Anxiety During the Holiday Season

 

The holiday season means more than just food, family, and gifts..it means the word “grateful” is thrown around like confetti.  Up until six weeks ago, I knew without a doubt that this holiday season, when asked to share what I am grateful for, I would reply, “my daughter has overcome anxiety”, with a giant smile on my face.  There would be no doubt to those around me that happiness poured from me in celebration of the joy that our family has felt over the past six months.  

(If you are new to this blog, check out our story here.)

However, in keeping with my promise to be open and honest with our journey, our happiness has started to fade as anxiety has slowly crept back into our lives in a way that fills me with deep, inner rage and fear that nearly consumes me.  Until six weeks ago, my daughter was thriving beyond our wildest expectations. She has a strong group of amazing friends, ended the first semester of her freshman year of high school with all A’s and B’s (because she was attending all of her classes in their entirety), had a busy social calendar, and shared her bubbly personality with us numerous times throughout the day.  My phone rarely “dinged” with an incoming text message during the workday and I often had to reign in her requests for sleepovers with friends.  

This does not mean that she was anxiety-free.  In fact, she faced moments/thoughts of anxiety each and every day.  However, she managed them and went on with her life. In turn, our family was not dictated by the beast.  We supported her when she had these thoughts/moments, then carried on. I was not naive enough to believe that she would not have times in her life where the intensity and frequency of anxiety had a more profound impact on her life, but I honestly never believed that in a matter of days, I would see the shell of anxiety slowly enveloping her every thought and action.  

She had one “bad” day about six weeks ago, where she felt anxious and overwhelmed…A feeling that we all experience from time to time since life is far from perfect.  That one day has set off a train reaction where her anxiety has convinced her that one bad day means that she has returned to the deep, dark abyss of anxiety where she was prior to the end of eighth grade.  It is as if, the weeks of success have disappeared from her memories and the 21 months of therapy have been meaningless. While she is struggling right now, she is nowhere near the shell of herself that she was for far too long.  Just as her anxiety causes her to go back to the worst-case scenarios of a bad day, my mind is often spiraling to the “what-ifs” and the “why us”.

During this holiday season, where I planned to share an uplifting post full of gratitude for the most amazing six months of our lives, I am struggling to hold onto the gratitude I felt just weeks ago.  I feel it slipping into despair. But I refuse to stay down. I will be grateful for the past six months because the memories will never fade. Even more empowering, I am grateful to know even when our family hit rock bottom, we rose back, soaring high.  

So, in the spirit of gratitude, even when it can be hard to move past the shadow lurking too close, I am grateful for:

• Experiencing hope and knowing that there is always a way through the darkness
• The courage I have to be open and honest in sharing the reality of life parenting a child with anxiety
• The connection I have made with others knowing that none of us are alone in our battles
• That I am fortunate enough to be a mother to two of the most incredible children each and every day
• I get to go to work every day doing something that I LOVE rather than simply collecting a paycheck
• That while life is far from what I imagined it would be at this point, I get to participate in life and enjoy the ride
• My husband who finds a way to see the positive in nearly every situation because “what other option is there”
• Access to a therapist who allows me to share my pain and anguish with her while giving me the strength to continue fighting for my daughter, and other children with anxiety

I anticipate the next few weeks will be challenging for our family, and I hope that we can make it out stronger and healthier than we are today.  Anxiety is not an illness with a clear path to health, it is a chronic illness with flare-ups along the way. No matter where you are in your journey of anxiety, I hope you can find moments of gratitude.  It may be hard, but those small moments tie together, to create bigger, more meaningful moments. Happy New Year!