My experience with anxiety after attending Talking Therapies

My experience with anxiety after attending Talking Therapies

As you may know from reading my past posts on this blog, I suffer with anxiety. After being diagnosed with anxiety, I got in touch with Talking Therapies where I had to answer questions to 2 questionnaires (1 for anxiety and another for depression), from these questions, they said that I seemed to be very anxious and depressed and they asked me if I wanted to do 1 to 1 sessions over the phone or attend group sessions where I could learn more about anxiety and depression but also learning how to deal with these problems. I chose to attend group sessions for 6 weeks. You can read about how I felt in each session and what I learnt in each session from my previous post.

In this blog, I'm going to talk about my experience with anxiety after attending sessions with Talking Therapies.

After attending these sessions, I knew why I was having these thoughts, feelings and how it affects people on a day to day basis however I didn't learn practically about what to do during an anxiety attack. This made me feel like those sessions were pointless however they weren't pointless at all. In fact, a few months down the line, I was to be able to control my thoughts and feelings which affected me everyday.

I began to start feeling more positive about myself and I didn't feel so alone anymore. I knew that I could reach out to someone and talk to them when I felt anxious or down. I started to have regular anxiety attacks again but I could tell myself that it wouldn't harm me. It is my body's reaction to worry and therefore I didn't start to panic as I knew what was happening to me. I tried my best to stay calm when having an anxiety attack. I also listened to a relaxation disc when I felt tense. This disc helped me to relax after a hard and long day at sixth form and it also reduced my muscle tension in my body preventing different symptoms of anxiety from occurring when I was worried or nervous. It also helped me to sleep better.

Then, a few month down the line I felt so much happier before becoming seriously ill again. My anxiety levels became too high which caused me to feel ill or become extremely ill that it constantly made me extremely ill. This is when I thought about on concentrating on giving myself a break so that I could recover from that state. I remembered that I shouldn't overwork myself otherwise I was going to drive myself down into that state again. A month later, my anxiety levels were up and down and I was all over the place as I didn't know what to do about it as it was affecting me during my exams and my studying. Once all my exams were over, I was really worried and I still am worried about my exams now but the best thing is not to worry as I can't do anything about them now they are done.

I started to get better and recover but recently over the past week of so I have started to have flashbacks and frequent nightmares. I can't say what I have been having flashbacks and nightmares about because they are personal but I will say when I feel ready to.

I hope that you enjoy reading about my experience with anxiety and remember I am here for you to talk to if you think that you may have anxiety or just need someone to talk to and help you through it. Anxiety is a awful feeling to have and I wouldn't wish it upon anyone.

Natasha