Living with Anxiety: My Journey and What I’ve Learned Along the Way

For the past few years, I’ve noticed the growing efforts made by health professionals (hello Manon Porelle!) to raise awareness and demystify anxiety, to talk about it openly — because it seems it has become the illness of the century (see the third statistic below). We can also thank Bell’s annual Let’s Talk campaigns, which have played a major role in this awareness. I still remember the television ad showing children standing in a school hallway, talking about a classmate struggling with mental health issues. They repeat the same message three times, calling her “crazy,” until one of the girls finally says: “She’s not crazy, she’s sick. We should go say hello.”

One of the five ways to fight stigma: change the language we use.

Some eye-opening statistics

I did a quick — non-scientific — search to update myself on the topic. Here are a few statistics that struck me:

• Each week, more than 500,000 Canadians miss work due to mental health issues, according to the Mental Health Commission of Canada’s Let’s Talk toolkit.

• Nearly one in five people will experience a mental illness in their lifetime (Montreal Mental Health University Institute).

• Mental health disorders account for over 20% of the total burden of disease in our society, second only to cardiovascular disease (23%) and ahead of cancer (11%).

  
  

Oof. These numbers show just how significant this issue is. So significant that I’ve decided to do my part in breaking stigma by sharing my own experience with anxiety. In another post, I hope to share the perspective of someone who lives alongside someone with anxiety — because we don’t talk about that enough.

Living with Anxiety: Where My Journey Began

Let’s go back to 2008.

I was in the midst of my separation from my daughter’s father. It was January. My daughter was 11 months old; my son was 7. I had just started a full-time job (financial necessity), after a period of entrepreneurship, leaving behind my semi-maternity-leave routine while still juggling my language institute.

On top of that, it was a particularly harsh winter. The snow just kept coming. Thank goodness for my wonderful neighbours, who came to shovel my driveway more than once. Living paycheque to paycheque, I still carry bitter memories from that time — running out of firewood, filling the oil tank $300 at a time (all I could afford) only to be empty again less than two weeks later.

(Big sigh.)

Of course, the separation itself wasn’t a surprise. Things hadn’t been going well for a long time. But living through it under those conditions was deeply traumatic. The emotions were so intense that, despite all the tears I shed, they continued to show up in nightmares and episodes of deep depression. Anxiety first appeared as a sensation of paralysis — I couldn’t feel my legs. The more I tried to calm myself, the worse the panic got. Hyperventilation followed. Catching my breath had become a battle.

I ended up in the emergency room several times, convinced I was having a heart attack and sure I was about to die. I was prescribed anxiety medication. I remember taking just one pill before bed one night and feeling such strange sensations that I scared myself.

Learning to Understand… and to Soothe

It was ultimately my childhood family doctor — while I was staying with my parents — who prescribed antidepressants to help rebalance my neurotransmitters. Accepting that medication took an enormous amount of humility. I saw it as a failure. Other factors contributed to that feeling — possibly fodder for another post — but let’s just say the context amplified everything.

The antidepressants were part of my life for a few months, and they genuinely helped calm the constant noise in my head and restore my sleep. (When you don’t sleep, you don’t recover.)

Gradually, I found an amazing psychologist (thank you, Krista!) who gave me tools and helped me rebuild — emotionally, I was completely shattered. Still, anxiety would surface here and there, especially during stressful moments. The numbness in my legs, the paralysis sensation, the hyperventilation… I sometimes had to step outside, breathe into a bag, or walk quickly until my breathing returned to normal.

Then, in 2015, I experienced a major turning point.

A psychologist (thank you, Jean-Luc Williams) explained anxiety in such simple terms that I finally truly understood — intellectually, emotionally, and even spiritually — what was happening inside me.

In short: anxiety is a chemical reaction in our bodies triggered by a perceived danger. Humans have operated this way for millennia through the fight or flight response — man vs. bear: man kills or runs. (Those are Jean-Luc’s words — which made me laugh.)

In my case, I had adopted freeze rather than fight or flight. My brain had learned to trigger these reactions — legs paralyzed, breath cut off — when it encountered emotions similar to those from 2008. The brain reacted first; the body followed.

The good news? We can reprogram our brains. Just like a computer, we have this incredible ability to reprogram our thoughts — because thoughts become emotions, emotions become behaviours, and behaviours shape our mood.

That was a huge breakthrough.

I learned to talk to myself, to calm my brain when symptoms appeared. I would simply tell myself:

“There’s no danger right now. It’s okay. This isn’t the reaction I want you to have.”

At first, I had to repeat this 10 times, 20 times… I can’t even remember how many. But slowly, that message took hold, and calming down came much more quickly.

Learning to Listen to Our Inner Voices

I realize the way I managed my anxiety won’t work for everyone — but it worked for me. It also helped me become aware of my inner monologues and how much my thoughts influenced my mood.

I noticed that in certain situations, I would worsen things by putting myself down — being overly harsh with myself. (When Nadine starts being hard on herself, she doesn’t hold back — let me tell you.)

We all have inner voices. When we learn to recognize them, it’s incredibly revealing. Even those that seem harmful are often trying to protect us.

But that’s a fascinating topic for another blog post — maybe with my coach Isabelle.

Don’t Suffer in Silence

If you live with anxiety, the most important thing is not to suffer in silence and to seek help. Here are some useful resources I found during my research:

• Bell Let’s Talk Toolkit

• Mouvement Santé mentale Québec – tools and resources

• eSantéMentale.ca – NB mental health resources

• Psychologist Manon Porelle’s videos

• Speaker Martin Latulippe’s reflections

  
  

If this text can help — even a little — to normalize anxiety and open the dialogue, then it has served its purpose.

Anxiety is that inner noise that lingers even when everything seems calm on the outside.