Hey, friends. I wanted to post on here my experience with anxiety. This may have a lot of triggers but also, I would really appreciate the read to not feel so alone. Side note: I’ve pulled out of this and doing 100x better. 

Since as long as I could remember I had a fear of mental health - specifically schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. My grandma killed herself and the “why” has been a mystery to her grandkids. Her kids, my dad, aunts &amp; uncles always just said it was due to “mental health.” As you can imagine, that really freaks you out as a kid thinking mental health can kill you. Introduce my fear of mental health disorders. It wasn’t until 2013, that I had my first panic attack that led, to what I believe, as dissociation. 

That night I was doing a school project on multiple personality disorder. I had just watched an episode where a guy had MPD and it freaked me out, but not too bad. We used the clip in our school project. That same night, within the hour of me watching this clip, I remember my then-boyfriend-now-husband, watching Dexter. It was the trinity killer season.  I remember at the time watching my PowerPoint presentation on MPD and hearing dexter in the background and thinking to myself “holy shit people like this exist. Can this be me?!” I sat at. my dining room table, head spinning and heart pounding. Work called me that moment asking me to cover a shift. I agreed thinking the attack would subside but I couldn’t snap myself out of it. I called back and declined the shift. I had to get my head right.

I remember, vividly afterwards, walking to my shower, as I was hovering over my body. Everything I did felt like I was watching me perform actions like I was someone else. I got in the shower, sat on the floor and cried. I didn’t snap out of this trance for over a year. 

I would wake up and feel out of Body. I remember having irrational fears as the cause of this, most I still live with. I thought that if I left a glass of water at my bedside while I was at work all day someone was going to poison it. I thought any smell out in the “wild” was going to kill me.  I remember typing in a customers order and thinking to myself “whoa your fingers are moving so fast.” I felt high but never was high. I was too afraid to smoke or eat edibles. I remember being hyper focused on my body doing mundane things such as pulling toilet paper off the roll and  thinking I’m pulling this off the roll” while being super aware of my motions. Everything i did my mind made sure I thought of every.single.movement. I was constantly in a state of hovering over my body and watching my actions from a 3rd person perspective. 

I almost quit school and my job because of it. I couldn’t do normal activities without crying from just pure exhaustion of looking down on myself.  Literally. I couldn’t stop seeing myself in 3rd person. 

It wasn’t until a year later that I was at a restaurant with my friends that I started to feel the veil lift, and I was able to start feeling like I wasn’t seeing everything as if I’m hovering over myself. I felt hope. 

I have finally snapped out of that trance like state that I believe is called disassociation, but I live in constant fear of going back to that dark place. 

It’s been almost 10 years but I am afraid that todays the day I end up back in that place. It was so dark and scary and I can’t imagine having kids in that hovering mindset.