friends with. We had just finished a casual supper. I'm just sitting on my couch relaxing after the meal. All of a sudden I noticed my heart was starting to beat faster. I'm thinking, “What the heck?” I didn't say anything to my friend. Instead, I just lied down on the living room floor & continued watching the TV. She tried making small talk with me not realizing what was going on. When I didn't respond, she asked if I was feeling alright. By now, the attack was progressing. It felt like someone was standing on my chest. I could barely eek out a breath of air certain I was dieing. She asked if she should call an ambulance. I nodded yes.
The paramedics arrived very quickly. They removed my shirt & hooked me up to a heart monitor. After ten minutes the symptoms began to subside. The paramedics said they could take me to the hospital if I wanted, but because I didn't have insurance, it would be a lot cheaper if my friend drove me there. So that’s what she did. After a thorough examination, the emergency room doctor said it was a panic attack brought on due to added stress of quitting smoking. She told me to go home & have a beer.