The first time I remember having anxiety was age six. One day, I got it in my head that my
teacher wouldn’t let me go to the bathroom if I needed to go, which would then
result in my having an “accident” in front of the class. There was no reason to
make this assumption. It’s just something I started thinking about one day, and
before I knew it, the panic had spread. I remember asking my mom “what if Mrs.
Rockhalt doesn’t let me use the bathroom and I pee in my chair?”
Six years old is
also when I learned the two-worded question “what if?”
From there,
worrying became as compulsive as my need to blink.
When I was
seven, I learned about AIDS, so naturally, any time I got sick, I thought I had
contracted the virus. As a result, I didn’t want to visit the doctor’s office
for fear of being told that I was dying.
At the age of
nine, I went on my first trip to Disneyland and drove my mom nuts with
questions like, “what if I don’t like Splash Mountain?” “What if I get sick?”
“Does this ride go fast?”
What if? What if? What if?
By 6th
grade, I convinced myself that I would get sick at school and not be able to get
in touch with my mom and go home if needed to. I worried so much that I actually made myself
sick. I spent a good half of that year in the nurses office as a result.
Now, at 27, I
think I am much better than I used to be back then, but I am not free of
anxiety.
I worry about
being liked by everyone from the random barista at Starbucks to close family
members. I worry about losing my grandparents on a random Wednesday. I worry
about never finding happiness. I worry about literally going insane from how
many hours I spend in my head. I worry about dying. I worry about not living. I
worry about the pain in my breast that the doctor says is nothing. I worry
about being a shitty, neglectful girlfriend because I’m too busy worrying about
the relationship I am in to enjoy being in it. I worry about not finding a job
that I love. I worry about settling.
For me, having
chronic anxiety means an invisible suffering.
On the outside,
I look like I have my shit together, and I do for the most part, but inside, my
mind is constantly moving between 10-15 different scenarios.
I may tell
myself something like these thoughts are
not true, just ignore them and then 10 seconds later I’ll worry about
having to tell myself the aforementioned statement and think, well, if I am having to tell myself they
aren’t true, then they must be true. Trying to convince yourself of something
means that whatever you’re thinking must be what’s truly in your heart.
This goes on for
about 25-30% of my day, everyday.
Here’s a better
example: last year, my boyfriend went on a fishing trip to Alaska, leaving me
at my apartment alone for eight days. Being the introvert that I am, his short
absence felt like a vacation for me. I got home from work and immediately took off
my pants, ate chips and guacamole for dinner, and wore the same T-shirt to bed
every night.
It was
magical.
Then, around the
sixth day of him being gone, my mom text me to ask if I missed him. I stared at
the text for two minutes, then looked at myself laying in the center of my bed
at 2pm watching “The Bletchley Circle” on Netflix, and realized I didn’t miss
him.
I text my mom back and said, “Yep,
I do” (even though it was a lie) and immediately started to panic.
Well if you don’t miss him then maybe you
don’t want to be with him. He’s been gone for almost a week and you’ve barely
talked to him, yet you don’t miss him at all? Maybe you want to be single.
You’ve had so much fun sitting in your apartment like this all week, maybe you
want to make it more permanent, I
started saying to myself.
It took me a
full week to calm myself down. During this time, I had to tell myself that not
missing him while he was gone wasn’t an indication of my overall feelings
toward him.
Having anxiety
is different depending on the person. Some are so debilitated by their anxiety
that they can’t even leave the house. Some need medication to help silence
their loud thoughts. Others talk about not being able to have a consistent
sleep cycle.
Luckily, I have
never felt like I couldn’t leave my house or sleep because of my anxiety. I
have tried medication, but it made me feel like a zombie.
For me, anxiety
means constantly second-guessing my decisions and myself. I can put my worried
mind to bed, but if I am not constantly hovering over it like some helicopter
parent, then ten minutes later the doubt creeps in.
Anxiety means
never fully appreciating the moments I am in because I am too busy chasing
after the ones that have yet to come.
I remember this
one time my boyfriend and I were listening to old songs from my iTunes and we
started dancing around our apartment and singing at the top of our lungs. We
even got the cat involved in our shenanigans. I was singing and smiling one
moment, and then in the next, it was as though I had left my body and was
watching myself, thinking, this won’t
last forever.
