Can't Keep My Mouth Shut - Living With An Anxiety Disorder (And How To Overcome It)

Episode Date: August 24, 2020

For anyone and everyone who has ever felt this way or is currently living through this - you're not alone. I got you. This will pass, and it does get better. Trust me. 

This podcast contains strong language and discussions about relationships and sex. It may not be suitable for younger listeners. This is the Sex in Singapore City podcast and I'm Nick Salina-Watson. Hi everyone and you're back with my Sex in Singapore City the podcast. I hope you're all okay having a good week um this episode isn't super fun by any stretch of the imagination but as per me i will try and slot in some humor somewhere even thinking about making a joke out of it feels like effort at this point in time i uh the reason i want to do this episode is because one let's talk about mental health shall we two i know so many of you listening to this

males and females are going to relate to what I'm going to say and are going to want to message me after and chat to me so many people you are going to be thinking I never even pictured you in that way I never even like had any inkling which is another reason why we should talk more about mental health so without further ado this episode is living with an anxiety disorder specifically GAD mine is generalized anxiety disorder so I haven't really spoke about it or written about it I did a blog I believe a few years ago in London where I wrote about what it was like but yeah let's talk let's talk it's a lot better so bear with me because we're going to go back a few years and we're going jumping from Singapore to London which I do a lot with

my memories, but c'est la vie, expat life. So back in 2013, I had moved out into my own place. I'd bought an apartment and I loved it. I was single, mid-twenties. Moving from the family home to my own flat was quite quiet and quite isolated, especially obviously as I was single. So I ended up getting a cat. I'm a huge animal person anyway, right? Like any animal. I mean like I will save cockroaches yeah if they're on their back and their little legs are still moving even though I know that they're dying because they're on their back I kind of flip them over to try and give them one last hope of cockroachy fun whatever it is they do for fun um total tangent there so I'm an animal person I got myself a cat because I've also grown up

of animals I find them very relaxing so it was just me and my cat in the flat wearing a hat sitting on a mat I go stop and um and I was smashing blog life sex in London city was like hugely successful I had a full-time job in London as an editor of a website as well beyond the blog so by day editor of a website by night blogger and press eventy attendee and yeah just general wild child of London I will say like I was rather wild so as far as I was aware life was great apart from being single which I didn't think was much of a struggle because I wasn't ever like not dating I was on all the dating apps and casual flings here and there really trying to like get a boyfriend but never kind of worked I was just oozing desperation I'm pretty sure with the men

and then my blog won its first ever blog award and um it was like fucking the most amazing night ever like i drunk a lot because i was super nervous i don't really remember much of it which is terrible um but yeah i was voted the best uh sex and relationships blog in the country for cosmo cosmopolitan uk magazine i then because i was then voted the top got a lot of job offers coming in and I took all I took all of them on beyond my actual role like we want you to do become our resident dating vlogger for this massive website in London and then MTV EMA's wanted me to do like a red carpet coverage for them and it was in Scotland at the time so it was only an hour flight from where from where we live so I kind of basically said yes to everything

I was so happy and so excited and then I went to the local shopping mall to get some supplies from a chemist and I just felt fucking awful I was so aware that I was dying and I was with a girlfriend and I kind of just collapsed on the floor and I was like I can't breathe I'm I think there's something seriously wrong there's something seriously wrong oh I think I'm dying oh I could think of was I'm dying she then took me to the pharmacy section luckily I was in a pharmacy shop right so they go and they'd like she needs sugar they went and got me a bottle of coke and then trying to put on a chair with my head in my lats trying to not faint and collapse and I I was convinced that something really bad had happened to my body maybe I was dehydrated to

the point of like organ failure maybe I was going into a coma I don't know so we go off to accident and emergency at the hospital and it turns out physically I'm fine they do an ECG they um which is where they do your chest and monitor your chest they took my blood pressure that was fine and they kind of gave me a pill like a diazepam like a Valium to calm me down which I didn't really want to take because I was just petrified of pills so by this point I have no idea what happened I'm just assuming I had a funny turn and I go back to work on the Monday morning this was at the weekend um and then basically this episode keeps happening I start to feel sick I feel like I can't focus on anything I like look I feel like noises get really loud so I'll be on you know the

train to work and I can hear everything it sounds like you know like a secret x-man which was also an option in my head but apparently you're fucking not unless anxiety is a superpower so I hear everything noises people eating or like forks and cutlery oh my god and it's driving me nuts and I couldn't focus and I couldn't look at the screen anymore because it would flick all the time right so this happened for a fair few weeks after this first episode. And then I eventually go to the doctor because I'm not getting any better. And I thought when I first collapsed in the pharmacy that that was just that I drunk too much alcohol or didn't have enough sugar. I didn't eat enough that day because my appetite wasn't huge back then.

