Okay, so I don't want to give TOO MUCH personal detail away, but I will let you know that the life-changing life events were the death of my grandma, and the separation of my parents... and they both happened in the space of ONE MONTH of each other. What happened to my grandma was very shocking and very devastating for me; she was the first person I truly loved to leave this world, and I didn't expect it so suddenly. Before that moment, I barely worried about dying; I spent so much time stressing over the little things that I never really stood back to think that one day this may all be for nothing. I mean, I knew deep down that one day there'd come a time when I would no longer be here, but I think I just sub-consciously brushed this aside, somehow believing that that time would never actually come. Back then, I thought me, and everyone I loved, were invincible. I thought we'd last forever. But then I realised we don't. No one is indestructible, and no one is eternal. The death I experienced shook me to the core; it woke me up to reality, but in doing so, it also opened the door to a virtual world of paranoia and grief. What I mean by that is, once I knew death actually could take people away that I love, I found myself worrying that it would take away someone else. If it can take away one person, why not another? Why not my mother, my sister, my boyfriend? I started to worry that they would be taken from me too. And it was like I spent more time worrying about them dying than grieving about my grandmother.
At this point however, I was still shook up from the real grief that I couldn't really pay much attention to the niggling worries of others dying. It wasn't until my parents announced that they were going to split up that my worries expanded beyond what is normal. The shock of my dad leaving us robbed me and my family of our continued grief for my grandma, as this new development took the spotlight. And to me, it felt like everyone was leaving. In the space of one month, my grandma had gone, my dad left, and my family was falling apart. In a way, I felt that we'd had a stroke of bad luck, and it made me paranoid that this bad luck would continue. My brain going at 100 miles per hour, I constantly searched for any way that anyone else I loved would leave me. Everywhere around me, I would start to obsessively search for anything at all that could lead to some one I loved being killed. And it wasn't just big things, it was the little everyday tasks.... crossing roads, plug sockets, slipping over... anything.
When I was a bit younger, I had OCD. All the time, I would line up items and things in the house because everything felt disgusting if they weren't perfectly aligned. And I also had to do certain activities a certain number of times, otherwise something bad would happen. Thankfully, I managed to get out of that stage by pure will and determination to pull myself away from the habits, and now i'm pretty messy. But unfortunately, the OCD progressed into a worry obsession, which means I now worry obsessively because I think that if i don't, something bad will happen. This is why I worry about bad things happening to my loved ones; because if I can think of every possible way of a death occurring, I then believe that I have the power to stop it from happening. I do think that in some twisted messed-up way, that this is logical, but it is also self-debilitating, exhausting and rather pointless.
Over the past couple of months, I've had therapists in the form of the NHS, friends and family, and I've also had to argue with myself day in and day out to get myself to see sense. It is like I have two sides to my brain- the rational positive logical side, and the irrational negative illogical side which doubts everything the rational side thinks. The two sides are in constant battle, which as you can imagine is very tiring. The main thing with my worry though is that no matter how hard I try, I CANNOT control what happens to somebody else. I do not hold that power. This thought does help me relax, knowing that I don't have to come up with solutions to every possible life-threatening problem... as it is physically impossible. It would be very upsetting indeed if the worse were to happen to someone I loved, but worrying about it beforehand wouldn't make it any less sad. There is the belief that if I prepared myself for the worst, it wouldn't hurt so much when it actually happened, but even then I would still be very sad. So now I just think, what's the point being sad forever worrying about something that is inevitable, and will inevitably make me sad whatever emotion I use now? In other terms, being sad and worrying now will never change the inevitable sadness; and neither will being happy and choosing not to worry.
Knowing this now, I am very slowly starting to improve, and learning to worry less about something bad happening. Sometimes, I can feel myself being relatively calm for hours at a time, and I'm even starting to have periods of time when I'm not worrying at all. However, since I have both anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorders, it will take a long while before I'm free of my worry about death, and an even longer before I can start to stop worrying altogether.Therapy has helped me come up with techniques and apply them to combat my worries, but worrying is a habit I've had for a long while so time and practice is still needed to improve.
Now, I have good days and bad days. On the bad days, I wake up so very scared that something awful will happen, I worry excessively about every little thing, I cannot control my anxiety and I have panic attacks. But on my good days, everything seems much happier and simpler. I wake up excited for the day, use my rational head to numb my mundane worries, and get through many hours feeling relaxed and free of panic. It's an up and down roller-coaster that will eventually just keep going up. And I hope that when that time comes, I can look back at my mental health disorder in a positive way. Rather than regretting it, I hope that I will look at it and realise how much it helped me grow and develop; how going through the bad stuff was what I needed to help me eventually just see the good.
I wrote an anxiety post on my Tumblr blog a couple of months ago for anyone who suffers from extreme anxiety and worry. It is basically a bullet point list of things to help when times are tough; it includes lessons learnt both from my therapist and from my own experiences. Here is the link: http://because-its-amazing.tumblr.com/post/118795803487/for-anyone-who-suffers-from-extreme-worrying-and
I felt quite fearful of putting this stuff on here, due to it being rather personal, but sometimes I just need to get stuff off my chest and writing it all down helps a lot. Thanks for reading :) x
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