This is my first official blog, and firstly I’d like to thank everyone who has donated to help me get this started and off the ground.

Anxiety and panic disorder has been the most difficult and hardest journey of my life, it has often felt very lonely, confusing and at times I've felt like I can't carry on and there was no chance of recovery.

But with the support of my family and friends I have started to make huge in roads into my recovery and am feeling much more positive about life and feel that I can make a full recovery. If there is one thing I've learned during this, it's that there will be more ups and downs to navigate and I know I'm not out of the woods yet but there is real hope again.

As part of my journey I decided to share what I was going through in the hopes that it would help aid my recovery but also help others who are suffering similiarly. I know how alone and lost I felt and I want to build a community for people suffering from anxiety, and create a platform where we can share with each other tools and techniques to recover.

In my search for healing I have learned many things that have helped me and I feel that I should share those with others as it's not easy to find.

My first goal was to raise enough money to be abe to start the blog and host a website for 2 years which I've been able to do so far. Now that the blog is fully up and running (Today 😀) my focus is going to be on building the website, creating a podcast and comminty space for people to come and recover.

Creativity has been one of the key tools in my healing and this project gives me purpose, focus, and a way to help others. So if you’d like to support the journey, please keep the donations coming, I’d really appreciate it. Thank you.

My Journey Into Anxiety and the Path to Recovery

The first instance came in the form of a panic attack, completely out of the blue. I was in the gym,like I had been pretty much every day of my adult life I’ve always worked out, stayed fit and healthy, and looked after myself.

I was doing my normal workout routine when I started feeling funny, and suddenly I got this sensation that something wasn’t right. My body went completely numb, I felt spaced out and disorientated, I sort of froze like a deer in headlights and dropped the weights I was holding without putting them away, and ran out of the gym, not knowing what was happening. I sat in the car shaking and crying, feeling all kinds of weird sensations in my body. I ended up ringing my sister to come and pick me up as I didn't feel like I could drive home. I genuinely had no idea what was going on with me.

After that incident, I tried not to think about it too much and carried on with life. But whenever I returned to the gym, I’d feel tight and tense and think, “There’s something wrong.”

I also used to run a lot, 3–4 times a week and on those runs I started feeling uncomfortable in my own body. I kept checking in with myself, almost obsessively. My breath felt off, my chest felt tighter than it should and my neck and shoulders would feel abnormaly tight and tense making it difficult to breathe.

Then one day I went to the cinema. About 10 minutes into the film, I had the same sensation I’d had in the gym: my body went numb, I started fidgeting and getting anxious to the point where I started twitching really badly, and eventually I became so uncomfortable that I had to leave. I ended up sitting in the car trying to calm down, still confused as to what was going on. Was I having a heart attack? Was my body starting to break down? What was going on?

As time went on, I became more anxious whenever my body gave me these strange sensations. Eventually I had another panic attack where I genuinely thought I was having a stroke. I was out on a walk and all of a sudden I felt like I was slurring my words, felt dizzy like I was going to fall over, and completely lost control. I grabbed hold of the person next to me to steady myself. I tried recalling my name and couldn't and instantly thought I was having a stroke. Somehow, in a blur I managed to call an ambulance, and was taken to hospital spening three days in A&E. I had all sorts of tests on my heart and bloodwork, confusingly everything came back abolutely fine, except I was a little low on my phosphate levels due to the panic and heightened state of nervous arousal. Essentially I was physically fit and healthy but they disagnosed me with Anxiety and Panic Disorder, which I struggled to get my head around for a long time when it was my physical body that felt so bad.

After going into hospital things became a lot worse...

I kept thinking, “I’m not an anxious person.” I’ve snowboarded, jumped out of airplanes, bungee-jumped, run my own business, travelled the world, spoken in public, I’ve never been really been scared of anything, how could I possibly have anxiety? At the time I didn’t know the difference between anxiety as a condition and being anxious. I also became very self aware that I had a "mental illness" did that mean life as I knew it was over?

Eventually, as the symptoms became worse I became housebound for about five months. I couldn’t leave the house. Every time I tried to go for a walk, I’d start shaking, feeling like I was going to fall over. I’d feel dizzy and disorientated. I couldn’t eat meals with my family, couldn’t sit at the dinner table, couldn’t talk to people.

