I was signed off work for around 2 months in the end and since September I've still not managed to get back into the office full time. I'm making excellent progress and am almost there, I'm pretty much back to my full time hours now, just splitting the time between the office and home. So Dr Parihar was totally right when he said there was no time frame.
Those first 2 weeks I was signed off I pretty much spent the time knowing that I wasn't getting any better but fixated on the mindset that I needed to be. When I had to phone work to tell them I had been signed off I was very emotional and as with the Dr I was ashamed and embarrassed.
In the 8 weeks I was signed off I went drastically downhill before I started to make any progress with recovery. The physical side of the illness really took hold and I became virtually housebound. On the occasions when I did venture to the shop or the library I started experiencing panic attacks which were frightening and led to me wanting to stay in more. Thank goodness for my close support network - especially Ash who often made me go and get in the car and would just drive me to the beach so I could sit and watch the waves and get some fresh air.
It felt like every part of me shut down, physically & emotionally. I couldn't do anything, I even found watching mindless TV or reading a magazine hard work. The creative side of my brain shut down, I had to cancel all outstanding balloon jobs, I lost all my creativeness. I didn't want to cook (another passion of mine), my eating patterns were erratic, I was sleeping 17/18 hours a day as I had such a massive amount to catch up on. I had feelings of agoraphobia, I was scared of the sky, I was scared of the big spaces outside, it took all my strength not to succumb to this and become a prisoner in my own home. I shut down all communications, the only person I spoke to for several weeks was Ash. I couldn't speak to my Mum, I could just about reply to some texts from my closest friends, I just felt like I had completely broken.
Alongside this I started to do a lot of reading on Anxiety. I didn't know anything about it and started researching and finding out the causes and how it effects different people. I went to the library and hired some books and I started finding out about treatments both medically and therapeutically.
I was seeing Dr P on a regular basis, infact it became a joke as I was there religiously every other Tuesday. I even took in an Excel spreadsheet of things that had been worrying me and what I thought had contributed to the build up, talk about a Type A personality!
A few weeks after the diagnosis there was a couple of routes I wanted to pursue. One was to look into the therapy that had been suggested at the start and the other was to make it clear that I would not take anti-depressents. Again, I had been clearly miseducated on how under-rated these drugs are and I like many others were lead to believe that they gave false highs, that they mask the problems and that they are addictive. I'd like to confirm that none of these are true and I did end up taking them but I'll come back to that later.
I started taking vitamins to try and boost my Omega 3 which is good for the brain and I took St Johns Wort (a natural anti-depressant) and Vitamin B to boost seratonin levels. I adjusted my diet to include foods which are good for anxiety including bananas, broccoli, walnuts and fish.
I was referred to 'Time to Talk' a local NHS counselling service and had some telephone sessions with the lovely Sarah. We talked about my lifestyle and my childhood and had some chats about how I've been feeling and where the GAD may have stemmed from. She offered me a place on an 'overcoming anxiety' course which was taking place over 4 consecutive Mondays and I decided to just embrace whatever was thrown at me. I am a very positive 'can do' person and if there was one thing I was sure of it was that this illness was not going to beat me.
I attended the course and met some really nice people who were also having their own struggles, it was immediately reassuring to know that I wasn't the only one going through such a tough time. To attend a course with a bunch of people who suffer with anxiety was slightly anxiety provoking in itself but it was useful and I took away some good bits of information, particularly around the CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) model.
After a couple of weeks I got a phonecall from Sarah to say that they were going to escalate me to their 'level 3' therapy which would mean a referral for some 1-2-1 sessions. I was a little shocked thinking it was a reflection on my poor performance, if anything I think it was the opposite in that I needed some more specialist help and I was willing to embrace anything if it meant helping me get well! I completed the course and left with a bit more confidence than when I started which was a good thing but I felt far from well.
I started my 1-2-1 therapy sessions with John in November and I have been seeing him on a weekly basis. We are just nearing the end of the course now and it has been an eye opening, enriching experience. My confidence has grown and I'd say I'm almost back to where I was confidence wise before I fell ill. We have been mainly working around the 'worry' model with some focus on panic too. A lot of my life is spent asking the 'what if?' questions to the point where I was often letting it take hold of me and spin out of control. I have managed to get that under MUCH better control now and my life feels so much more refreshing as a result of it. We are going to do a little more work around perfectionism and high standards and realising that these can sometimes have a detrimental rather than positive effect. IE it is much better to set your standard at around 60% and if you occasionally go beyond that then you can celebrate and be pleased rather than having the bar set at 100% and feeling a constant failure if you don't hit this (and being a person of this nature, you never feel like you've hit it even if you have!). I cannot stress how helpful these sessions have been and it was one of these sessions that introduced me to the buddhist influenced meditation practice of mindfulness which I seemed to make an instant connection with and is the reason why I am now doing the meditation course (I told you I'd tell you how I got into it!).
I'm going to talk about the medication in a separate post next.
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