I underwent a year of treatment to get a better understanding of Anxiety. How it affected my life, how to wrest control back, how to ground myself and focus on what was actually happening. My mind had spent so long fixating on imagined futures that the present moment was almost foreign. I felt vulnerable. A large part of my anxiety centred around being prepared for anything that might happen, especially things that I couldn’t anticipate. Stay constantly alert, vigilant, ready to act because when this impossible-to-predict awful thing happens, I’d be the one best positioned to react and keep myself or my loved ones safe. I had to learn to base my worries on my experience not my imagination. This didn’t stop me from worrying, it didn’t remove my lizard brain survival instincts, but that was never the goal. It merely allowed me to control the fear tap more and reduce the flow. Even turn it off for the first time in my adult life.

There was only one problem with all of this. Basing myself in my experiences meant facing my experiences. I didn’t fancy doing that. Despite my therapist being aware that I had lost Jas to cancer, the topic of trauma was never properly brought up. I was happy to leave it and thought my work on Anxiety was enough. I did feel much better. The nightly panic attacks were mostly gone, I wasn’t tense 100% of the time I was in public, and my relationship with myself graduated from vitriolic hatred to “he’s alright I guess”.

And then my therapist left the practice, and I was forced to look for support from someone else. Cool.

In my mind, finding another therapist was purely about finding someone to check in with. I thought I had completed my journey but having a regular therapist would be just as important as having a GP (I still hold to this actually). So, I googled nearby psychologists and found Lance. He was local to me at the time, came recommended, and had a free slot for new patients. Perfect. I attended my first appointment, let him know what I was after, and gave him a brief summary of my journey so far. He asked me a bit more about what happened with Jas and I offered a few more details. He sat quiet for a moment then hit me with

“I think you might have some unresolved trauma around the loss of your sister. Have you ever talked to anyone about PTSD?”

My heart and my stomach switched places. This man had the audacity to pull to the light this secret that my mind had worked so diligently to hide from me. The secret that I was absolutely, unequivocally, still not ok.

Lance told me he would very much like to help me deal with this and he had a lot of tools we could use to make the process as easy as possible (see: super fuckin’ difficult). So I accepted. If there truly were unresolved issues, I was keen to work on them. A week later I was tasked with writing down what had happened and it was then that I realised that I hadn’t ever truly thought about it, not actively. It took me several days to finish my account. I presented it at the following appointment, shaken to my core by reliving the worst day of my entire life yet proud of what I had accomplished. He agreed. He was impressed by how I had thrown myself headlong into it, despite the horror I had to face. Then he made me write it again.

“This time, add in the details you left out.”

My dear reader, please know that I’m not exaggerating when I say that I had never be so afraid. Because he was right. I had left the worst parts out. I hadn’t even meant to. Lance described trauma as a cupboard stuffed with glass then hastily closed. As soon as you even nudge the cupboard door, it will all come spilling out and shatter on the floor. So, you avoid it. You may even forget about it. Sure, you can function just fine without it but it’s a big cupboard and you have other precious things stored inside. The lost space and missing items will eventually have to be addressed. Life will get better if you open the cupboard. But man. It’s scary.

It took me weeks to finally do it. When I did, I wept for hours. The pages of my journal are warped from it. Ink is smeared. But I did it. The account you can read at the start of this page is that same one. Only with this in hand could my treatment begin, for hidden within it were the anchors of my disorder.