I thought I'd share my relationship with stress. How we met, how the relationship developed, how it manifested and became a part of me, how it hurt me, and how I've began to manage it. I believe my stress and anxiety has two sides. One is obvious, I see and feel it coming, normally during difficult times, it goes something like, bad news, bad thoughts, sharp pain under my back shoulder blade, stress! But the other side is sneaky.... And that's the scary one!
I'll have to go back a little, to the perfect setting. It was the happiest time of my life, November 2013, I was offered a promotion at work in the banking industry, which I ultimately declined, and I was also offered a position at another company as a Finance Assistant, which meant I had options. At the same time, I had just gotten engaged 4 months prior and was planning the wedding of my dreams for March of the following year. I was on cloud 9! I was confident with my choices of changing industries and with marrying the man of my dreams. That, to me, there was nothing stressful about... I was happy.
Day 1 at the new job quickly turned into day 365. My perfect wedding came and went, and we were planning for our Honeymoon/Anniversary trip through Europe Paris, Rome, Florence.... I was in Utopia, the happiest I had ever been in my life. Then November 2014.
I can't tell you exactly when the stress began, or what exactly triggered it. To me, responsibility and planning have always been things to look forward too, things that bring about change, and not necessarily causes of stress. But now in retrospect, I learned that what I "thought" and what my body felt were two different things, I was out of tune. Being in my head so long, I became out of touch with my body, and stress ceased the opportunity.
Alopecia areata, aka sudden, spotlike hair loss-- Thats how I realized my stress was beyond a feeling, and my body was fighting an internal war, and I was ignoring it and calling it happiness. Alopecia is literally your own immune system turning on your hair follicles and attacking them, which then causes the spots of hair loss. The cause of Alopecia is said to be probably inherited, but after a year researching the autoimmune disease, I learned that no one in my family could have passed this down, no one directly related to me has had Alopecia, and what do doctors/science really know anyway? LOL.
The first thing people tell you is try not to stress about loosing chunks of hair, because stressing about Alopecia will in turn, make it worse, Oh and don't stress about the fact there's no actual cure or way to predict how far it will go. This was the most difficult part of the whole process, I felt defeated.
How long had I been loosing my hair? How was I just now noticing it? Was it going to stop? Will I go bald? Will I need wigs? How much was this all going to cost?... I run my fingers through my hair and about 5-10 strands come out every time. I break down, various nights crying and feeling helpless, I didn't want to brush or even touch my hair. My husband being the bright light that he is in my life, tried to pull me out and help me see a bright side. I wanted to believe him, but I couldn't. I'm a Mestiza (offspring of a Spaniard and an American Indian) long thick long hair is part of my heritage!
After loosing it literally and figuratively for weeks (maybe months), I realize hair loss is not a limb, or a finger, it wasn't something that would necessarily hinder me. And to an extent that made me feel even worse. I felt I was being shallow, was I this pathetic? How could loosing my hair break me down this way? And there I went again feeding my anxiety increasing my stress, an invisible parasite in me just happily feeding away at me and my hair!!!
I researched for months, I needed to find something that worked, and all dermatologists wanted to do was inject me with steroids which, with the amount of side effects that has, I didn't consider that as a solution to my problem. And if steroids could be considered as a solution why couldn't I come up with a totally different solution? That's when I began to see my anxiety for what he really was. Just like you can't get rid of the flu with NyQuil, it was going to take alot more than an injected hormone to fix my hair loss ... So I turned to meditation.
Every night instead of crying, I meditated, instead of actively watching my hair fall out, whenever it did come out I thought of new hair growing in its place. I started following people who meditate on social media, and mimicked their lifestyle. I soon learned about homeopathic remedies. Which lead me to various oil remedies like almond, grapeseed, and castor oil which I mixed and rubbed on my scalp every night for months. As far as I was concerned I was curing my Alopecia by managing my stress with meditation, and helping my hair grow back faster by giving it all it needs with oils, but most importantly I REALLY believed in my core this was going to work. However, through meditation I learned (the hard way) to let go of the fear of loosing my hair. You see, meditation has a funny way of teaching one that everything your are "proud of" owns you right back.
Nothing happened overnight, now a year and months later, my hair is slowly growing back, and is still nowhere near in thickness from where it used to be. So after years and years of luxurious long locks, I decided to cut my hair to my shoulders. This was my way of proving to myself that, although I still care about my appearance, that it my hair and stress DO NOT OWN ME!
I believe I took back my control, by letting go. Stress and I have had numerous encounters since, both at work and at home, as I suspect it will always be there. But every time I am better equiped in dealing with it. Meditation made me a little more in tune with my body, and my mind. I now feel and see my anxiety coming and now I know that it CAN be controlled.
There are 200,000 US cases of people affected by Alopecia every year, and approximately 40 million adults with anxiety in the US alone. This one of the oddest ways that my stress took on a physical form. So if this blog serves just one of those 40 million than it was worth writing out this long story.