7 Days Without Anxiety

Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash

I took a step back from blogging for a few weeks; every once in awhile, stepping back from any constant body of work can help you fine-tune your intention... so here I am! 2019, new year, fine-tuned me.

I also did something a bit radical as a Christmas present to myself.

I got rid of my anxiety... hopefully for good.

~ ~ ~

After I was paralyzed in 2008, I had to relearn three main motor skills: how to walk, go to the bathroom, and write. It's a surreal experience, to lose all of those things in one night, and then to relearn them all within a month again. 

Anxiety is a lot like being paralyzed. I would stare at my leg, willing it to move as I always had before. You don't realize how separate your leg and your brain are until your brain is saying, "Move!" and your leg doesn't move. In my anxious states, my mind would get stuck in loops. It felt like walking in circles, determined that the next go around would bring me out of it, but I'd be stuck in the same place I was when I started. I would will myself to take a breath, to get up out of my room and off of the couch, to listen to what my boyfriend is saying, to reach out to a friend I know would be able to help me... and I would do nothing.

Sometimes, it's hard to tell what's anxiety and what's not. That's the tricky part of anxiety that isn't like being paralyzed at all. It's very obvious that you can't walk or can't write. It's not as obvious that you're not being "lazy" or just "don't have the will" to do what is best for yourself... at least in our society. I hope one day soon we will all be able to know ourselves enough to know the difference.

It's been 7 days now, and I am hesitant to say that it's gone forever... but it feels incredibly promising. 

So, how did I do it?

1) Focus.

It has always been my weakness. I have 100 different interests, and in my mind they are all one massive universe of a singular nature - but to everyone else, I am a scatterbrain. So, therapy with me is no different. I have all of my issues laid out in a cloud of moments labeled in my mind as "things to talk about in therapy" and I can jump from issue to issue in order to avoid actually dealing with any of them. So I finally settled on a single goal: get rid of my anxiety.

2) Realism.

I knew I didn't have the time/money to spend on finding a regular therapist that I would really like for myself. Paying out of pocket is my only option, since as much as I love what Kaiser is doing for health these days, the mental health workers were striking for a reason--their ability to help patients is highly debilitated by their time/money restrictions. To put paying out of pocket in perspective, I hope to charge at least $75/hour for weekly sessions with individual clients. That's $225-300 a month. For at least 6 months to really get the most out of it. So... $1800. At least. But I saw my prior therapist for a year and a half (for a lower cost, about $35/hour). We did some good work, and I learned a lot. And that was a lot of money!

I also knew that if I didn't pay for something Right Now, I would end up spiraling into an anxiety-fueled Starbucks-and-or-shopping-spree bender in the spring semester from the stress I am anticipating will be coming my way, which would probably cost the same amount (if not more) in the long run. Not to mention the cost of being utterly stuck in mental hamster wheels for the rest of my life.

3) Leap of faith.

I took a major risk. I've been looking into online therapies, different possibilities online, weeding out the ones that feel like scams or false promises. I want to see if one day I, too, can be an online therapist, have my own business, do something new and radical and interesting and dynamic and completely under my own creative vision.

And then I found Haley. I can't even remember now how I found her, really.

She specializes in Rapid Transformational Therapy. No, I had never heard of it before. Though I had heard about hypnotherapy, and CBT is a very common therapeutic modality being used in schools, in therapy, in hospitals.

I really had only seen hypnosis in high school as a magic trick, and the concept of hypnotherapy was a bit daunting to me as I learned about it in grad school. Like many things, it's hard to be able to know if something is evidence-based. Anyone can write anything on the internet, right?

She has an option for a free possibility call before you even schedule and pay for a session, so I took it. I recommend this to anyone seeking ANY kind of therapy or personal connection or coaching or anything at all in which you are giving someone else personal information and emotional openness; talk to them first and pay attention to how you feel, in your body and in your heart - BEFORE you decide to go forward with any more sessions or treatment. Most therapists I know will do a consult call or initial meeting without cost or at very low cost. 

• Does it remind you of any feeling you've had before? 
• Calm is a good sign, of course. It is a baseline feeling, like a open table on which you can lay out the other feelings that come up for you when you talk to someone, and it helps you separate and identify what is yours and what is others' feelings and thoughts. 
• If you feel nervous, that's normal too - does it remind you of a nervousness you've had before something terrifying, but ended up being wonderfully positive, or does it strike you as something "isn't right"? 
• Excited / happy? That can be tricky too. Sometimes feeling elated will steer you wrong, like when you fall "head over heels" for someone romantically, and then you fail to see their shortcomings or boundary violations. Knowing that you are excited AND also have some feelings of hesitation and tempered expectation aka being grounded in facts and risks you're taking - this will be much more helpful.

I felt good. I felt hopeful. And I felt like she was really listening to me, she understood where I was coming from, and what I wanted to accomplish. She wasn't just repeating what I said back to me; she was connecting my emotions to my values.

So, I went forward with it, she recommended a payment plan and a customized amount of sessions (2 total) that we would complete via video chat. 

And with our first session... the weight of anxiety is lifted. 

I did not realize how heavy it was. 

I did not realize how much I felt it every day. 
I thought my anxiety was pretty 'mild' as far as anxiety goes.

I get that this can sound like an infomercial... I can't read too many of those things or I go insane. If you know me personally, you'll know that this comes from my heart, that my only wish in life is to help others to help themselves. 

~ ~ ~

Walking around without anxiety is most like the feeling I had when I put on contacts for the first time; I felt like I could really see again. You don't notice how bad your vision is until you're looking around and everything is so clear.

After I have my follow-up session in a week and a half, I'm going to write about this again. Anxiety has such a powerful effect; it is easy to also blame every "negative" feeling on it. And I know that this one session of therapy is not going to solve every problem I have. But what I've learned so far is...

Fear is not anxiety.

Anger is not anxiety.
Shame is not anxiety.

Sadness is a frightening depth. 

I am so much more than all of these combined.

& Love is a powerful being.