My Adventures in Anxiety During the Merriest Time of the Year

It was Thanksgiving morning. I got up to get the meal going and I stood in the kitchen shaking. My hands were trembling.

My anxiety was through the roof.

The holidays are known to be stressful, especially for moms. Planning merriment for a large family can suck the life out of an already worn out woman. If the kids don’t feel fed, loved and heaped in family traditions during this time of year, it’s mom’s fault right?

We make the menus, plan a service project, make the gift lists, make the gift-giving for kids appear evenly dispersed monetarily. We try to decorate according to Pinterest standards, bake goodies for neighbors, go to parties, play secret Santa, and watch every holiday movie we’ve ever loved etc.. And in our family, we have three December birthdays. Including mine. It’s a lot.

Then let’s add this…shorter, colder days that are hard on anxiety and depression. I live in sunny Las Vegas for a reason. But the winter blues are still very apparent. I have managed it all for many years and still love Thanksgiving and Christmas with my family. We have created many years of great memories and traditions. Then in January I nap and cry a lot.

But this particular year was harder. In the middle of the jolliest of seasons, my husband Robert, and I were planning our first trip to Europe. We were going to pick up our daughter who was working as an au-pair outside of Madrid, Spain. Yes, it should have been a wonderful problem to have. But, the planning of the trip broke me.

We had to see all the things right? We were planning a hefty schedule that included five different countries in ten days. Rookie mistake, I know. At first the planning was fun. I was researching everything you could imagine. I was memorizing bus routes, train schedules and trying to fit in every attraction I could. My mind was starting to ruminate over every detail.

Also, it was winter in Europe. Very cold. We had to search out, buy and pack warm, comfy clothes, hats, gloves, toe warmers etc. To add to the stress, my passport was expiring soon and I had to figure out how to renew it quickly. We were also leaving three boys. One adult boy to babysit and do the driving and two boys still in school. Christmas would be six days after our return, then we were taking the whole on a family trip.

So, somewhere in all that mess, my brain broke.

On that Thanksgiving day my body was telling me I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t plan, schedule, research, buy or prepare, one more thing. I started not sleeping or eating, and could not convince myself that I had done enough and everything would be okay. I didn’t want to go to Europe anymore. I didn’t want to go anywhere. I just wanted to be able to function again.

Robert, also being my doctor, is not always a good combo. In hindsight, I should have gone to therapy. But I didn’t. I wanted an immediate cure. So my Dr. Spouse, out of love and desperation, started prescribing stronger things for sleep, anxiety and a broken brain. It worked.

The drugs made me feel weird and fuzzy but I was sleeping and functioning a bit better. We also cancelled a few plans we had made for Europe. There would be three countries instead of five. We lost some money in changing plans but gained some sanity.

We went on our European escapade and had an amazing time.

I was grateful to be reunited with my daughter. My appetite still was not great and I kept my anxiety meds with me at all times. Despite all, I was able to enjoy Madrid, Paris and London for the first time. We packed in a ton, hit the highlights and loved all of it. We returned home tired but so grateful for our time abroad.

But then there was the jet lag. Asleep at 8 pm? Yes please. Then it was Christmas. Then a family getaway to Disneyland. I was exhausted but I was still drugged, taking several pills everyday, still functioning and enjoying my family.

In January with everything slowing down again and a normal routine returning, I wanted to go off everything but my regular anti-depressant. I knew I did not need all those pills.

Little did I know, it was easier said than done.

The months that followed would be the hardest of my life.

*In my next post, I will share what it’s like to taper off a drug that doesn’t want to leave your body, and how it affected me and my family.