Last week was tense, eye opening, and freeing all at the same time. I have not experienced anything like it before. Emotionally, I am doing better than I had expected. I have spent a lot of time thinking about all kinds of things. Obviously, a big portion of those thoughts revolved around what is going on in my marriage, as well as my daughter. I also spent some time thinking about the huge knot in my stomach, and how it reminded me of the constant nervous feeling I had before I began depression treatment.

Before depression treatment, all my mornings started out the same. I would wake up feeling like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was always waiting for the next bad thing to happen. It was a feeling that stayed with me all day, every day. I was so convinced that something bad was going to happen that my heart jumped a little every time the phone rang. I hated the mail because of that feeling, but there was no way I could allow it to stay in the mailbox for the same reason. It also made my world smaller. It limited how far I could travel from my house. It created a fear in me that made me think that if I went too far away, or stayed gone for too long that something bad would happen. That feeling gradually lessened, but never entirely went away.

Something occurred to me while I was thinking about that awful nervous feeling. In part, bad things did happen. (Before I go further, I want to clarify that I am in no way implying my husband and his behavior caused the anxiety. I am saying that his behavior and my reaction to it, made the anxiety worse.) In my house, I never knew what kind of mood my husband would be in when he got home. If it was a bad mood, nothing I did would be “good enough”. Even though I rarely went anyplace without him, if I was not home when he got home from work, it really upset him, and he would say some very mean things. Then there were times when he would explode, and I could not figure out a rational reason for his anger. I lived in a house full of tension, and stress, never really knowing when the next explosion was going to come, nor how bad it would be.

With the certainty that bad things would happen – combined with my already existing anxiety – my extreme anxiety makes much more sense to me now. I guess the distance from my husband, and being in an environment that has much less stress, has allowed me to see things more clearly.