I wasn’t always a terribly anxious person. Depressed, yes. But anxious? Not really. Somewhere along the way that changed and I don’t know exactly when or exactly why. But it has gotten pretty bad over the last three years or so.

Crowds: I’ve never liked them, but I tolerated them to do things I loved like going to concerts, festivals, walking around the grocery store, etc. Now? I started avoiding them like the plague. In fact, my very definition of “crowd” changed to be much smaller number of people, too. Like, 10 is kinda a crowd.

Driving (or travel in general really): I was never really a nervous rider or driver. Now? I hate riding in the car and the idea of driving makes me break out into a cold sweat. I have this HIGHLY irrational fear that I’ll somehow forget how to drive in the middle of doing it. Or that I’ll get lost, even going to places I’ve been before, and even with the modern miracle that is GPS. There’s no logic to it, it just is.

Parking: I’ve developed this weird obsession with parking. As in, will there be any? Where will it be? How far is it? Will we have to parallel park? It’s gotten to the point that I avoid going certain places because of it. For example, I needed to find a dermatologist recently. I looked up my options on my insurance website, and found most local ones to be in the same general area. So how did I choose which one I went to? Not by reviews or anything like that, but by which one looked like it had the easiest parking. (Thankfully she turned out to be a great doctor so it all worked out.)

And there are countless other little things too. Random stuff that should be fine, but randomly isn’t. At one point I was having panic attacks of some degree every day.

I’d shared this with my psychiatrist and (supposedly) we were working on getting the anxiety under control. To be fair, with a combination of medications and not working outside the house anymore, the panic attacks pretty much stopped. But the constant dread, the constant worrying, the constant nervousness, they stuck around.

Cut to this Spring. My psychiatrist of six years had been out on FML since October. It became pretty clear he wasn’t coming back, even though the practice never came out and said that. So I realized I needed to find someone new. Through the recommendation of a friend I found someone and had my first appointment.

And it was a pretty typical first appointment. Lots of getting background information, asking the million standard questions. But then we got to my meds. We went through the list and when we finished she was like, “Other than the PRN medication you have for panic attacks (that you can’t take all the time because it can be addictive,) you aren’t actually on any meds for anxiety.”

Da ferk? Are you kidding me?? After all this time??

So she put me on something. And the difference, even in a short time, is ridiculous. All that constant nervousness and worrying and dread are just gone. I still don’t love crowds or driving or parking, but it’s better than it was. I can suddenly function reasonably well again. The miracle of modern medicine.

Am I annoyed? For sure. You mean to tell me that there’d been a way to help fix this all along? Why the hell weren’t we doing it then?? I can’t help but wonder what would be different if I’d been on this med all along, starting back when the anxiety first started to get disruptive.

But c’est la vie, water under the bridge, hindsight, and all that jazz. There’s nothing I can do about any of that, but at least I’m feeling a little better now. I’m also going to start seeing a new therapist (I’ve yet to find one I “click” with) so hopefully that will help too.

Who knows maybe one day I’ll be able to drive to a crowded event and park there without an issue again. I can dream.