And then my head is like feeling just as weird. And I'm so paranoid and scared about having another collapse episode that i'm running on constant overdrive and fear and panic that i'm then causing more fear and panic so when i go to the doctors he basically says look um he does all the tests again he says i think you've got an anxiety disorder and i wasn't having any of it i was like no there's something physically wrong with me because i am that is not emotional that is nothing but physical. I feel like I'm dying every day. So I refuse to have any treatment for anxiety disorder. So he kind of like did the old Dr. Roly-Eye thing. I'm assuming thinking she'll be back soon. And he sent me off with like, okay, let's try this. Let's try this. Try some yoga.

Just, you know, humor me, do some exercise, stay off coffee, stay off caffeine, don't have caffeine before bed, whatever. Few weeks go by, I'm getting worse and worse and worse. Bearing in mind that before this, I was the kind of woman that would be everywhere, that was always out. I was the light in the room. I could do anything and go anywhere. And I was now struggling to get to work and I wasn't feeling any better. Things were just escalating very quickly. So one morning I tried to go to work. And I was so convinced that the train was going to derail or that I could smell gas that I ran off the platform in some random station. I had no idea where I was. And then I had to wait for the next train to take me back home again and call in sick. And I called in sick

a lot actually during that period. And I was so lucky that my company and my boss and my colleagues were so amazing to me um but I was every day trying to go in and every day I felt like I was dying and would try and then couldn't go in and I was struggling sleeping I would wake up with headaches I would wake up with my if I looked at anything everything was always fuzzy so I was always squinting at the tv and the laptops I couldn't everything was flickering and it also it made me feel like I was always swaying. I was constantly like walking around swaying and feeling sick and dizzy and crowds would freak me out because I'd also hear really loud noises everywhere. So I eventually would go back to the doctor like, okay, you win. And he says,

okay, you're going to accept you have an anxiety disorder now because then that way it can help you so he says we need to put you on an ssri which is a serotonin up in rehabilitate it up to google ssri for me huh because i could never say that and i i know it's it's a form of antidepressant basically so this is a set of pills different pills you've got like zoloft to sertraline, diazepam, valium that help people who suffer with things like anxiety, OCD, bipolar, depression. So it's a whole range of mental conditions, disorders, I'm going to say disorders. So he tells me to take one of these pills. I go home and say, we need to get you started with this is going to help and I'm so so jacked up now on my own anxiety that I convinced

myself that once I took that pill I'm going into a coma because I was so against being that kind of stigma that mental person oh my god you have an anxiety disorder you're mental you're crazy you have to take pills because you're crazy I've like grown up surrounded with that kind of stigma that when I took the pill I went even more into overdrive and within 20 minutes I was having another collapsing episode I ran to the bathroom I was vomiting but nothing was coming out and I was lying on the floor I called 999 I called the ambulance service and I was like you need to get here I'm gonna I'm going into a coma I've taken a pill I'm going into a coma they turn up doing my ECG sit me down with a sick bucket even though I wasn't vomiting calm me down yeah

you know actually okay blood pressure okay everything's okay this happened this me calling the ambulance about three times as well um because i was so convinced that i was dying that i needed help and i was so alone at home as well so i go back to the doctor by this point i think he's fucking sick on my face and he says right we're going to put you on a tablet called sertraline. We're going to start you off as 25 milligrams. It's nothing. It's nothing. You won't feel anything. And I'm like, no, no, no, I can't. And he's like, I can't have alcohol. If I have alcohol and an SSRI, I'll get a serotonin overdose and die. And he's like, you won't. Okay. So he starts me off on this tablet and he also puts me onto CBT, cognitive behavioral

therapy. So I get a counsellor, a therapist, and we start working on identifying the root of my, because you can have anxiety in different forms. So mine's generalised, but it could be health anxiety, like you're always worried about your health, you're always worried about dying, which as you can hear, I have a strain of that. You can have social anxiety, a fear of being around new people, a fear of being in a room with people, you know, a fear of going outside into crowded of places so there are different levels so we we start working on that and then I take I finally settling to take the serotonin I had to move back into my dad's home for a week or so when I started taking the tablets because I was so convinced that I was going to die and I didn't want to be on my

