Sarah Surette recalls the time when anxiety attacks ruled her life — and how she finally overcame them.
I have an unwelcome friend.
It is a silent demon that only I can feel.
Sometimes it falls asleep and I can feel my soul taking a deep breath, but I know it is still there and will wake up again.
Anxiety wages a constant war in my mind and body.
Inside I am nauseous; my heart runs fast and does somersaults.
It feels as though I have been drinking too much coffee. My brain is forgetful and has a hard time keeping up.
I hide it from most people, save my husband, close family and a few friends.
I don’t want my children to think of their childhood and remember their mother this way.
When my friend is awake and coursing through my body, I let the kids watch too much TV and I am a bit more irritable.
We eat more fast food than usual and there are usually more dirty dishes in the sink than normal.
We run more errands and go to the playground more often.
Sometimes I don’t want to leave the house so I invite friends to come to me for coffee and playdates.
Sometimes I can’t stand being inside so the kids and I will spend the day out visiting family or friends.
If I could somehow eradicate that part of myself from my body, I would.
I would find a way to lock it away forever so that it could never find me again.
Anxiety has thrown up so many roadblocks in my life. How do you get past an enemy that is stuck inside of you?
Cognitive Therapy has been helpful.
Two weeks ago I went into the office having reached my limit.
I have avoided using medication to cope in the past, but was ready to try it if I couldn’t manage to get my mind back on track.
It had been a full week of severe anxiety, worse than I had ever felt in my life.
My therapist walked me through a 15-minute meditation.
After the meditation, I could feel my friend falling asleep.
Throughout the following week, I meditated twice a day. I made the time for it because there was simply no other option.
Every day, the anxiety continued to sleep and every day I was discovering more things about myself that had been hiding for so many years.
For the first time in a long time I felt joyful and at peace.
My days were no longer being spent coping with my anxiety but dreaming and planning and creating.
I had more energy. I felt so very alive and happy.
A full week is the longest that my friend has fallen asleep.
The wonderful thing about meditation is that doing it perfectly isn’t the right way to do it.
The intrusive thoughts that come with anxiety will make their way into the front of your mind.
It is completely normal for thoughts to come and go through everyone’s mind.
The problem that people with anxiety face is that the thoughts don’t go.
Our fight or flight mechanism is in hyper-drive and we have a hard time letting go of the thoughts that would otherwise come in and go out.
Meditation allows those thoughts to enter.
The exercise involves recognising when your mind is straying from the exercise and choosing to let the thoughts go without judgement.
After a few days of meditating twice a day, I noticed that my mind was doing this when I wasn’t meditating.
An intrusive thought would enter and, once I realised it was there, I had a new ability to simply let it go.
Sometimes it isn’t that simple. I was about to take the kids to my sister the other day and panic hit me like a brick wall.
Nothing was wrong, nothing had scared me. I stopped in a parking lot, put on some quiet music for my kids and closed my eyes.
I focused on my breathing, tensed and relaxed my hands on the steering wheel and focused on my feet and how they felt in my shoes.
I kicked anxiety’s butt in under 10 minutes and I was so proud of myself! I have never had control like that before.
Sometimes I will feel better for a little while and I’ll think that I can stop meditating, that maybe I don’t need it anymore.
When that happens, I can actually feel the anxiety seeping back in.
The first thing that I notice is being jumpy and paranoid, feeling like there is something just around the corner, waiting to attack.
Then I have to take a deep breath and pick back up where I left off.
If it helps me to meditate every day for the rest of my life, I’ll do it.
It is a small price to pay for the ability to stop feeling the way that I have for as long as I can remember.
One thing that I will never do is give up.
Anxiety can be severe or mild, long or short lived.
Everyone is different; everyone affected by anxiety is affected in many different ways.
Meditation is hopefully going to work for me to keep it at bay.
If it comes roaring back after a week, a year, a decade, I will be ready to face it head on.
It is scary and it is physically painful, but I would rather look in its face and control it than let it control me.
*Sarah Surette is a stay at home mother of two who holds onto her sanity by blogging.
This article originally appeared at Huffpost.com.
