Therapy started to really work for me
Speaker1:
I describe it sometimes to people who don't have anxiety, if you're in an elevator and it goes down and it has that feeling where it just kind of bounces, you get this funny feeling in your stomach and you're thinking, what's going on with the elevator. That's what you feel over and over and over. That feeling of not knowing what's going to happen, a free fall.
Speaker2:
The first time I ever felt, like felt the anxiety manifest itself, my ears were burning and my whole face felt like it was tingling and my lips felt numb, and my heart was racing and my palms were sweaty. And, I remember kind of just talking myself down, "like what is wrong with you, relax." I didn't want to leave my house and it just kind of all of a sudden, the word became a very scary place and you realize, wow, I've affected by all my time on combat.
Speaker3:
Going to school was a lot of stress and anxiety to where I was just like, "okay, just breathe, like no ones here to harm you, it's going to be alright, just breathe." The difficult things for me were situations like being in rooms with a lot of people, going out to like for instance nightclubs or if I wanted to go out with friends. Crowded restaurants would give me really high levels of anxiety.
My therapist helped me on other levels of understanding, whether it be techniques of breathing, whether it be agreeing with how I'm handling the situations or trying to give me an alterative way of looking at it. She was able to actually pinpoint my symptoms and actually describe to me, like you're doing this because of that. You're doing that because of this. I started basically taking the things that she told me and applying them in the situations where I felt my symptoms happening and it started to really work for me.