own and even then I remember I moved back in and I couldn't go to work so I had to take two months in the end in total two months of work because I yeah in my head I'd gone mental in my head I'd lost the fucking plot and I was like I'm gonna end up in an asylum there's nothing wrong with that I mean and uh yeah so eventually I'm living with my dad I'm now trying to take the pill I would go for walks in the woods to try and calm myself it used to be my favorite place even then I couldn't focus on the trees the trees were swaying or I was swaying I was feeling sick because I'm swaying I'm dizzy I would want to try and focus my mind on blogging but I can't look at the laptop screen I was really upset I had lots of pressure on stuff now I couldn't do so I then had to basically

cancel covering MTV EMAs I ended up sending my sister in my place and her partner to do the red carpet section um because I couldn't go because I couldn't get on a plane to Scotland I couldn't do it from London I I was a shell of the person I was before as the only way I can describe it and I lost so much weight um I stopped going out I stopped drinking I stopped smoking I cut down coffee um and just concentrated every single day was a fucking marathon to get through take a tablet in the morning try and do something that makes me happy so I'd like go and walk to the nearest coffee shop and get a decaf toffee nut latte that was one thing a day I did um of course my doctor said like cut down on caffeine but you don't have to he was even like why don't you have

a glass of wine just the glass and see if it relaxes you but I was so irate at this point so panicky so concerned for my health in such a bad place I just didn't want any kind of drug I didn't want anything I kept thinking oh if I have a caffeine overdose with serotonin overdose I'm not going to wake up in the morning so many times I thought to myself I'm not waking up in the morning and I didn't understand any of it no one in my family and none of my friends have panic attacks I'd never had a panic attack so when the doctors explained to me like what happened to you in the pharmacy was a panic attack I didn't understand and that's what I think a lot of people are like unless you go through that you don't get how physical it is when before if you told me about

panic attack I think it would have been oh god I've you know I feel really worried this is like a whole entire take over your body you shut down kind of movement and you can't get your head around it because it's your head that's causing it how fucking fucked up is that and the more you worry and the more you panic about having a panic attack the more you get a fucking panic attack I mean Jesus like that is so not fair so I spent months in this state I really did I had to cancel a lot of work I had to stop blogging I cancelled a lot of external blogging stuff all the events I couldn't go to I couldn't go physically into my day job I had to be around my family a lot, like babysit me. And I remember one day before he put me on sertraline, he put

me on diazepam, which I would never really advertise to go on because it kind of made me like a vegetable. So he was basically just trying to like calm me the fuck down. I think it might have been one of my episodes where I was in hospital or I'd called the ambulance. So diazepam just vegged me out my sister actually took a day off work to look after me and all I did was sit on the sofa and watch back-to-back Disney movies just back-to-back Disney movies half asleep not asleep half awake not awake just like a vegetable human yeah it wasn't good literally being babysitted at like my mid-20s but there is a light at the end of this anxiety tunnel so I start to feel a bit better when I'm on sertraline I'm on 25 milligrams he then ups it to 50 milligrams I start to feel

really a bit better I'm then having cognitive behavioral therapy and my therapist works through these what's going on with me and says basically you need to change your lifestyle you are working yourself into this breakdown and it got to the point where when I started to feel a bit better and I was going back to work and I was planning the press event she made me show her my diary my schedule and she was like look how much you've crammed in your diary already like you can't you have to have like two or three nights off to to relax to eat and I'm like no because if I don't go to that press event I'll miss out on that and if I don't do this and I need a night of blogging because I've got to write up about that you know product that was sent to me and I've got to write

about this and she's like you're gonna go you're literally gonna go and do this yourself again And ironically, what we discovered was my work ethic and my lifestyle choices were so severe in getting my brand to where it was that I drove myself into an anxiety breakdown. And when I reached the height of my career at the time, you know, because I'm like, wow, I've just won a blog award, like, wow. Your brain kind of goes, yeah, but now what? and I didn't even realize that was happening and it was so frustrating because I was now on the bike on the roller coaster I'm like right fucking I'm the best in the country right let's go to all these events let's answer all these emails and it was coming in thick and fast and at that moment my body decides to go you can't even get off the fucking train

