Changing lives

Yesterday or whenever it was I finally talked about my Anxiety Disorder....this is something that is very hard for me to talk about...Having any kind of Disorder is a sign of weakness as far as my own brain is concerned, only my own not anyone else's....
Discovering in my mid 30's how weak I really could be was not only frightening but very hard for me to accept. We all live our lives waiting to be able to accept ourselves for who we are. I always treated myself way worse than I would my worse enemy. Then I got sick and had to start all over again, learning about myself and my strengths and many weaknesses.

Like I wrote the other day, my illness resulted from Hypnotherapy that went wrong. I could never figure out while under Hypnosis why I couldn't see anything in my mind but a dark, bottomless hole? This happened for the 4 or 5 sessions that I had. I always thought it was something to do with me because I was having major emotion but could never see anything. It wasn't until I had to see a psychiatrist the following year that I learned that even the Psychiatric body never used Hypnotism anymore due to the small percentage of people that got screwed up....Well Thank you, where the hell were you last year!!!!
I will never deny that I had a hard time growing up and came across many broken bridges that I had to swim across instead of walking over. Much violence did my young eyes see.
Some how some way my brain was brought back to a time in my life where things were very hard for me emotionally. This is my assumption.
What made things much worse was the couple years afterwards where Doctor after Doctor tried to prescribe those magic drugs that would make my life revert back....needless to say there wasn't a drug that did anything but make matters so much worse.
Teenagers and children aren't the only patients that need to be cautious about suicidal tendencies while on anti-depressants or anti-anxiety drugs. I was misdiagnosed as Bi-Polar and put on a round of high potency drugs, then I was taken off those and put on a series of anti-anxiety/depressants, where the dosage just kept going higher and higher until early last year I believe where I had to take control and say NO MORE. At the time where I went cold turkey I was near an overdose state and not able to leave my house. Each of these drugs played havoc with my mind and my body. Weight gain, agoraphobia and memory loss hampered my life, this along with trying to raise my teenage daughter without her thinking her mother was insane.

In the beginning my family thought I was faking it, which made it that much harder for me to deal with. It wasn't until the symptoms were not going away that finally my Mom realized that this was not an act. My friends left me because of a couple reasons, they didn't understand and they couldn't deal with me in such a drug induced state. They believed that many people go through similar symptoms why can't you find a drug that works? They were the same thoughts as I had in my head. What was wrong with me that I couldn't get better?
It wasn't until early last year or late 2003 that I started reading about people that just could not find the right drug, and that it wasn't them that were the problem. Reading about adults who also felt suicidal taking the same drugs as I took. I then realized that I wasn't the only one. I also decided that maybe I would never get back what I lost but I didn't need to lose anything more. I went off the drugs and started venturing out past by comfort zone. These times were extremely difficult and many anxiety attacks prevailed. People were still ignorant about the whole process and many just didn't care enough to stick with me...but in hindsight it's their loss

I am still drug free and venturing out beyond my comfort zone. Talking about it on this public forum is very difficult for me but if I can help one person to know they aren't alone in their own ordeal is worth it to me. My memory is shot, I have very little short term memory and my long term is very small, which makes me sad because there are a lot of moments of my daughter's growing up that I dont' remember anymore, I have a short attention span, I cannot read unless my anxiety level is low and I do have moments where I can't go out alone. These are all situations that I know will not go away but they are situations that I will learn to live with....

Please feel free to ask me any questions that arise, as ignorance is the worse attitude someone can have regarding those people with any type of Disorder.