Grateful For Therapy!

I’ve been in & out of some type of therapy for most of my adult life.

Today marks 5 years since our house fire. I’ve briefly mentioned this here before but it was a traumatic day for all 3 of us. We (my husband and son) made it out safely and our two dogs too, but we lost our 3 cats. For days after I could not stop crying, I’d randomly just break down throughout the days. We were well taken care of by our families, friends and the insurance company, the one bright side. We stayed at my parents for 3 weeks before moving to a townhouse until our house was renovated.

During this time I developed an issue with anxiety I had not experienced before. Going out anywhere was scary, I was only okay at home with my boys. I ended up back in therapy to work through all of it.

After my breast cancer diagnosis and surgery, I put my head down and just did what I was told by the doctors for my treatment. For those few months I didn’t give my situation any thought. I showed up for radiation then went on to work for the day. It was a routine and manageable for that time. Once I was done I started to process what had happened and the anxiety returned. I have been working with a wonderful therapist at HGCC since then.

This time of year has started to bring not so pleasant feelings up. I was never a fan of fall and strongly dislike winter weather. Now the chill reminds me of needing to turn on the heater, the cause of the fire. The winter is also when I had the surgery for breast cancer, then a broken foot the following year. This past winter, into spring was all the testing leading up to surgery for where my NETs were discovered. With this diagnosis I told my therapist I am her job security.

The anxiety creeps in and so many things are potential triggers. I’m just now realizing how insidious this is in my life. The GI pain I had last week started me worrying about the possibility of my condition getting worse. I didn’t realize until today how extreme my fear is for the likelihood of needing further surgery or more intensive treatment in the future. The approaching of today’s date reminded me of our past trauma. All of this set my anxiety level to 11.

When this happens it’s almost like I can’t see straight in a sense. Everything about my life becomes distorted to a negative skew. I have a hard time expressing what’s going on to anyone else other than to say my anxiety is kicking in. I find it difficult to have normal conversations with friends or even family. My reaction to this is usually to cry for no apparent reason or just shut myself away from everyone.

Therapy has been helping me see these patterns and identify the core issues, instead of me just harping on anything I can think of to be negative about. I don’t see an end in sight for my therapy need. I still feel anxious, scared and super mad quite often. But I am grateful I have such a wonderful therapist. And also for the friends who stick around even when I am talking nonsense. I have an amazing husband who willingly puts up with all this and remains my strongest support.