Since I had done a post about my depression, I figured… well, why not add this in as well?
This seemed to be something that was exacerbated by being pregnant, although I think I’ve always had some degree of anxiety beyond what normal people feel in certain situations. When I contacted my primary care physician and explained to him how the 20mg of nortryptline that I had been put on was alleviating symptoms of depression, I added anxiety in there as well. I figured that if I was going to medicate one of them, I should medicate both of them… and as it turned out, nortryptline at a higher dose than what my neurologist had prescribed me could be used to alleviate symptoms of anxiety and depression. In my mind, unchecked, what can go wrong “does” or “should” go wrong, if any of that makes sense. Prior to beginning treatment for anxiety and depression, I always braced myself for the idea of what could go wrong actually going wrong, even though my mind knew that me doing this was beyond how most people normally… deal with things. At around the time that I got sick of having a chronically low mood and lack of desire to participate in hobbies and interests, I got sick of the anxiety and the hypervigilance. I wanted a change.
Until I began taking medication for it, though, I didn’t quite realize how much anxiety had taken over my life, and how the… decrease in anxiety (does any of this make sense? I hope it does) freed up parts of my brain that could be used on other things, or for other pursuits. It was like it became a part of my personality, one that I didn’t want other people to know about if I could avoid it, but one that crept out enough to the point that people close to me could guess or were aware that I had anxiety. I’m glad to have admitted that I have it, that it is a part of me, and am seeking appropriate treatment for it in the form of taking daily medication.
At some point in time, probably earlier on in my life, anxiety actually became a facet of my personality.