Hey everyone, before you read any of my blogs, I feel like it would be nice to read my story:
Lets go back to when anxiety began for me...
Before I was 15, I didn’t even know what anxiety was, let alone a panic attack. Needless to say, I wasn’t prepared for when I would first experience one. In 2016 my family and I took a summer trip to France in our motorhome. This was first time we had all gone to Europe together, so of course there are many differences between their culture and here in the UK; one being that they drive on the other side of the road. On one of the days we were there, my dad was driving on the motorway and another UK vehicle tried to switch into the lane we were on and it caused my dad to quickly swerve into the next lane. I honestly thank God so much for taking control of the situation as I hate to think of what could’ve happened. Although I might be making more out of the situation than it was, the one thing that I remember was just feeling so scared and not knowing what was happening to me. After it had all happened, I felt as though I couldn’t breathe, my whole entire body felt like it was frozen and I couldn’t even respond to what was happening around me, I was honestly bursting into tears. After speaking to my mum she told me that it was a panic attack that I had just faced. I didn’t really think too much about it, I just thought it would be a one time thing. However that wasn’t true, I can’t really remember fully but I just remember feeling super on edge for the rest of the trip, sub-consciously thinking I was going to have another panic attack. Although I didn’t, it was just the fear of thinking it would happen. Anyway, a couple of weeks later, after being back in the UK for a bit, I had another panic attack; I can’t remember what it was about but I just remember feeling horrible again. This basically happened for another 8 months or something, I couldn’t really go on any transportation; one time I made my sister walk for an hour with me so that I didn’t have to get the bus. It was that bad!!! After a while though, I had to start getting the bus around again and taking other transportation, so in some ways I thought my anxiety had gone, I wasn’t having regular panic attacks and I don’t remember having that many anxious thoughts. How could I have been so wrong. About a year later, in October of 2017 my sister and I went to watch Harry Styles live on tour in London and the only way we were able to get to the stadium was via the underground. Can I just point out that prior to this trip, I had only been to London once, which was on a school trip so we didn’t have to take the underground around. So basically I had no idea what an underground was until I was there. My sister had only been on the tube once so she couldn’t really remember how it worked either. So, basically, to cut a long story short as I feel as though I have been rambling on forever, the underground was super busy as it was around 8am so basically peak hour for London. Sooo yeah, I was super scared but I was with my sister ( my best friend ) , so I knew I would be okay. The train that we needed to go on then arrived so my sister rushed off trying to get it but because it was so busy I had to push past so many people and by this point she was already on the train so I went to get on but the doors started beeping, I didn’t even know what was going on. I tried pressing the ‘open’ button but nothing happened. By this point I was panicking , I was looking at my sister through the window with panic on my face; not only could I not get on but she wasn’t able to get off either. Yeah, remember when I said I didn’t know what an underground was yeah… this was a bad situation for me. After feeling completely scared and anxious, luckily God helped me and I was able to meet my sister on the right platform but in the moment It was so scary and my anxiety just wanted to kill me!
what is life like for me now…?
Well, if I was to look at all of the panic and anxiety I still have to go through, I would say nothing has changed from before, buttt that isn’t my perspective on life. If you haven’t already guessed my life is mostly committed to God, I wouldn’t say that I’ve officially devoted all of my life to him but in most situations I like to think “what would God be thinking right now?”. I know this is supposed be my story but I wanted to remind all of you reading that God gave you a life for a reason and a purpose (whether you believe it or not). I don’t want to force any of you to become Christians or anything like that but I just want to remind every one of you that God can do amazing things for you, He certainty did for me. If I was to look at all of the situations I had faced in my life, especially last year, I could’ve just spent the rest of my life not trying. But I believe that all that has happened to me in previous years, and what is still happening to me and the suffering that life may have caused me, all have a purpose. I wouldn’t have even thought about creating a blog if I hadn’t gone through all of my anxiety and stress. I am able to use that pain and suffering to hopefully help loads of you out there who maybe in a lot of pain and don’t know what to do. I’ve always got to tell myself, when I feel anxious about a situation, that I’m not the only one going through it and there is probably hundreds of people out there who are also suffering, maybe people in your own friendship group. So if you’re someone who is reading this blog thinking ” I can’t see any purpose to my suffering”, I promise you that there is something good happing in your life even if you can’t see it yet. Because I used to think the same thing and I would look at other people or even my friends and wonder why they have so much happiness in their life and all I’m experiencing is anxiety and FOMO (which on it’s own just makes us feel horrible). News flash: nobody’s life is perfect: just because outwardly they may have happiness and fun. Inwardly they could be breaking so it kind of works the other way for people with anxiety. What I mean by this is that although negativity is probably all you feel, inwardly and outwardly there is going to be happiness somewhere and we experience happiness in different way to someone else but that’s okay!!
I hope this has encouraged you in some way and has helped you to get to know my story of battling with anxiety a little…
Love Emily xx
We Can Conquer Blog 