you can't even leave your flat you can't even walk into crowds and it's so debilitating is that the word for yourself when you're used to be in that crowd having the best time of your life and now you're crossing the road to avoid it because you can't you just can't be around all those people at Christmas time this had been about two and a half to three months after this happened I believe um there was a Christmas market on which I used to love and it was only down the road and I went with my dad and I made him walk across the road we didn't even go into it because I couldn't handle all the crowds I said I went into panic that was so weird and that's so frustrating and then you kind of upload more guilt and shame onto yourself because you're like what has become

of me and how the fuck has this even happened you know there is no history of anxiety there is no I didn't even know anxiety could do that I didn't even know anxiety was a disorder so yeah the whole the whole experience was very frightening and very frustrating and I spent a long time researching and the more I talked about it the more I realized other people knew people that were doing it or on these drugs or other people who you know had been through this and come you know come out the other side and then the more I realized panic attacks were pretty common And so along with that knowledge and research, along with the therapy, and along with Sertraline, I got up to 100 milligrams, I think, back then. And along with all that as a combo, I became my former self.

I actually really genuinely got over that whole period of my life. and it was i think in total if i'd say four to five months from that beginning episode at the pharmacist to getting back to feeling like a human and propaganda yeah it's about five months i think i was about two months flat bound um i was just stuck at home by my own admission i couldn't leave i was just too much of a mess and what's really frightening as well is you're so much of a mess that you can't leave your home, but then anxiety still gets you. Like you're watching TV and suddenly the TV's flickering, you can't focus and you feel sick and you're having an episode on your sofa. And everyone would always say to me, right, what was you

thinking about at the time? I wasn't thinking about anything. I wasn't thinking, oh my God, the world's going to end and then cause it. I was, if anything, I'm usually thinking good things. So it made it even more frustrating because I had no idea where this was coming from. so I got back to work I finally get my my normal life back I eased myself back into my blog events press events and I start finding time as well beyond work beyond my brand to do things like I want to do I take up yoga and I do that once a week and that helped me tenfold and I really had to realign my life values and that alone was hard because I wanted to be out all the time at every bloody event going and I felt so much FOMO when I was like no I can't I'm not

going to that I'm too tired or I need to proper sleep or the therapist said I need to go out three times and so I can't like it was not easy but it was like fucking hell no wonder looking back no wonder I got to that place because I was just a Duracell battery fucking running on empty and I burnt myself out. That being said, I understand as well that there must have been an underlying anxiety condition to get there in the first place, right? Because people could also go for like that work breakdown or, you know, like burnout, but not have the anxiety that I had. So I had no idea that I was predisposed predispositioned it's one of those isn't it that I previously had anxiety roots in me living somewhere I guess because I must have had it to begin with for

it to come out the way it did I've spent a long long long time doing a lot of research on this years and years and years and years. And I've taken myself off surgery in a controlled and professional way. You obviously do not take yourself off drugs without consulting a doctor and working with a doctor. I've also put myself back on them as well. And I've had really bad times, very, very stressful times. And what I've like really felt I've had to get grips with living with anxiety disorder is acceptance and that's another thing that I was working very hard against during my peak was it was if you accept the panic attack if you accept the bad feelings if you accept that wave of anxiety it actually makes it a little better but every time I resisted oh my god I'm

going into it I'm going into it oh my god I'm going into it oh my god I can't I can't I can't I got stopped somehow. And I was always fighting this episode, this collapse that I was trying to avoid that then made it even worse. So living with my anxiety disorder has made me have to accept that I have it, be very open about it and talk about it, and make me realize that it's not the sum of me. It's a part of who I am. And it doesn't reflect me as a person. And I have to also change how I behave to to accept that part you know like I can't really drink too much even though I do I can't drink that much anymore it does send me into hangover alcohol shame the next day which heightens my anxiety I have to exercise I need to keep my yoga up I I need to be happy

taking sertraline if that's what makes me better and that's what the doctor said look this is going to help you know like I tried my hardest to avoid the tablet route and I was part of the the shame and the stigma oh my god you've got to take pills for your head you crazy bitch I was part of that and I fucking refused and if I just accepted help a lot earlier I might have had a speedier recovery but I was such a stubborn little bitch and I was like no way I'm doing this natural and this isn't you know you're wrong I generally thought the doctor had got it wrong I mean what do you know got it right but whatever I'm always right so if anyone's listening to this story and thinks like oh my god I can really resonate with a lot of that just know that the best way to deal with