Most days I was in bed, shaking, feeling dizzy and completely uncomfortable in my own skin. I reached a point where I didn’t know how I could carry on. I was terrified that my body had given up on me. I didn’t know how to recover, where to start, or anyone else who had been through this.The Dr's in the hopsital had wanted to put me on meds but I didn't want to take them as they expained the side effects were everything I was feeling. And after some reasearch I found that a lot of people on meds often felt worse and only really recovered after coming off them. The problem was I didn't really know what I was facing or if there was even a way to recover. I genuinely thought I was alone and the ony person suffering from this. I'd never come across anyone wth Anxiety and didn't know any better.

I’m not really a religious person, but at night I found myself praying for a way to recover. I began researching everything I could on anxiety, but I was finding a lot of people who said they had suffered for 20 plus years and were still scared to leave the house. I didn't want this to be me but at the same time I was in so much pain and felt so scared I thought this was it, this would be my life from now on. I was getting frustrated at mysef for feeling this way. I've always prided mysef on being strong minded and strong willed, I felt like I could do anything if I put my mind to it and here I was suffering from mental illness. It crushed me.

I was never suicidal but I definetely had thoughts that I couldn't carry on and that I just wanted this pain to stop. I think in the end I scared myself with the thoughts I was having about not being able to carry on. I’ve always been goal-oriented, focused, and positive. To suddenly have these dark thoughts terrified me. It scared me enough to fully commit to finding a solution.I literally told myself if I didn't find a way to recover by my birthday then I may as well end it.

I was trying to find ways to heal myself. I was on the waiting list with the NHS for therapy but there was an 11 month wait before I could get an appointment. I knew I couldn't wait that long and needed to recover sooner.

It was my brother who when speaking with a friend told him she knew someone who had suffered from Agoraphobia, panic disorder and anxiety too but had started to recover and was now out and about livng life again. That is what I needed to hear, someone who had overcome it and was suceeding in life again.

My brother put me in contact with Danielle and the support and guidance she has given me over the last 18 months has been immense. At the beginning I'd be messaging her all the time as I had noone else to talk to about it, that had experienced it or could relate to what I was going through. She would send me all sorts of practices and healing methods or videos on anxiety explaining what it was and how it affected the mind and body.

With her guidance and putting things into practice I started to make some progress with my healing, even though it felt like an uphill battle at times there were little green shoots of hope I could cling onto.

At first it was really difficult I would push myself to do things like walking to the supermarket or trying to go to a resteraunt for a meal, I would have panic attack after panic attack and would feel dreadful for days afterwards but I kept pushing myself and putting myself in the uncomfortable postions, trying not to be scared of the sensations and allowing them.

In trying to push myself to get out and about again I felt really weak and self concious and that I would be judged for being this way. It was in that moent I decided I needed to face this head on and if I was going to get better I would need the support of my family and friends. I felt that if I was honest about how I was feeling and what i was going through maybe people would understand and I wouldn't need to feel embarressed about having to leave or step outside if I was having a panic attack.What i wasn't expecting was the amount of support I got from people from all walks of my life reaching out to help and offer their own stories of recovery and overcoming things. it was genuinely touching and very emotional to get that level of support. This helped me to start stepping outside again and doing things that had become really difficult as I felt I had support.

What I didn’t know then, but understand now, is that anxiety is your nervous system trying to protect you. After years of stress the nervous system can get stuck in fight-or-flight mode, and you have to recondition your body and mind to know it’s safe again.This doesn't happen over night and takes time. Everytime you stimulate the nervous system you have to allow it time to come back down to base level and feel calm and at peace again. This is really difficult when you feel so awful and scared and takes a lot of mental strength and being kind to yourself.

I was someone who was always on the go, pushing myself to do more and be more but with this I had to become ok with doing nothing, (which is extrememly hard when you feel like you are missing out on life and it's passing you by) allowing myself time to rest and recover and not beat myself up by thinking I was failing or not good enough.

Whilst I'm still recovering and not back at my functioning best, I am a million miles away from my darkest days and have learned so much,not just about myself but about the human mind, body and spirit and how its all connected. I've learned breathing techniques and started to meditate and learned how to tap into my intuition more.

I've also seen a side of people I didn't know existed. In being vunerable about my own difficulties I have found support in paces I didn't expect, people have opened up to me about their own struggles and difficuties and shared how with me sharing what I've been through they've been able to make changes and heal. That feels very special and is why I want to write this blog and create a lace for people to share and feel safe.

So over the coming weeks and months I'm going to be sharing different parts of my recovery and things that have worked and things that haven't in the hope that I can help others.

Thank you for reading abd remember if you are suffering from anxiety the only way out is through.To get better, you have to step out of your comfort zone slowly, consistently, and with compassion for yourself.

And that’s what I did and you can too.

Graeme