The last month or so I have left church with almost this panic attack, anxiety feeling.

My inner most being has said “suck it up cupcake, it’s church you are secure.”

Even as I am writing this the tears are flowing and the anxiety I feel is about a 9.5 on a 10 scale and I have been home from church for an hour.

I don’t like feeling like this~ the girl who loves serving~ who loves to teach~ is floundering trying to figure out how to get involved and subside this emotional roller coaster of anxiety and panic attacks.

As I talked with my amazing husband, we decided we would first try a different service time. The 9am service is not as packed and maybe the overflowing service has triggered something. So today we attended the 9am service. I did well, but as the service let out, and we were leaving the anxiety started to fill me again.

We head home,but first we need to stop at Kroger. My husband realizes that my arms are folded and I am walking with much more of a purpose. “I’m fine”, is my reply. All the while my inner being is saying: “as long as you don’t say much, keep busy, you won’t lose it.”

Yeah, I make it through Kroger. Now home. My husband comes over to me, wraps his loving arms around me and starts to pray, I start to cry.

I am so tired of feeling like this. This cloud. This anxiety. This very easy could become a dark depression if I let it.

So I sit down and start writing, the tears flowing as I pray “God, something’s gotta give, and I am afraid it’s going to be me.”

I start to let my mind wander.

These are the words I come up with:

The accident

The man who didn’t fit in

The bathroom

No more happy place

So the first word: Accident (totaling the motorcycle on June 28)

Adding additional Trauma to someone who already deals with PTSD, and their go to behavior is to stay busy so you don’t have to feel…is not a recipe for a beautiful wedding cake, but a recipe for disaster.

I have realized that growing up, when things were bad at home, I kept myself busy. I figured if I just locked myself in my room, the bad would happen, and I would just walk out when things were done blowing up. Again not a healthy way to cope with real life and feelings.

Second word was: Man who didn’t fit in

Right after the accident and right after the Chattanooga shootings, there was a gentleman who came to our church services. I did not recognize him. His clothing choices, did not fit the 90 degree weather we were having, and seeing we are in the suburbs, having this person being someone of the homeless population that I minister to in the Nashville area, wasn’t even on my radar. The whole service long my anxiety was heightened, again to the panic attack mode. I wasn’t even safe in the church building, was my thought.

During this time, I had started using a different set of bathrooms that were off the beaten path. There was never a waiting line before or after church. Here is where the issue was, this was the bathroom, in which right after the attack (January 2011) I found myself in when I started bleeding from my nose and it was so bad that we had to call the doctor to make sure everything was ok. So, now every time I walked into this bathroom, I immediately went back to that night, which went back to the attack.

And then my happy place.

My happy place was destroyed through words of discouragement.

So why did I write about this. First because my therapy is writing. It may not fix all my anxiety and panic attacks today but getting it out and verbalizing it allows for satan to not take up any more residence in my thoughts.

Secondly, I know I am not the only person who deals with PTSD, anxiety and panic attacks. Not everyone has such an amazing spouse who is in-tune to your feelings and can give you a safe place to think, vent and strategize. If you are that person who does not have a special someone where your feelings are safe, please do not let this anxiety, panic attacks become a deep dark depression please, please talk to someone. Don’t let it engulf you.

And thirdly, even though church is supposed to be a safe place, it can also hold a lot of triggers for people.
My question to myself is how am I going to work through this? How am I going to control it verses letting it control me?

You see having these issues don’t define you unless you give them permission to.