If you would have told me 9 years ago that I would be living the life I am now, I’d tell you that you’re full of shit.
My anxiety began like many others, perfectly normal day doing perfectly normal things (i was on vacation and at a zoo) and wham bam, hit with my first panic attack. I have course at the time didn’t know what it was. So I did what everyone else does; Went to Google. So I then went to my doctor and then went to my doctor and then went to my doctor. Every twitch, every ache, every pain.
I was able to continue living a relatively normal life, I just got a promotion at work after graduating high school. And continued working there for a little bit. Then things got worse, I started panicking there all of the time. And I did the worst possible thing that I could’ve done which was take a leave of absence. I believe that’s what initiated the beginning stages of agoraphobia.
I got out of that funk and was able to live fairly normal again, and then it happened over and over and over. This is the point where Google led me to DARE. I “tried“ using Dare, (I didn’t) and, of course, decided it wasn’t working. So I chose other methods, went to the doctor again, was prescribed medication that I was too scared to take, and then I stopped, leaving the house entirely about around this time 2015.
There was a period of time where for about a week I was able to leave the house, then fell right back into the same old ugly loop.
I had given up and I did not really try again until 2018 or so.
Come 2018 I figured what the hell what do I have to lose. I used the dare steps religiously, and I remember a moment very clearly, while I was showering (somethings that rocked me to my core, made me so anxious every time I did it). What am I afraid of?! For years, I’ve been scared of the same things, dying, heart attack, stroke, brain, tumor (you name it I was scared I had it even if there wasn’t even a remote possibility that I could)— where is the proof? Nothing has ever happened to me I’ve always come out on the other side just fine. And at that point, I fully implemented run towards. and that’s when my healing began.
I was able to live more confident & a better life at home, but I was still much too scared to leave the house. So I didn’t even try.
Come 2021, my fiancé, who I had been with since I was 16 head, finally just gotten tired of doing everything alone. Family gatherings, grocery shopping, fun activities, date nights all the things I wasn’t able to give him. He was ready to call it quits on us, and an effort to make it easier to leave the house. I got on a very mild anxiety medication. That still didn’t do anything. It curbed some symptoms, but it’s still didn’t do the “me” part of things. The action. The doing. He left. After 10 years together, he couldn’t do it anymore.
He gave me one chance, he said, meet me here. It was “do or die” so I did- and I did not die. I got in the car, I fully implemented all of my DARE steps, because that was the only thing that I had control over, I listened to “help I’m having a panic attack” two times over the entire way. I made it, we got in the car together a little while after and came home.
In effort to not fall back into typical habits, the next day he made me go to a movie theater, day after that dinner, day after that bowling, day after that to remote area middle of the woods to go four wheeler riding. I am implemented DARE, I listened to my audios. And I made it through. I was even able to enjoy myself (which was never my goal, my goal was to do it)
I have been able to conquer countless fears massively in part to DARE, but also in part to me. I think it’s forgotten that you get in your own way, & you are the reason why you react the way that you do the things. Anxiety is not its own being, it doesn’t have a chokehold on you, telling you this is how you have to act or react. You can hear what it tells you and still do the opposite.
Sure things are unpleasant, but things can be unpleasant and doable at the same time.
At this point, I was finally able to set a wedding date. This is something that I’d waited for and wanted so bad for so long. I set that date with a little bit of fear. What if I can’t make it to my own wedding? What if this, what if that? All the way up until the day of. Do you know what I did? I loaded my stuff up, We got in the car, And I went anyway. I finally got married in front of 100+ friends and family members. I was riddled with anxiety the entire day, it did not settle.
And that’s ok.
That’s not a failure.
Because I did it anyway.
❤️ Morgan H.