Depression was my toughest battle, but anxiety feels like my cruellest. It’s taken away from who I am as a person, and who I want to be.
Anxiety makes me feel as if I’m drowning. I’ve been thrown in at the deep end, but I don’t know how to swim. I’m stuck behind a glass wall, watching everyone else enjoy life. I want to join in, but I can’t break through the glass.
It’s like stage fright, but without the stage. As soon as I leave the house, it feels like the spotlight's on me. Everybody’s watching. Everybody’s judging. My heart starts pounding and my throat gets tighter. I want to run and hide.
Completing the most basic task can feel like running a marathon. One short minute can be filled with a thousand racing thoughts. My own mind has betrayed me – but I’m stuck with it. It feels like I’m in a constant battle between my ‘real’ self and my ‘ill’ self. I enjoy socialising; I like talking to people – that’s the real me. But the sick part of my brain doesn’t want to let that part live.
And, if something takes away from the very person you are… you start to wonder what the hell you have left.
By the time I was in sixth form, my anxiety was worse than ever. I stayed on at school while all of my friends went off to college. (Naturally, I was too anxious to even consider starting somewhere new.) However, with my friends gone, I’d lost my security blanket. I no longer simply felt alone – I was alone.
That’s when the panic attacks started.
I would lock myself in the school toilets for hours at a time, crying and shaking and lonely. Then I’d get home and I’d cry some more, because I couldn’t stand that this was happening to me.
Time and time again, my illness robbed me of opportunities. It’s prevented me from living the life any ‘normal’ girl my age should live. For years, I stopped going out socialising or partying on the weekends. I didn’t talk to friends because I worried that I’d annoy them. I’d turn down plans that sounded exciting because they made me too nervous. I couldn’t work, and I was too scared to have driving lessons. I couldn’t even catch public transport. I didn’t (and still don’t) have the independence that people my age should have.
So often, I feel completely incompetent. I’m living a life I don’t feel capable of living. It’s upsetting and it’s frustrating, but it’s also embarrassing. I can’t help but feel ashamed. What must other people think of me? Why can’t I just get on with life like everybody else?
Unlike with my depression when I was at my sickest, though, this illness has never fully taken over my brain. I've always known that most of my thoughts aren’t logical or rational. I know the way I’m living isn’t 'normal'.
But in many ways, that just makes it worse. Feeling like I’m broken, but not being able to fix it.
I find it harder to write about my anxiety because it’s still very much a part of my life. Some days are OK, some days I feel completely defeated. It’s not all doom and gloom, though. If you went back in time and told Past-Me all of the things that Current-Me has managed to do, she never would have believed you. Even writing about my anxiety is something that I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing when I was first diagnosed.
It doesn’t have control over me to the same degree that it used to. It might be a part of my life, but it’s not my whole life. I’ve gone from suffering from weekly panic attacks to barely experiencing them at all. I’m much better at controlling my thoughts than I used to be, and I’ve faced a lot of fears I never thought I’d be able to face.
I also have people in my life who understand, so I no longer feel so alone. And that’s exactly why blogging about it feels so important. If you’re going through this too, even though it sometimes might feel as though you are, I promise you’re not alone.
Things That Make Me Anxious
1. Public transport
2. Paying at counters
3. Phone calls
4. Changes to routine
5. Spontaneous plans
6. Interacting with strangers
7. Interacting with adults
8. Answering the front door
9. Walking past someone
10. Walking past a group of people
11. Walking somewhere alone
12. Arriving somewhere alone
13. Last-minute plan changes
14. Ordering at a restaurant
15. New places
16. Anything unfamiliar
17. Sending messages
18. Reading messages
19. Replying to messages
20. Waiting
21. Doctor’s appointments
22. Sitting somewhere alone
23. Standing somewhere alone
24. Life
Things That Help Me When I’m Feeling Anxious
1. Fairy-lights
2. Listening to my cat purring
3. Relaxing music
4. Lying in bed counting my breaths
5. Lighting candles
6. Keeping a to-do list
7. Tidying up
8. Listening to nature sounds
9. Colouring in
10. Taking a shower
11. Drinking hot chocolate
12. Losing myself in a book
13. Watching Netflix
14. Wearing cosy pyjamas
15. Knowing it’ll come to an end
Things That Help Me When I’m Feeling Panicked
1. Having a distraction
2. Counting my breaths
3. Focussing outward instead of inward
4. Diverting my thoughts
5. Having something to eat
6. Promising to treat myself for fighting through it
7. Keeping my body relaxed
8. Slowing down my breathing
9. Reminding myself that it will pass
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