Well. This is my very first entry on the Anxiety Tribe. And it's giving me anxiety! But if there is one thing I've learned about myself it's that when I do things anyway, usually something good comes out of it. Usually 🙂

Well for starters, I am 27. I have a full time job, am planning my wedding for next year. From an outside perspective I probably look very socially normal, pretty vanilla. I seem confident, I am reliable, I function quite well and I am independent.

But I'm concerned with what's going on inside. Everyone in my family has dealt with anxiety in some form or another so I guess you might say some of my behavior is learned. I learned that when it is storming you HAVE to call your loved ones and demand to know when they will be safe at home and off the road. I've LEARNED that if your family isn't all at home they are potentially outside somewhere dead in a ditch.

But my anxiety is getting out of control. My fiance is so amazing and has encouraged me to get help. The first step of which was joining the Tribe!

It's getting to the point where a daily panic attack has become part of my sleep ritual. It's easy when I am pretending to sleep to act like it's not happening. But right before bed, each and every night the last thought I have is that I might not wake up in the morning. If I'm driving the next day, i think about how I could get into a car accident and die. If my fiance has plans that take him out of the house, I think about how he could get injured. I know ocassional musings on one's mortality is normal. I know wanting your friends and family to be safe is completely commendable. but it is not healthy to think about it every single night. It's not normal when a loved one is 10 minutes late to immediately think they have perished in a horrible freak accident. I used to jokingly say that I have a "dead in a ditch syndrome". Like it was endearing. But it's not!

Even more scary, (scarier than anxiety) is that once I get married, we'll be trying to have kids and I don't want to teach them my neuroses. I don't want them to learn to obsess about things, or panic about every single thing. I want them to be kids. That scares me more than anything. See? I'm getting anxiety about kids that don't even exist!

Well, anyways, I am new here. I don't really know my way around here and I acknowledge that I need help.