Photo by Hailey Reed via Unsplah

By Michelle Gaudet
@michellegaudet

The moment I realized that my anxiety had gotten out of hand was the first night of my honeymoon when I woke up in the middle of the night in our hotel room in a panic, reaching over to my husband’s side of the bed to check that he was still breathing.

I had awoken to the acute fear of the stillness next to me, my mind already imagining my husband’s skin cold to the touch, the feeling of dread deep in my chest. He slept on, unaware of this episode until I spoke to him about it the next morning, and he agreed that I had been more on edge lately than usual. This wasn’t a surprise to me, as I had already attributed my increased anxiety to the pace the last few months had taken; the stress of wedding planning, the anticipation of some major life changes, the neverending to-do list, not to mention the nearly 30 hours of travelling we had just completed. But I also recognized how deeply unsettling and irrational it was to fear my husband’s death – nightly for the rest of our trip, as it would turn out.

A few weeks later, I sat in an unfamiliar doctor’s office and accepted a prescription for Zoloft, a popular selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), often prescribed for generalized anxiety and depression. And so began my first experience with taking medication for the anxiety I had lived with for as long as I could remember.

I can’t pinpoint when my anxiety started exactly, because I’m sure now that it was always there. I do remember when I first recognized what I had as generalized anxiety and then started noticing it in every aspect of my life. In my year off between high school ending and university beginning, my life had begun to feel like it was unravelling. The uncertainty of the future had me feeling anchorless, and my negative reactions to change grew into a steadily growing suspicion that my perfectionism, intensity, and need to control everything might not be a healthy way of being all of the time, despite my defensiveness.

My excuses for flaking on plans escalated from defending my introversion and needing alone time, to avoiding situations requiring small talk altogether. My need to control situations started causing fights with my partner, and my stress-induced scattered thinking became more exhausting than I could handle. At some point, I came across the term ‘generalized anxiety’ and the figurative light bulb went off in my brain. I researched and read everything I could about it; I bought workbooks and found online resources that directed me to mindfulness and therapy. I started questioning my stress-induced quirks as personality traits and began to consider them more as results of anxiety.

Throughout the remainder of university, I handled my anxiety fine enough. When I became stressed and overwhelmed, it felt all-consuming but I had long ago learned how to manage myself. That’s not to say managing it was healthy for me. Overthinking, ruminating, and overreacting were commonplace for me. I developed painful canker sores in times of significant stress. I bit my fingernails down to the quick, developed some wonderful adult acne, and flew off the handle at the slightest upset or disappointment.

In the chaos of student life, I grew used to the constant spinning. I accepted my thoughts circling in my head over and over all day long as how I was wired. My anxiety would manifest most often in controlling urges. I tried to stop my then-boyfriend from making plans with friends because I would spend the entire time worrying about him. Something could happen to him, those sirens I hear on the highway at night could be for someone I know. I insisted on being the one to drive everywhere because I trusted no one else to be a safe driver. I dreaded going to work at my customer service job on the days when I couldn’t bring myself to carry on conversations with strangers. And I could feel justified in my avoidance and control because it made my anxiety a little bit better.

I defended the actions I took to avoid situations that caused my irrational anxiety to nearly no end. Avoidance and control was the only thing that gave me relief. Until that night on our honeymoon when I imagined my husband had stopped breathing. My anxiety was no longer under my control, and I recognized how much it was affecting my daily life.

I’ve been taking medication for three months now, and I am noticing the subtle changes. I don’t want to over or under-sell it, because every person’s situation and reaction to medication is different. But I know now that I should have reached out to someone about my anxiety a long time ago. We all tend to think our own issues don’t warrant the “drastic” solution of medication or therapy, but as my counsellor later reassured me, I was suffering. Maybe medication will be the thing that helps me tackle my anxiety, maybe it will bring me closer to a normal level of anxiety. Maybe it will help me stop overthinking so much, or maybe I’ll have to still do that work myself. I’m still finding out these things, but so far medication hasn’t hurt.

What taking medication for my anxiety has taught me is how to keep a closer eye on myself. I’m more self-aware than ever and more capable of separating my anxious thoughts from my more rational ones. I can step outside of the anxious thoughts in a way and note oh, I’m feeling overly anxious about this and then use the strategies and tools my counsellor and the books she has recommended have taught me.

And although I advocate for mental health awareness and care about removing the stigma around medication, the idea of publishing this essay under my name is terrifying. But judgement by others is another thing my anxiety likes to make me fear, so I’m making finger guns at my new mental space and deleting the name Anonymous at the top.

Michelle Gaudet is a communications nerd, a bibliophile running out of shelf space, and a wizard. She is happiest when reading outdoors, listening to country music, and carrying her cat around the house.