Lo Bosworth - Love Yourself Well: An Empowering Wellness Guide to Supporting Your Gut, Brain, and Vagina

FOR THE LOVE WELLNESS TEAM

PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE.

I AM NOTHING WITHOUT ALL OF YOU.

LB

E verything was going well for me in 2014. I was living in New York City, in a serious relationship, and working as a content creator in the lifestyle and food space. I wasnt completely sure about the direction of my career or how the relationship was going to play out, but I generally felt like life was unfolding for me in a good way.

And then it all blew up.

One morning, I woke up and my heart was racing. I had an uncomfortable tingling sensation all over my body and a tightening in my throat that made it hard to breathe. Id had similar episodes before, but never this intense or without warning. Panic attack is such an apt phrase. It felt like my body was under siege, and I remember in that moment I genuinely thought I was dying.

The panic attack faded after an hour, so I thought it was a weird one-off. If it was just a blip, I didnt need to freak out about it. But it happened again the next morning, and then the morning after that, and the morning after that. Soon, the panic attacks started to strike randomly throughout the day, too.

My life became divided into the time before that first morning panic attack, and after. Before, when I would get anxiety, I visualized the fretful feelings as water rising to the halfway mark in a glass. As I calmed down, the glass slowly drained of anxiety, until it was empty. After my morning attacks began, I visualized the anxiety as water filling the glass until it overflowed, poured down the sides, and flooded the room. There was no off switch for it. It just kept flowing.

I would drag myself through the workday and then collapse into the couch, too tired to do anything but zone out in front of the television or scroll on my phone. On a good night, Id crawl into bed at 10:30 p.m. and wake up eleven hours later at 9:30 a.m. with a jolt of panic. I lost whole weekends in bed, finding it impossible to do anything else.

My boyfriend and I were at the critical stage in the relationship of looking at each other and wondering, Are you the one? Both of us were beginning to realize that the answer was probably no. Our relationship hadnt been perfect for a while, but it must have been shocking for him to find his formerly upbeat girlfriend incapacitated by anxiety, lying on the couch, and sobbing for hours a day. (Not an exaggeration.)

Deep down, I suspected that something was seriously wrong with me on a physiological level. Why else would these attacks keep happening? It didnt make sense unless something was really wrong. But when I talked to my friends and parents about what I was going through, I got the kind of advice I mightve given to a friend in my situation. It was the same advice I gave to myself: Youre upset about your relationship. Things are weird with work. You need to meditate.

Its only human nature to grasp for easy explanations, and I wanted to blame emotional stress for what was happening to me. I convinced myself that my slowly unraveling relationship and the lifestyle of being a content creator were the causes of my anxiety. I was working as a freelancer and doing a lot of filming at home by myself, so it made sense that I was stressed in part because of the isolation that comes with the job.

I started seeing a psychologist who took my complaint at face value. She suggested that the tightening of my throat during the panic attacks was due to repression. You feel literally choked up, like youre unable to say the things that you want in your relationship and in your life, she said. It sounded like an interesting insight, and when a therapist tells you something that seems to make sense, you internalize it. So when I woke up every day feeling unable to move, I thought, Im holding stuff in.

Along with weekly therapy sessions, I was prescribed an antidepressant and Klonopin for anxiety. The psychologist didnt ask about my diet or sleep and exercise habits, though she did include occasional reminders to drink less alcohol.

I took the medication and poured my heart out in the sessions, but my anxiety wasnt getting any better. In fact, it was getting worse. I went to a cardio dance class, expecting to feel better, like I usually did after intense exercise. During the class, my levels of the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline rose, a normal physiological response. Which would have been fine, except by then my mind was so conditioned to link those responses to the beginnings of panic attacks, so guess what happened? Well, I flew into one in the middle of the class, burst into tears, and ran out of there.

A few months into my health mystery, I started to get severe brain fog and dizzy spells. Not being able to think or speak clearly felt like being removed from the sharp, articulate person I had been. I remember once standing at the door of my apartment in Tribeca, trying to put my key in the lock, and the world suddenly tilted off its axis. I had to sit down with my back against the wall in the hallway for a few minutes before I could try to insert the key again.

This is not normal, I kept thinking. Why would an impending breakup cause dizziness and brain fog? It was getting harder to justify my symptoms as purely emotional. I was doing everything right and not getting any relief. Feeling helpless only added to my stress.

I pressed the issue with my primary care physician (PCP). She referred me to an ear-nose-throat (ENT) specialist who tested me for inner-ear conditions and suggested I cut down on salt. That didnt help. The spinning episodes came more frequently than ever and were chased by a fun new symptom, a constant ringing in my ears called tinnitus.

The tinnitus might indicate an underlying problem, said my PCP.

Like what? I asked, desperate for any clue about my conditions.

Well, I dont know, she said. You have a handful of low-grade chronic mystery symptoms that dont point to a specific diagnosis. I see that fairly often, actually.

My primary care doctor mightve thought that Id take comfort in knowing that many of her patients had low-grade quality of life problems that werent tied to a specific diagnosis or illness, but seeing the person I turned to for answers basically shrug off my symptoms had the opposite effect.

My psychologist told me not to underestimate the impact of depression. I wasnt underestimating anything. The majority opinion of my health care providers told me that my symptoms were emotionally based. So what was I supposed to do? Shrug off debilitating panic attacks, spinning head, and brain fog? I kept insisting, There has to be something else going on. My physical discomfort was just too intense and worsening, despite medication and therapy.

As the months passed, I added new low-grade chronic mystery symptoms to the list, like urinary tract infections (UTIs), vaginal yeast infections, and bloating. For UTIs, I was prescribed antibiotics, often over the phone. For the yeast infections, I followed a frustrating pattern of going to the obstetrician/gynecologist (ob/gyn) and getting a prescription for Diflucanthe standard protocol. The itching, redness, and pain would clear up for two or three weeks, and then Id get hit with a rebound infection. As for the bloating, my whole body felt puffy. I could press on my ankle and leave a fingertip-shaped depression in the skin. It was like pre-period water retention, but worse, because it was happening all month long.

By 2015, I was stuck in a revolving door of doctors appointments and therapy sessions. Even though I wasnt seeing any positive results, I wasnt going to let go of these problems until Id figured them out. So I followed my doctors instructions to the letter and would then come back with more complaints. They kept writing prescriptions for pills and medications and blaming my depression. Admittedly, my emotional condition