It has been over 10 years since I was originally diagnosed with anxiety disorder, and 10 years since my last panic attack. This was a time before there were television and magazine ads touting medications for whatever anxiety disorder one may be suffering from so after 2 years of frequent and varied doctors visits and 3 different misdiagnoses that included a host of medications, was I finally properly diagnosed with acute anxiety disorder, manifesting itself through panic attacks.

I did not accept the diagnosis right away. Having never heard of such a thing, I chalked it up to having some rare, undetectable, incurable disease.

On with my life, or what was left of it, by this point severely depressed and agoraphobic to the point that I could no longer work due to the frequency and severity of my attacks. Most of my time was spent cloistered in my apartment fantasizing and planning my long and most assuredly painful death, until one morning upon arising I could not move. It felt like every muscle, tendon and ligament in my body had contracted and would not release. This was it, the moment I had been waiting for, deaths door, and I was not crazy! My death would prove, as much, and I along with my rare, undetectable incurable disease would be recorded for history in medical journals across the world.

Since you are reading this, it is obvious that that scenario was not to be my fate. It does give you an idea of how anxiety disorder can affect ones psyche.

Given that I was not dying, I was forced to accept the diagnosis and face the situation head on. Several years later, armed with knowledge, action on my part, and the help of some special people, I was panic free. It was realized that I had been suffering from anxiety disorder since childhood, undetected and ignored. I was to learn that many of my behaviors during those years encouraged and aided in the progression and severity of my condition.

During the early phase of my recovery, I became interested in massage therapy as a tool to aid in stress and anxiety reduction. So fascinated with it, I became a certified massage therapist, and practiced for some years. In that time I provided over a thousand massages and learned that many people suffer from some kind of anxiety, and most do not recognize it as such, the ones that do medicate, medicate, medicate. It is a bad habit that this society has picked up, relying exclusively on the medical community for their health care needs.

If you suffer from anxiety and or panic attacks or think you do this information is offered to you in the hopes that you will become interested in educating yourself, not so much about the condition, but what you can do about it.

Next Post: Ten Most Common Sensations (Symptoms) OF A Panic Attack

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