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Mon 13 September 2021

Being Proactive with Your Diagnosis

Meet Kylie, an awesome human with an incredibly proactive response to her diagnosis.

5 years ago I was formally diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Not trauma or specific event related but also not just a generalised anxiety disorder either, somewhere in the middle. Not bad enough for hospital but also not good enough to function day to day without any impacts.

I worked through medication regimes and I threw myself into counselling. I dabbled with trialling various holistic methods. I looked at my life and realigned my values. I worked out my triggers and developed a care plan. I got my support crew upskilled, ready to deploy into action when I needed them – even in the times when I didn’t think I needed it. I took the lead with identifying what responses may be needed depending on how I was doing.

Guess what? I still have anxiety! Despite the years of efforts in learning about and being so proactive with my condition and treatment plans, it is unrelenting with no cure as such. But guess what else? I haven’t given up and I don’t intend to!!

I have taken that shaky but domination piece of me and stopped trying to shove it out the window. We’ve compromised I guess. It is no longer in the driver seat, if it’s going to come along for the ride then it needs to take its place in the backseat. Sure it can get stubborn and mouthy and tries to tell me how to live my life but I stick firm with my boundaries, as best I can with the tools I now have.

My partner understands what sets my anxiety off and helps me pre-plan events or situations. I know that grocery shopping is a triggering event for my social anxiety, so we trialled ways to combat this other than my usual sheer avoidance. The key for me is to put things in place to make sure that despite the anxious shaky feelings I can still function. We started with making sure I always had someone with me, but that is not always possible. So we then worked on techniques and ways I could tackle the situation in the same way with or without someone with me.

I have a list and a calculator. To the average Joe maybe these objects are just sensible items for a shop, a list to remember items and a calculator to stick to a budget. This is true but it also allows me to keep my hands busy. You see when I get anxious I start to rub and scratch my neck and chest which gets progressively worse the more anxious I feel and the longer I stay in that anxious state.

The list also allows me to keep my thoughts methodical, working through what I need, sourcing them and ticking them off and then onto the next item. My mind doesn’t wander when I am task orientated. If I am preoccupied with what I need and getting to the next item, I am not focused on the people around and the large open space that I am in that makes me feel so daunted. The calculator feeds in to this and puts another step in this process. It also pre-empts another side effect of my anxious state, panic buying. When I get anxious and overwhelmed I end up grabbing all sorts of random items which means I end up spending so much more than intended. I then get frustrated and annoyed that I hadn’t coped and that I wasted money on useless items that I don’t need.

Medication is normal to me, I take Panadol for aches and pains and I have Ventolin for my asthma, I just also happen to take antianxiety meds as well. I have worked out the balance of having safe spaces but also making sure I don’t isolate. It’s a fine line between stepping safely outside comfort zones and traumatising myself by having too high expectations on what I can reasonably handle and work my way through. I don’t hide my condition but I don’t scream it from the rooftops either. I have my preferred processes for when I need to be propped up and more help to push on. I go to therapy regularly and I also use mindfulness and Pilates.

My advice is to find what works for you and be kind to yourself, this is not a quick process. Just as I have had to trial different meds to find what works for me, I have also had to trial different counsellors to find the right fit and I have had to trial different coping strategies. No one else can dictate or prescribe these, you need to find the individual ones that work for you and your personal situation all while being sufficiently supported.

Everyone has a story and this just happens to be mine. My anxiety doesn’t define me, for the most part it is in the backseat. I am the driver and I am keen to see where life takes me.