My journey through pain - 5. Chapter 5 -GAD

Generalized anxiety disorder. That’s what I’ve been told I have, by my psychiatrist. It leads to panic attacks every now and then, but by far the most debilitating thing about this is the fact that I am constantly worrying, every minute of every day. I tend to extrapolate the bad things that have happened today and think that they will happen every single day of my future, even if it’s not even a rational thought. I had a brief period of calm about a week ago, but anything can set the vicious cycle running. In my case, it was a visit to the pharmacy a few days ago. After a lot of talk with my doctor, I have decided to give psychoactive/antidepressant medicines another try. This time it’s a different combination, fingers crossed it will work. But when I got to the drugstore they didn’t have the medication that my psychiatrist prescribed and were rather rude, since the combination of meds that I now need includes some drugs which have been known to be abused by people in the past. It doesn’t happen often, but every now and then I have to deal with people thinking that I only want certain medicines to abuse them, even though I have a doctor’s note that says I need them. I get judgmental looks, suspicion, and so on. Or at least that’s how I perceive it. Normally, if it happens it sends me spinning into anxiety. I begin to think that nobody will have the medicine, that nobody will want to sell it to me despite my prescription, that I’m going to have to live through this bad experience again and again and again every single month of my life since the condition I have will probably be with me for the rest of my existence.

That’s when the anxiety becomes crippling. I feel all my strength and motivation drain out of me, and I just want to curl into a ball and cry, but that also scares me because it will mean that I am alone with my thoughts. It’s horrible. I fear my own fear, the way it makes me think that I won’t make it through the day, much less through the week, and that I won’t have the strength to go through the experience of going through the pharmacy next month. Then the thoughts spin out of control, thinking that maybe I just won’t go anymore, but then my mental state will be even worse and I might downright lose it, and end up a raving lunatic wandering through the streets in my underwear or something.

Right this moment, I look at those thoughts and realize that they are not rational. That some of them are even kind of funny. But when the anxiety attacks come and sometimes escalate into panic, it is impossible for me to tell rationality from irrationality. My doctor has said that I need to try and stop the thoughts by asking them several questions, and I thought I might share them in case anybody finds them useful. He said that, as soon as the anxiety begins, I should ask:

1. What am I scared of? What is generating this bad feeling?

This question is important because it helps to isolate the thing that is making you miserable. In my case, it was the fear of having to deal with judgmental looks when I go to the pharmacy. But the real fear was being denied my medication.

2. Has the thing I feared happened in the past? If so, what is the probability that it will happen again in the future? Is it a realistic probability?

This is where it gets tricky for me, because although I have had some bad experiences in the past, none of them have escalated into what I actually fear, and it is not rational for me to think it will. Despite what the bad thoughts might say, I am not doing anything wrong, I will not be denied my medicine as long as I have the prescription for it, and if anyone is indeed judgmental or whatever then it’s their problem, not mine. There is no realistic probability of me being denied the medicine that I need, and so my worry is unfounded.

I find this is the hardest part to understand while an attack is going on because the only thing I can think of is that it will happen soon and it will happen again, and again and again. Even if it has never actually escalated to the part that I fear. It’s just so bad that I lose the ability to stop myself and say: you’ll be all right. Everybody has bad days. Everybody has tough things to do. It doesn’t mean you can’t do them. You will find the strength when the time comes. I have actually been rereading some of the entries I have made earlier here on this ‘story’, which is actually a journal. When I am deep in the pits, and I read the positive things I have written, it feels as if somebody else has written them. But this is why I am writing this out right now, so that present me can help future me in a way. Maybe.

3. What is the benefit of worrying about this thing? If there is no benefit, why not just let it go?

Sometimes worry is beneficial. It prepares you, makes you think and plan. But when it gets too overwhelming then worry becomes something bad. And when it becomes chronic, it is awful. It saps you of all the strength little by little, and I must remember not to let it burrow deep into my mind because then it’s harder to excise it. So, after isolating my worry and determining whether it’s rational or not, I must remember to think that worrying too much about it will backfire and make me suffer.

So anyway, that’s what I’ve been busy thinking the past couple days. As you can probably tell, I’m on a roller coaster of emotions several times an hour and it’s exhausting. I wrote all of this down to fix it in my mind, and also so I can reread it at a later date. The weather is also getting me down a little, since we are about to begin December, and it’s the double whammy of colder months and Christmas plus everything it represents. The sky is dreary, but I have to remember that the sun will come out sometime. And that spring follows winter as it always has (despite the nagging technicalities of my mind telling me that seasons are just a consequence of Earth’s axial tilt, which itself is an oddity as far as typical orbital mechanics go. Shut up, brain.) I’m going to continue fighting this, because GAD for me has become the main source of my misery, not so much the external circumstances which trigger it. I must remember what I said earlier about fear, and I must follow my doctor’s advice and trying to ask myself those three questions.

Blessings to you all, and thank you again for reading.

-Albert