In that moment,
anxiety was like a cold, hard slap to the face.
I have anxiety
about two major things in my life: abandonment and endings.
After being
alive for 27 years and living with anxiety for 21 of those years, I am fully
aware of where my anxiety comes from. I know that the reason for my anxiety
about abandonment comes from my father leaving when I was little. It’s a
tangible piece of evidence for my anxious mind. It says, “This has already
happened once. It can/will happen again.”
But I’d also
like to say that I think my anxiety has grown to the size it is today because
of messages from society. As living, breathing bodies, we are told exactly how
we should think, feel, and act everyday. These messages come from television
shows, magazines, religion, and most recently, lists created online.
You know the
lists I’m talking about. The ones that say “15 Ways to Know You’re in a Happy
Relationship” or “15 Ways to Think About Life”. There’s a “top 15” list for
everything these days.
Reading through
those lists can make even a well-adjusted person feel like they’re messing up.
And while sometimes I find the lists to be good, most of the time, they just
reinforce this idea that if you aren’t living life according to someone else’s
“top 15”, then you’re doing something wrong.
And if you’re
like me, then you don’t reach out to other people in your life to find out that
they are also not living up to someone else’s “top 15”. If you’re like me, you
assume the problem is yours to suffer alone, and that isolation that you create
where you tell yourself you are alone in
this, there is something wrong with you is where the anxiety plants its
deep roots inside of you.
The other day I
was dealing with one of my anxious thoughts and decided to talk to my
girlfriend about it. I told her that I felt alone and different when it came to
this particular experience and she wrote back and said, “I feel that way a lot
of times too.”
That simple
reply from her felt like my body had been wrapped in a warm blanket after
months of standing out in the cold. I have always thought that because of our
differences, there could be no possible way she felt the same way I did.
I’d like to say
that I am a lot better than I was even just three years ago. I have been able
to recognize my anxiety for what it is, which is a big step.
Therapy has been
the most helpful for me. During one of my sessions, I said to my therapist, “I
mean, if I keep having the same thoughts, doesn’t that mean they are true?”
He laughed and
said, “That’s part of the trick your mind plays on you. You can’t believe
everything you think, even if the thoughts are recurring.”
You can’t believe everything you think,
even if the thoughts are recurring.
This is now my mantra on the days where I lay in bed chasing my worried
thoughts.
I have also started
to come clean about my thoughts to those closest to me without fear of
judgment. I used to think I was
burdening people with my problems, especially my boyfriend because of how often
I worry about our relationship, but I am starting to see that by talking about
it, I am seeking to change my behaviors, which benefits him, too.
Whenever I do
talk about my anxiety, I just ask that people listen and don’t tell me “just
stop having anxiety” or “worrying is SO bad for you.”
I know worrying
is bad for me, and if I knew how to stop doing it, I would stop. Telling me
that my thoughts are dumb or bad only helps to exacerbate the problem by making
me feel more alone.
Last night I
finished a vision board that shows all of my hopes for myself in the future.
Here's my board |
I told my boyfriend, “in the
future, I want to be these things.”
He told me, “you
have to start being them now. Putting them off for the future just gives your
anxiety permission to continue taking up space in your life.”
At first I
thought, easier said than done. But
now I think he might be right.
I may always
have to work harder than people who don’t have anxiety to redirect my thoughts,
but I think it’s a far better alternative than allowing my thoughts to control
my happiness.
So I’d like to
start practicing gratitude for the things I have in my life and the things I
want. I’m hoping that combined with communication, acceptance, and ignoring
other people’s “top 15” lists, it will make a difference.
The "angst" of life.
ReplyDeleteExistentialist philosophers grasp to qualify it.
I believe we all have experienced it (I think it is an ongoing process of existence)
And you sure as hell did a great job of describing it in this AWESOME post!!!
Dave Henderson
ahumanistsperspective.wordpress.com
I appreciate what you said about thinking that these recurring thoughts must be true if they won't go away. I get that way too. I suspect it's a close relative of OCD. I hate that I can't trust my own mind to assess situations normally. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDelete