My tryst with anxiety – III: The redress

Continuing from My tryst with anxiety – II : The fall

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross came up with the five stage model for grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. If I had to adapt that model for my state, I had already crossed the first four. The issue was the final hurdle from depression to acceptance. As Sam Harris says, Free Will is an illusion. Once we form a habit, it is going to be hard to unlearn. Our brain takes over and triggers action way before we can ascertain the implications of the action. I couldn’t imagine a world I won’t be able to bulldoze the issues at work. I could feel the cortisol imbalance in my system. I walked into the therapy, hoping my problem was physiological and not psychological. My bigger want was a mean reversal back to my previous state.

My first session with the psychologist was a revelation. Once I sat down in front of the psychologist, I kept my bias aside. I wanted to give therapy a chance. I spoke for close to two hours. I shared my issues honestly. I opened up about my insecurities. I relived every incident from the previous six months. It left me in a battered state, completely drained and devoid of any energy. 

The fortnight following the first session was comfortably the hardest. It coincided with the Christmas break, leaving me with very little official work to do. I felt exhausted and started sleeping at odd times. Interactions with people were still hard. As expected from a person of my ego, I managed to hide it from everyone except a select few. 

Fast forward a couple of weeks, I was already at work. I had overestimated my recovery. In less than a week, I realised that I had no energy left to continue and needed a longer break from work. For starters, I took four weeks of leave. Little did I know that I wasn’t going back to work in the same place again. 

In line with Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, my id was to take a battle head-on. The super-ego which had to instruct me about self-preservation doesn’t exist at all. What followed were cycles of ebb and flow on the path to recovery. I never really got my head out of the issues at work. As I mentioned in my first blog of this series, I have an addictive personality. My two addictions were:

1. My close circle of people I care
2. My work

My inability to get myself detached from the latter was affecting my relationship with the former. After every ebb, the fall was drastic and painful. Very soon, the situation hit an abyss. 

Something had to give in as my situation started to deteriorate rapidly, and the discussions at work started to get more apathetic and tense. After almost eight weeks of leave, I realised returning to the same setup wasn’t an option. I decided to quit and move on. The anxiety also hit its peak as I was prescribed medication to deal with the situation. 

Three weeks in, the medication started to take effect. I also began to disassociate myself from the job. The path to recovery had just started. My therapist told me that I am suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Unfortunately, the damage has already been done. The road to recovery will take time and plenty of care. 

One year after this entire episode began, I am feeling close to my normal state. I am still on medication, but I haven’t had an episode of anxiety in close to 3 months. This traumatic experience has taught me how fragile my mind was, irrespective of what I thought. This recovery was possible mainly due to the support I received from my loved ones.