It slowly creeps in...

There I was - a full time wife, college student, employee, daughter, sister, friend and most of all perfectionist. OH! and I was running a non-profit working with teen girls. With all of these things going on I began to feel worried and stressed often. Sleeping at night became difficult and I slowly noticed I stopped doing the things I loved because of the stress of worry that they would produce. I slowly was secluding myself.

At the time, I was employed at a small business that I would take a back road to everyday. I never took any other roads. Often people with anxiety have routines and patterns that cannot be disrupted - this was the first thing I noticed was so different than my normal randomness of life. Every morning I would wake up at the same time, eat the same thing, pack the same lunch, get into my car, and drive the same country road that I was assured would have no more than 2 or 3 other cars on it.

I would work minimally with people which was good, but also gave my mind way too much time to let my mind wander to irrational places. Soon, going anywhere became something I dreaded. Especially work where I was often on my own with time to think. I remember driving to work one day and thought, 'If I just pull this car off the road into a ditch, maybe I would break my leg and not have to leave the house for awhile.' That day I came home and told my husband that I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me but something was....at that time he didn't know either.

Being a perfectionist and concerned with how people would think of me, I said nothing to no one about my struggles. I told my husband some things but not all (now he knows). 'Who would want a crazy wife?!' I would tell myself. Keeping everything to myself did not help, in fact it made it much more lonely and frustrating than it already was. However, I became a good actress - 'no one will see me like this. It will go away,' I would tell myself. So anytime I was around people my mask of perfection would come on.....however...the anxiety slowly started to eat through the mask. People closet to me, my family, began to see that something was different.

That was just the beginning...