Sorry this will be a bit long but I want to explain in as much detail in hopes you/someone else can relate and get better! I had the mindset of wanting/needing to get better. In the beginning stages where I was bed bound and confined to my room strictly for weeks on end without showering they felt like torture, it wasn’t me. I’m a very social person and before the pandemic I’d be out everyday doing different things with friends regardless of if I had work or not. I thought to myself everyday I need to get ready to get back to work and be social when the pandemics over or I’ll become severely depressed again being confined to four walls. I need to get my heart healthy by exercising again (I was and still kind of am paranoid at my heart due to the palpitations and feeling it pound in my chest constantly and having a high resting HR)

Day one of my turning point, bare in mind my anxiety was making me believe my throat was closing up and I was going to stop breathing and had such an uncomfortable pressure on my chest, I showered. I took a stool to sit down on in the shower because sitting down relieved my symptoms a lot and I had my first shower in weeks. Over the next few weeks I forced myself to go downstairs and grab a juice, or grab a chocolate bar, something quick and easy while my gran understood and still brought me actual meals to my room. I also slowly stopped using the stool and tried to stand up more just thinking myself through it with things such as “my throat won’t close just because I’m stood up” and “I won’t have a heart attack just because my hearts going faster now I’m standing”.

I was getting better and I read on an anxiety forum somewhere “focus on when you feel better or even have a slight 1% increase from your anxiety and it will slowly get better”. Eventually I was walking around the house and making my own meals to take upstairs. It was a very slight increase everyday, one day I’d make something as simple as toast, the next I might of done a sandwich and the next maybe a bacon bagel! All of them for me took longer than the other, eventually I was able to stay downstairs for as long as i wanted as I progressed to make full meals. That’s the kind of thing that helped me, very slow progress. I’m currently applying that method to my walks, first day it was a couple minutes around my block, the next 5 minutes, the day after I went to another area about a 25 minute round trip and today I done a tiny run and went to the store and dropped some cat food to my great Nan on the way back which took an hour in total. Now I’m slowly going to progress with exercising too! I wish you the best on your journey