I've battled anxiety my whole life. Mostly social but recently I've added health anxiety to my struggles. This past year my anxiety that had hindered but not totally stopped me from doing things became crippling. I developed full blown anxiety and panic attacks that made me leave work early and develop a wicked case of insomnia. Basically 3-4 hours of sleep at night because most nights the process of falling asleep became a harrowing experience for me. 

Through medication, therapy, diet, excercise,  and real discipline about sleep I was able to get these anxiety episodes under control. I still had the general feelings and intrusive thoughts but I didn't even have the fear in the back of my head that an anxiety attack was going to happen. I was so proud of myself for making this work.


Then, about a month ago as friends and family started coming home for the holidays. My routine got disrupted and I started staying up later eating garbage and completely dropped my excercise routines. I was starting to feel bad but still functional  then I got put on a Covid quarantine and it all went to shit. I barely moved for 10 days door dashed some crap food and spent all day scrolling my phone and watching TV. 

This whole process of letting myself go was about 3 weeks. 3 weeks of being undisciplined around the holidays and the anxiety attacks and insomnia came back in full force. It's common to let yourself go a bit around the holidays why can other people do it and still be human and when I do it I  activate heart racing fight or flight mode?


Looking at the positives because I've seen improvement in the recent past I know my mental health issues aren't totally treatment resistant because I've seen results. I need to cling onto that but it's just frustrating how perfect it feels like I have to be.



Tldr; worked really hard to get my anxiety under control. Stopped using the techniques I learned and was back at square one in 2-3 weeks. It's frustrating how quickly I lost a lot of progress.