Living with anxiety and trying to beat it

Em Rathbone is happy to stay home and look after her children she writes about their life at snowingindoors, Em also suffers from anxiety and depression BUT she’s determined to beat it out of her system, do you feel the same? Read on to find out more

At the end of last year I managed to get some counselling for my anxiety and depression. It was going really well and I came to some fairly major realisations that left me looking at my life in a whole new light.

I had had counselling on and off over the past 15 years but never found a counsellor I clicked with like this one. Under her supervision I worked hard, booking play dates for the kiddos, pushing myself to leave the house without my husband’s support, meeting up with friends and going to the park and as a result managed to lower my anxiety levels substantially.

Then counselling ended and my prolapsed disc flared up. I was housebound for a month, unable to lift the kids, drive, steer the buggy and having trouble doing the smallest tasks. Since this happened I found that I’ve been feeling rubbish, my anxiety levels have rocketed and my self esteem and confidence has plummeted. I even had to stop my CBT because I was unable to make it to appointments.

I tried using the CBT techniques to rebuild my confidence but I am unable to leave the house in the first place. The anxiety also brings with it a ‘lovely’ assortment of nervous tics, I’m short tempered, snappy, grumpy with the kids and have a really low tolerance for clutter and mess.

I have been cancelling appointments, postponing play dates and even the thought of sending an email or writing a blog post is too stressful to contemplate. My days are spent worrying about everything and I feel unable to switch my brain off, a sure sign I’m feeling run down.

Last week I went to see my dr. I have spent the last year determined not to go back on anti-depressants but after discussing the situation with my husband and the dr. I decided that I need a helping hand to break through my anxiety.

The way I see it, my anxiety is like a choking weed. If I stop hacking away at it then it spreads rapidly until my mind is all overgrown and tangled with it. I have to keep cutting it back daily to keep it under control, the harder I work at clearing it day on day, the better I feel.

I’m lucky in a way, since my counselling I can recognise that pausing my proactive behaviour has led to a slump in my mood and a revival of the anxiety. With this knowledge and my CBT workbook, as soon as I feel able to start going out again I can be working towards getting back to how things were before my bad back, and then, even improving life from there.

Even luckier is the fact that I have a really supportive husband and two loony kiddos who lift my mood and give me a reason to kick anxiety’s arse once and for all.

Em Rathbone is a stay at home Mum who blogs about life with her 2 kiddos at snowingindoors Em has a passion for photography, reading, learning through play and eating crisps! She felt trapped by her job until discovering her dream career as Mum to 2 awesome kids. She now spends her days building Mega Blok towers, pushing swings, reading stories (& doing all the voices), kissing bumps and bruises and enjoying fairy tea parties. She also writes about her struggles with anxiety and depression and her determination to beat them once and for all.

Tweet with her @snowingindoors and find her on Facebook