an anxiety disorder is to accept it's part of you but not who you are and kind of embrace it like you know like I'll make jokes about it like oh god I don't want to be a bit anxious or I'm feeling a bit angst or you know like ah panic if I'm if I'm in a jokey mood because I have to make light of it because it's so scary if you don't and people around you and the fucking internet people making comments or whatever I'm sure that who never had a panic attack who don't live with anxiety don't have a fucking clue and in my opinion the strongest people are the people that live with these conditions because you don't realize how strong you have to be to have anxiety and panic attack while you're at work then just go excuse yourself go to the bathroom calm yourself

down all by yourself even though you're you know your head you're it's hard to step outside the box when you're in the box and do that by yourself and then return back to your desk at work and carry on that to me makes you stronger than anyone who doesn't have these kind of problems so I guess like me being very open about living with an anxiety disorder I'm helping will I'm hoping will help dispel any of the stigma attached that I that I grew up with that I was so fearful about and I think maybe if I had a more understanding when it first hit me I wouldn't have been so severely affected because I would have been more accepting and I would have gone, OK, I understand this,

but I was, you know, a fucking mess and refused treatment and called the ambulance and thought I was dying every day and thought I was, like, ready for a mental home. I was in a spiral of guilt and shame, like, I'm broken, my head is broken, my brain won't return. You know, like, it was dark, dark times. But they don't last. And that's another thing I want to make really clear for anyone listening.

Always remember, this too shall pass. That's what always gets me through. I'm like, whatever I feel right now, this will pass. This will definitely pass. Everything passes. I mean, all the good stuff, unfortunately, also passes at the same time. But you're not going to feel like this forever. And I feel there will be bad days and good days.

But once again, as a part of acceptance, so what? Everyone's got bad days and good days. Okay, so I have to take sertraline because I have an anxiety disposition. Okay, so what? So I have, you know, a lack of a chemical imbalance in my brain, basically, where I don't get the serotonin that I should be getting. So I have to take sertraline to get that. you know like people always say well if you if you broke your leg you wouldn't walk around with a broken leg you'd get it fixed by the doctor and you would take antibiotics for a virus obviously not covid let's not go down there but you would take help and medicine to get better and it's the same same do not allow any stigma attached to anxiety depression or any mental condition to make mean that you won't get help because you don't want to be that person taking

that pill you don't want to be that person that has to go and sit in the institute of mental health who fucking cares if it makes you feel better every day if you actually get up and go to work if you have you know that horrible cloud lifted off your head and things start to feel happy again is that not worth it so many girlfriends and and also people generally on the internet will now talk to me about anxiety and about depression because pretty much i'm i feel like i'm a fucking expert but i also like okay i know where you feel that then do this this will help you and i just wish that i had someone like that that i could have spoke to every day that when i was going through the worst time in my life so yeah I'm here for you on that note if anyone out there

is worried that they might have an anxiety disorder if anyone deals with recurrent panic attacks or has depressive spells or anything like that or anything where it doesn't even have to be that spectrum it could be you know a lighter version where you just sort of listen to what I said and gone oh actually I can see elements of that in me please do reach out to me I can be like the big sister of the internet on this topic and help you um and also let's point out one last obvious thing is it doesn't anxiety disorders and depression doesn't attack a certain type of people i'm super confident i'm really loud i have a no fucks given attitude i believed you know that i was like the party girl the one in the room and i got hit with it so it's not you know it doesn't

like anxiety doesn't go for weak people or shy people or introverted people you know I think that's a whole other stigma that we need to dispel as well because it doesn't it gets pretty much to the most of us and it happens for different reasons mine was obviously my work ethic and my inability to chill the fuck out and on that note I'm grand this episode but please do reach out to me or um if you're really struggling please ring up the institute of mental health make an emergency appointment they are always there or you've got helplines like the samaritans and whatnot you just need to google it and you can speak to someone if you need super urgent help thank you and um yes please do message me if you need me i'm always here

thanks for listening to the sex in singapore city podcast this episode was produced and hosted by me nixelina watson and recorded at the splice car studio in singapore we're available on apple podcasts spotify google and all major podcast listening apps do subscribe for a new episode every single week please do give us a five-star review it helps other people find our podcast we're also on social media with facebook and the gram don't be shy send me a message and come say hello for more information and to read more articles please do come over and say hey at Thank you.