The start of it all

Before i start...

I am intending on making this a fairly frequent blog for the next little while at least.  It's as much for me as for everyone else.  To help those that don't know to understand.  To help show other people suffering from Anxiety and other similar disorders that there is a way through it.  That you will survive and you can find happiness again.  There is light at the end of the tunnel.

About 6 months ago I decided enough was enough.  So I got my write on and penned a letter to all of my close friends and family telling them that I hadn't been very well for the past year.  It was a pretty soppy have a cry, spill my guts and feel all good about myself style letter that I hadn't really thought I was going to write... But it turned out to be such a positive thing to do.  All of a sudden I was getting emails from friends who I thought had known what was going on telling me they had no idea of what the story was.
The response I got from people really helped to give me the confidence to be open with people about what was  going on with me.

Since then I have ended up doing quite a bit of finding out that there are actually a lot of us out there who suffer from much the same disorders.  Varying degrees, but the same disorders or something very similar
Actually I have been doing a bit of helping others through the same thing that I have been going through.  so I decided that it's about time I shared some of the stuff that I have been doing over the last 14 months to help get back on track.

For a long time anxiety was suppressed in my subconscious and didn't really bother me too much.  I just started taking on more and more and more and more stuff until one day after spending 5 weeks at sea and then 5 weeks at home fixing unexpectedly broken vehicles I snapped.  Sadly for me it was nearly a career ending snap.  No, not like flipping your boss the finger, or abusing a customer.  I had a full scale panic attack while I was doing my job, at sea.  emergency evacuations for a suspected heart attack.  The repercussions of that day have cut deep into my psyche, and its been a long hard road to turn my thoughts around from the daily battles I have faced in the nearly 500 days since it happened.

When I got home, possibly the biggest battle (aside from the one I had with myself) was the battle I had with other people.  Trying to get them to understand that I couldn't just "Snap out of it".  That they cant just wave a wand over me or give me a hug and everything will be OK.  It took a few tense moments with my wonderful wife for her to begin to even get a grasp of what was happening to me and why.  It wasn't her fault.  she just didn't understand what was happening to me.  How could she? our dynamic had suddenly and unexpectedly changed.  For her, overnight I went from being this rock who could handle any situation, who looked after her through some really tough times.  To being this infantile babbling mess.  Shit I couldn't even close the door to the bathroom when I was having a shower for the first few weeks that I was home.  I was that bad.
She has been truly amazing throughout this whole saga,  once we both had a better idea of what kind of support I needed, she really stepped up to the plate.  Both in support and in challenging me to push my boundaries.
My family were quite shaken up by it all too.  I had always been such a strong independent person, and overnight I went from that.  To withdrawn, quiet, sad and lonely.  Nobody new how to deal with it.


I started seeing a psychiatrist fairly early on in the piece and low and behold... it actually really helped.  I learned lots of techniques and skills that I could apply when I started feeling bad and began to evaluate why it had happened to me in the first place...  It takes a lot of courage to look in the mirror and face your demons.  For me it wasn't one of those stare in the mirror type revelations where I got down and wrestled with myself... and came out of it better off.  It took me months to even recognize the patterns I had created and my triggers for anxiety.

The next few blogs are going to combine a bit of how to stuff and a bit of how my life has panned out.  Leading up to what i'm doing now and my plans for the future.  Please feel free to share this with anyone you know that may benefit from reading this.  If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask.  I'm more than happy to discuss just about anything.

Thankyou for taking the time to read this