EP 45: A Personal Story about Anxiety: Skye McClain
Skye McClain always thought she was just a highly strung person, never considering that she might be suffering from anxiety. Having her son seven years ago revealed her underlying anxiety which often presented itself in bouts of anger, but it wasn’t until the pandemic last year that Skye’s anxiety reached breaking point and she found herself in a state where she was barely able to function. While we have talked about anxiety from a child and teen perspective in the past, today, Skye McClain, Blogger, Instagrammer, pastor’s wife, and mom, joins us to share her personal story of her journey with anxiety from an adult perspective. She explains how her husband helped her see that she needed help and the importance of being willing to hear and trust the people who love you most. Tuning in today, you’ll find out what barriers Skye needed to overcome in order to get help, what false beliefs she had surrounding anxiety and treatment, and what unhealthy things she did to try to manage it. Hear about her experience with medication over the past eight months, what she is doing to progress after getting help, how her anxiety levels and relationships have improved throughout this process, and how her journey has affected her relationship with her son. For some hope-filled encouragement, tune in today!
Key Points From This Episode:
- An introduction to today’s guest Skye McClain.
- Skye gives some background into being ‘highly strung’ and her struggles with anxiety.
- How having a child really exposed her underlying anxiety issues.
- How her anxiety revealed itself as anger and the effect this had on her son.
- The effect of her anger on her relationships and how this motivated her to address it.
- The role her husband played in helping her see that she needed help.
- The importance of being willing to hear and trust the people who love you.
- The types of unhealthy things she tried to do to manage her anxiety.
- What fears, false beliefs, and stories she told herself about getting help.
- The barriers she overcame in order to get the help she needed: The lack of education and her own misperceptions.
- Thoughts on the difficulty of just taking that first step.
- How she followed her progress after getting help: documenting her journey in a journal.
- The importance of being able to observe your responses to things without judging yourself.
- The differences she’s noticed in her anxiety levels and relationships throughout this process.
- How her child has responded to his mother’s success on her journey thus far.
- Why Skye feels it’s important that her son sees that she is imperfect and is no longer afraid to apologize to him.
- The feedback she has received from sharing her journey on social media.
- Skye’s final words of encouragement to listeners.
Tweetables:
“You have to be willing to really really really trust the person who loves you most, that when they say something to you about your bad behavior it’s because they love you. And sometimes that can be the hardest part.” — @skyenmclain [0:09:06]
“Having the bravery and the honesty with yourself to even tell anybody ‘something’s wrong’ and not feel afraid to get pushback on that, is such a big deal.” — @skyenmclain [0:16:02]
“I feel like everybody feels like they’re so alone in their struggles and, it’s not to minimize anybody’s situation or life, but everybody has somebody in their life who’s probably going through the same thing or feeling the same thing that they are.” — @skyenmclain [0:37:40]
“The point that I’m trying to make is that when you don’t talk about it and when you try to bottle it all up and fix it yourself, and it doesn’t work, it just makes it worse. And so don’t be afraid to come out of your shell and to come out and say, ‘there is something wrong with me.’” — @skyenmclain [0:39:38]
“It doesn’t mean you’re broken, it doesn’t mean you’re not fixable, it doesn’t mean that you still don’t have a light to shine and a gift to give to the world, it just means that there’s something that can be improved.” — @skyenmclain [0:39:53]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
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