But I digress.
I say with such confidence that 'I'm cured' because the amount going on my life just now is of what would normally be perceived as 'high stress situations'.
In the last 2 months, I've been a victim of bank fraud, been on countless outings with work, had family reunions that would otherwise be devastatingly awkward, financial problems (as most do just now), high workloads and not enough hours in the day, etc etc.
Nothing has changed. Everything goes on. Everything is the same, but me.
I've changed incredibly, and am changing daily, weekly - monthly...
Work is not the scary, horrible, stress filled place with bad people that it used to be. It's a series of tasks which I can complete in order of priority. And if I don't get it all done - that's OK too. I now avoid the bad apples of my colleagues and surround myself with the supportive and friendly ones.
However...
I was at an awards ceremony a few weeks ago, and a multi-millionaire businessman was doing a keynote speech to aspiring enterpreneurs. This man came from a deprived housing estate and left school with no qualifications due to undiagnosed dyslexia.
The one thing he was great at was computing. And with my charity's backing in a loan, he opened his first business. Then his second, and on and on. Some failed, some are worth millions.
He made mistakes along the way. The very popular 'Grand Theft Auto' series of video games was invented by this very man, however at the time he wasn't knowledgable enough to grow the company and sold it on to rockstar games. They went on to make billions from it. Literally. It's now the highest selling merchandise from a game ever made. But he powered on.
The point is: We all have these setbacks. We learn, we grow, we get better and more equiped to deal with life.
If someone told me last year that I was going to suffer from 10+ panic attacks per day, KNOWING during each one that I was going to die. If they had told me they could make me not suffer from it, I would have said "OK, don't let me go through that".
Having gone through it, I wouldn't change it.
Some people live their life with stress and exibit little symptoms of it. Eventually they die from it having never known they were suffering.
My panic attacks let me know I was pushing too hard. And they made me stronger.
If you think that you have this disorder and you will never get better: You will never get better.
It takes time. I'm still recovering. I still have fears and irrational thoughts. But I'm dealing with them.
Step by step - Grow stronger.
