Have you ever been entirely paralysed by fear and panic? Ever been swept up in a sea of your own despair to the point that you are unsure of what is up and what is down? Well let me tell you, it's no fun. Anxiety disorders are serious, it's like you are experiencing a nightmare in your head that you can't escape and no one else can understand. I've been to the pit of this trauma and have realised that no matter how much you try to ignore it or believe that certain isolated parts of your life are the cause of these terrifying experiences there comes a point where you need to accept that you don't have control and you need help, ironically enough that can be the first step in gaining it back.  

I always tried to blame others for why this was happening to me, it's your fault for putting me through this and I'm like this because you're like that. This attitude was totally counterproductive, it only served to feed the fear and panic within me. Don't get me wrong others can place you in severe panic sometimes but in my case I was just angry and looking for someone else to blame. 

So what got me to a state where I was at times totally debilitated? It's hard to answer I guess, no scratch that, it's easy to answer but hard to hear. I was so completely full of self loathing about nearly everything about me, I felt like a total failure, like nothing I ever did was worth jackshit to anyone. Combine that with the pressures of day to day life in a high stress environment and it can be a cocktail for fear, panic and anxiety to be the driving  forces in your life and when they those bastards are behind the wheel it can feel like the only place you can go is off the side of a cliff.  

I may be painting a picture of myself where I appear to be a nervous, introverted character terrified of my own shadow. The thing is that couldn't be further from the truth, I am a loud gregarious, fun loving individual and even during some of my darkest days, I still managed to maintain this facade on the outside, but on the inside I felt like everything about me was just wrong. I kept thinking "this will go away if I just squash it down and ignore it, Tony you're not a wimp who succumbs to 'mental illness,'For God sakes just take some concrete pills and harden the fuck up!." 

What happened next was I had what is commonly known as nervous breakdown. I got to a point where I couldn't see a way out, couldn't think straight, couldn't work, couldn't remain calm and couldn't see a point to it all anymore. I really thought that when I got the opportunity I would end it all, in my mind at the time it seemed like the only thing I could do.

Thank God I wasn't alone, my beautiful partner Laura was there for me when I was at my most desperate. She took me to the doctors and got me in touch with some good people. I used to think that I was going mad and that there was no hope to get through this, I was just going to be a crazy old bastard one day. Not true, I can get through this and I can get control of my life back. I'm not crazy, it's just a disease and it's treatable. I'm not talking about treatable as in pumping yourselves up to the eyeballs with meds, but making positive life changes.

These incidents I am writing about didn't happen so long ago and I still have a way to go. When I was in the real thick of it I felt as though a was just being punched in every which direction, now I still take the odd hit but at least now I can fight back. That's what battling mental illness feels like for me and I'm happy to say, I'm winning.