Anxiety and I go way back. Probably since childhood. I cannot remember a time when it was not there in one form or another. Sure, some might say, anxiety is something we all face. It is a normal response to stress.
Nothing could be truer.
However, what do you do when your mind has this answer for almost everything that happens to you and even for the things that do not happen (those “ifs” or “maybes” that keep running through your mind in an endless horde of thoughts)? You learn to live with it. You learn to live together.
There is also the option of therapy, which I encourage, but I haven’t had the courage to go to a psychologist. A deeply negative experience distanced me from this option and still keeps me away from any practice. I promised myself that I would come back, if and when I found someone right for me, but that’s another story, with other entanglements.
The current situation makes those with anxiety disorders (already extremely stressed by everyday life) experience what is happening more intensely.
A few mornings ago I woke up suddenly, straight into an anxiety attack. My mind was convinced that I was breathing heavily lying on my back. I felt it with every breath. I stood still for a few minutes trying to check over and over if it was true. It seemed to be. But later, when my mind was occupied with the tasks at work, I realised that it was just an anxiety attack. It wasn’t the first and it certainly won’t be the last. An episode from a year or so ago comes to mind when, on a similar note, I thought I was breathing heavily. The sensation continued for almost half a day until I managed to calm down.
However, anxiety disorder is not strictly related to reality and what happens to you, but to what could happen to you. It is characterised by a persistent worry that is not linked to a specific circumstance. In other words, you worry almost all the time and think over and over about things that others would consider too small to give importance to.
An example of this, which I face almost every day: going shopping. Although I know for sure that at that moment I have the necessary money, either cash or card, I worry until I get to pay. I check my wallet over and over trying to make sure, even though I know I have it, I know everything is okay. This is a somewhat familiar situation that I try to manage, although I don’t always succeed. Unfortunately, there are also times when you cannot prevent anxiety.
Often, social situations… give me a lot of trouble. Long after a discussion has ended, I sit and turn over everything I said, what others said, what I could have said differently or what I didn’t say at all. Sometimes I can spend hours worrying about something I said that the other participants in the discussion have surely forgotten. Or, if social situations are not to blame, then a wandering thought about some illness or a family member, and then my mind goes crazy again.
© Fusion
I had another episode recently, right at work. I had just come out of a meeting where I had to speak in English, a language I know almost natively. Well, because of anxiety raised to alarming levels, that day I felt like I had done a horrible job and for a long time afterwards I obsessively thought about how awkwardly I had spoken and how I had made a mistake with some word or some verb tense, even though absolutely no one had noticed, and even if they had, they hadn’t given it any importance.
And the examples could continue, but I think it’s enough to outline even just one moment with anxiety.
I see anxiety as a spiral of thoughts that coils around you and squeezes you tighter and tighter until you can barely breathe.
Most of the time, it turns you against yourself, against friends, because you live in a constant fear, and this fear doesn’t even have a real basis. That’s why you’ll often hear the reply “it’s just in your head” if you try to explain it to someone. Of course, it’s heard in connection with many mental disorders because, isn’t it, if you don’t see it, it doesn’t exist!
Of course, nothing could be more wrong, but you don’t have to convince anyone that what you feel and what is happening to you is real. What you can do is seek specialist help and receive a psychiatric diagnosis. It’s good to know exactly what’s going on with our brain so we can understand it, so we can understand ourselves.
Although I haven’t received a diagnosis yet, and only have a suspicion (mine and my former psychologist’s), I plan to return to therapy at the first opportunity when I find a therapist who gives me the necessary confidence, because now everything is shaky.
I am grateful, however, that I can talk about my experience here, that I can tell what it’s like to live with an anxiety disorder and how it can affect your life down to the smallest details.
I wish that in the near future going to a psychologist will no longer be so stigmatised and that we can talk more openly about it without attracting all sorts of surprised looks.
Because mental health is just as (or perhaps even more!) important as physical health, although it is often ignored or treated superficially by many of us.
