Recovery doesn’t always go the way we expect it to or want it too.

When you are going through anxiety, you often think healing means not feeling anxious anymore. You imagine that one day you will wake up and everything will suddenly feel normal again.

But that is not how it works.

Recovery, unfortunately, does not look like feeling good all the time. It can often be frustrating and feel hopeless and sometimes you need a friend to tell you "higher lows"

When my world became very small with Anxiety and Panic Disorder

There was a time when anxiety completely took over my life.

I did not want to go out. I did not want to see anyone. I did not want to do anything at all.

My world slowly became smaller and smaller until it was basically just my home, because home felt safer than anywhere else. Everything outside of it felt unpredictable and overwhelming.

Back then I would never have suggested going out for a drink. The idea of it would not even cross my mind.

A small moment of progress in Anxiety Recovery

Yesterday, for the first time in a long time, I suggested to my brother that we go out for a pint at the local pub.

“Fancy going for a pint?.”

An old english saying, we use to arrange meeting up with mates, for most people that's par for the course and might not sound like much to someone who has never experienced anxiety, but for me it was huge. That single suggestion was progress in itself. It was me having confidence in myself to do it again.

Even then though, I noticed something important.

The pub I chose was close to home. It was within walking distance and somewhere familiar, not somewhere I would go all the time but familiar enough to feel safer. Without even consciously thinking about it, I was already trying to manage the anxiety.

I was creating safety. Making sure I could get home easily if I needed to. Keeping my comfort zone close by.

And that is one of the most frustrating parts of anxiety, because you do not want to be managing it all the time. You just want to live your life normally without planning everything around how safe you might feel.

It is not the pub that scares me, it is the bodily sensations and symptoms of Anxiety

What I am slowly beginning to understand is that it is not the pub that scares me.

It is not going out or being around people. It is not sitting with a drink. It is the sensations in my body that frighten me.

The tight chest. The difficulty breathing. The dizziness. The nervous energy. The feeling that my body has suddenly taken over and I have lost control. The struggling to swallow when sipping your drink.

When anxiety hits like that, it does not feel mental. It feels physical.

You cannot turn it off. You cannot tell your body to calm down, no matter how much you want to. You are gripped with Panic.

Leaving the pub and the frustration that followed

I stayed as long as I could, trying not to fight the sensations as they came up, but also wanting to escape. I was chatting to my brother, which in itself was progress, even though it still felt like an effort.

When my brother suggested we leave, I will be honest, I jumped at the chance. My body was starting to scream at me.

As soon as we walked out of the pub, my body started to calm down. I was able to talk to my brother normally again. By the time we got home, I felt fine again. Which is progress.

And that is what frustrated me the most.

Nothing bad had happened. There was no danger. Yet my body had reacted as if there was and I was in discomfort.

I could not understand why anxiety was still there or where it had come from.

A conversation with a Friend

Later that evening, I was chatting with an old school friend of mine who has suffered from anxiety himself.

He understood exactly what I was describing because he had lived it too.I told him how disappointed I felt and how part of me believed I had failed because anxiety was still present.

He listened and then said something that instantly resonated with me.

“That's higher lows.”

The moment he said it, I understood exactly what he meant.There was a time not long ago when my lowest point was not being able to leave the house at all and I'd feel like crap with all the sensations going on.

Now my lowest point is being out, uncomfortable, but still doing it.The anxiety has not gone, but the low is nowhere near as low as it once was.

My baseline has lifted.

He also reminded me that healing isn't linear, sometimes its two steps forward, one step back.

Why speaking to someone who has lived with Anxiety helps

Talking to my friend helped massively because he has been through this himself.

People who have never experienced anxiety want to help, but it can be difficult for them to truly understand what it feels like when your body goes into survival mode. Having someone who has lived it understands immediately.They know the sensations. They know the fear. They know how real it feels. You don't feel like you have to explain it and justify you aren't going mad.

In many ways it is like having a mentor in business.Someone who has already walked the path can remind you that what feels like failure is often progress.That perspective can make a huge difference during recovery and one of the reason's I'm working on building a community for people with Anxiety and Panic Disorder to come together to support one another through this.

The Anxious Voice Telling Me Not To Go

Today I'm meant to be going out again, this time with a group of friends to watch the football. All day there has been a voice in my head telling me that I do not want to go. Stay home. Stay Safe.

Not because I don't want to see my friends or watch the football because I do, but because I do not want to feel the discomfort that comes with Anxiety.

That voice tells me staying home would be easier. That I can go another time. That cancelling would make today calmer, I don't have to feel the discomfort as badly if I stay at home.

It sounds reasonable.But I know what that voice really is.It is anxiety trying to protect me by keeping me comfortable. And if I always listen to it, my world shrinks again.

This is why I often finish my blogs with the same sentence....

The Only Way Out is Through

Because it is the truth I keep having to come back to.

The only way out is through.

Through the discomfort.
Through the fear.
Through doing things when you do not want to do them.

You cannot retrain the nervous system by avoiding situations. You retrain it by experiencing them and showing your body that nothing bad happens, even when discomfort shows up.

Every time I push myself to do something I do not want to do because of anxiety, and I feel the discomfort anyway, I am teaching my nervous system that it is safe.The longer I can sit with the discomfort the more chance I have of coming out the other side of it.

It does not happen instantly. It happens slowly, over time, one experience at a time.That is how I made home feel safe again.

There was a time when I felt uncomfortable at home, even being in my bedroom felt unsafe, and the only way I made home comfortable again was by pushing out of my comfort zone and making myself do thing's I didn't want to do by pushing through the discomfort.

And that is how everywhere else will eventually feel safe again too.

My nervous system is still learning safety

I have to keep reminding myself my body is not broken. It is simply having to relearn what is safe.

Anxiety for me now is my nervous system scanning for danger and reacting as if it needs to protect me.I am trying to teach it that these sensations are uncomfortable but not dangerous.I did it at home and now I have to do it whilst I am out. I haven't figured that part out yet but when I do I'm sure I'll blog about it so stay tuned.

Higher Lows mean Healing in Anxiety Recovery

If you are reading this and feel frustrated because anxiety is still there, please know this.

If your world is bigger than it once was.
If you are doing things you could not do before.
If your bad days are not as dark as they used to be.

Those are higher lows.

And higher lows mean healing is happening, even when it does not feel like it yet.

Because recovery is not about avoiding discomfort.

It is about walking through it.

One step at a time.

Remember the only way out is through!