Anxiety Diaries: How Amsterdam Broke Me

It's been a whole year to the day since I went off an a little trip to Amsterdam to celebrate Neil's birthday...way ahead of time, we went for his 29th birthday because Kelly had plans to be uppeth duffeth by his 30th - she bloody did it as well. Baby Johno is due in September.

Okay, let's talk about edibles... I've never seen an appeal in smoking; I've never even tried a cigarette and with having asthma I thought I'd opt for a little cakey cake. It went something like this... nothing... nothing... nothing... giggles... giggles... OH MY GOD I AM GOING TO DIE!

My heart was racing so fast it felt like it was ready to burst through my chest.

I was bouncing between hot, cold, hot, cold, hot, cold. Jacket on, off, on, off. Inside, outside, inside, outside, you get the point. 

I felt extremely claustrophobic; I mean I'm not a fan of being squished into a small space, but this was something else. We stayed in the Ibis hotel and the rooms are pretty small so at one point I was sat next to a cracked window to try and give myself more space. We planned to go to a little place that did all you can eat ribs for dinner, we were seated towards the back or the restaurant which was down a second set of stairs with a low ceiling. I just couldn't bear it, every time I tried to sit down and look at the menu I'd feel another wave of panic and have to get out. Martyn didn't get his ribs, which he's reminded me of for months on end.

I couldn't stop shaking and kept opening and closing my fists like that would do something to help. Martyn still jokes about my 'grabby hands' a year on. If I sat down I felt like I could pass out so I kept pacing up and down the street. Martyn popped into a shop to get me a drink and when he picked up a Coke Zero I followed him in and proclaimed 'no, I need full fat!' I'm not normally a fizzy drink person and it's always diet for me, if anything, but I needed that sugarrrrrrrrrrrr.

So it's clear that I'm very much a light-weight, which I'm totally fine with and at least now I can look back and laugh about the events of that day. Had it have ended there, it would have been nothing more than a funny story, but it didn't... or maybe it did, I don't really know - and I'm fine with that too.

Two weeks went by with absolutely nothing at all, then on a training day with work it suddenly came back, then it came back again, and again, and again, and again. I couldn't understand it; was it coincidence that it started after the cake, did the cake just let something out I'd suppressed?

I struggled for a few months; I couldn't understand why my body was doing what it was doing and I hadn't realised how physical stress and anxiety could be, I honestly thought it was just how people described a feeling. I was convinced there was something physically wrong with me - like that would've been easier to accept some how.

I remember looking at Instagram accounts one day to try and find out more about stress and anxiety, I found a post that simply read 'share a symptom' and as I read through the list of comments I burst into tears because I could relate to so many of them; pounding chest, tight throat, feeling drained, crying, shaking... the list went on. It was only then that I started to accept that it could be stress, or anxiety, or depression, or all of them, or none of them, or something else... 

I consider myself so bloody lucky that I had so much support from everyone around me; family, friends, colleagues, professionals - and especially Martyn. The more I opened up about it the more I came to realise how many people go through experiences like this - probably much worse that this, I'm so thankful that a year on I'm doing pretty well. It's so easy to feel like an alien when life deals you a wild card, but you're not alone, trust me.

Stephi xx

#Anxiety #MentalHealth #Panic #Amsterdam #Travel #Edibles #Depression #Stress