Did Someone Say Anxiety?

 With the elections over and the waiting period beginning, maybe it's time to get back to what I do best: oversharing! 

Today's topic is incredibly personal to me, and I'm hoping it opens up a conversation because I genuinely want to know if anyone else has experienced this. For most of my life, I have been fiercely independent. I've always been perfectly capable of being on my own, making decisions, following through, and handling whatever life decided to throw my way.

When my daughters were growing up, their father traveled extensively for work. He generally left on Sunday and returned Thursday evening. When the girls were very little, we sometimes traveled with him, but once school started, those trips were mostly reserved for school breaks. That meant I was essentially running the household on my own five days a week. We had rules, routines, expectations, and standards. Life happened, as it always does, and sometimes decisions had to be made without the luxury of consulting my husband first. I made them. He trusted me to make them. And neither one of us thought twice about it.

I wasn't nervous. I wasn't anxious. I didn't second-guess myself. I just handled things. And then, somewhere around six or seven years ago, something changed. I started second-guessing myself. Then third-guessing. Sometimes fourth-guessing. Decisions that once came naturally suddenly required an exhausting amount of thought. I'd replay conversations in my head, question things I'd said, and worry about situations that wouldn't have bothered me in the slightest ten years earlier.

And then there was the grocery store. Oh, the grocery store. The lights. The noise. The people. The constant movement. What had once been a perfectly ordinary errand became completely overwhelming. More than a handful of times, I abandoned a perfectly good cart full of groceries and walked out because I simply couldn't take another minute. For the record, I believe Instacart deserves some sort of Nobel Prize.  I can probably count on my fingers how many times I've physically entered a grocery store in the past five years. But it didn't stop with grocery shopping.

Eventually, anything outside my normal routine started making me anxious. New places. Different schedules. Unfamiliar situations. Things that once would have been adventures became things I dreaded. A few years ago, I was traveling for work and experienced what I can only describe as a full-blown panic attack while standing in the airport security line. My heart was racing, I felt physically awful, and every instinct in my body was screaming at me to get out of that line and go home.

I genuinely felt like I was having a heart attack. Having experienced one before, I knew what that felt like, and while this was different, it was absolutely terrifying. I made it through the trip, but when I returned home, I finally talked to my doctor about medication for anxiety. I've been taking it ever since, and it has helped tremendously. But it hasn't completely eliminated the problem.

And here's the part that has me wondering. Could this be connected to menopause, aging, or changes in our bodies that nobody really prepared us for? My last menstrual period was January 2012. I've read discussions suggesting that some women experience new or worsening anxiety years after menopause. The timeline certainly makes me curious, although I have no idea whether that's actually the explanation for me. Maybe COVID and spending so much time at home contributed. Maybe it's hormonal. Maybe it's a combination of things. What I do know is that I don't particularly like this version of myself.

I miss the woman who could walk into any situation and handle it. The woman who didn't rehearse conversations in her head or worry about every possible outcome. The woman who could make a decision and move on without questioning it seventeen different ways. She's still in here. I know she is. But sometimes it feels like anxiety has taken over the driver's seat, and I'm sitting in the passenger seat wondering when I handed over the keys.

So here's my question, especially for women who have crossed that 60-year milestone: Have you noticed a change in your confidence, independence, or ability to handle everyday situations as you've gotten older? Have you developed anxiety later in life when you never struggled with it before? And gentlemen, I'm not leaving you out of this conversation either. Have you experienced anything similar as you've aged?

I'm not looking for medical diagnoses or miracle cures. I'm genuinely interested in hearing other people's experiences. Because surely I can't be the only person who spent most of her life being the one who handled everything, only to reach her 60s and suddenly find herself overwhelmed by things that used to be so simple.

Let's talk about it. The things nobody warned us about when it comes to getting older might just be the things we need to talk about the most.