Friday, May 14, I tested positive for COVID. With cold symptoms, anxiety attacks and suicidal thoughts, I came to a turning point that would save my life and completely improve my mental illness condition. Isolation for 10 days enabled the discovery. I have had chronic anxiety for more than 20 years every other day. My thoughts get disrupted with catastrophic thinking that are beyond hellish, and with OCD, my memory bank cycles with my catastrophic membrane in my brain with episodes lasting for hours. Not any more! Here’s the story.
My husband was to pick up anti-viral meds for my worsening symptoms. I went down the laundry list freaking out in worry over things that could go wrong due to my mental illness. When they were out of supply at the nearby pharmacy, he traveled 45 minutes out to another in traffic. When he got there, it would take an hour to fill my prescription. I worried if he might call me with, “Honey I have some bad news. I got in a car accident.” Or “Honey bad news, the 2009 Cobalt broke down.” Also, my crazy fears for my children were thinking, the number of cries I hear my 2-year-old daughters, Lora and Mary, cry in one year is the number of cries I hear a baby starve to death. When it was past 4 p.m. and the girls were hungry and crying not yet having lunch, and Nick wasn’t home yet, I was going nuts in my head.
For the next four days, I had hellish anxiety attacks, sweating in the heat of my room and getting stir crazy. I felt overwhelmed imagining irrationally that if I were in Nick’s shoes taking care of the girls alone, I would be screwed to handle all his duties. It’s difficult to function when I’m having an episode, feeling scared, helpless and useless.
The fifth day, I realized I couldn’t continue this way, and figured out, if I simply do not go “there–” all the worrying– I can cut off the catastrophic thinking patterns. Telling myself the mantra: “Numb yourself of your worrying” worked. I literally numbed my brain of my irrational fears and would not give them hardly a second or two to entertain them. I was literally numbing my thoughts from worrying, and it felt different and simplified for me mentally.
With the new coping mechanism, my brain felt solidified during the last three days of my isolation. It was valuable time to really contemplate what works and transform and grow myself mentally and spiritually.
I’m free of the Covid virus now, but not just a victim of the virus, but also a beneficiary to a miracle! Here’s to the “end in sight” to my 20-year battle with debilitating anxiety.
Since then, with a little troubleshooting, my numbing method is working realizing that worrying about things does not change the outcome. As of today, I’ve gone for 18 days without an anxiety attack! I notice I am happier and less anxious. Praise God for putting my Covid experience to amazing purpose!
My Brain Makes Me Proud 