Living with Anxiety
*trigger warning*
You’re in the cafeteria, with your closest friends, laughing and talking about your day. Slowly it feels as though there’s pressure in your ears and a slow pressure being applied to your chest. It’s weird and uncomfortable but you try to ignore it. The pressure increases. Your heartbeat quickens. Now your mind focuses on monitoring your heartbeat while you wonder, “Why is my heart beating like this? What’s going on? Something’s wrong with me.” Your friends continue talking, unaware of what’s going on with you. You notice that it’s really hot in here and there are way more people in here than you thought. Can they tell you’re not okay? Probably not and now you’re overcome with a deep sense of loneliness on top of everything else. All you can hear is your rapid heartbeat in your ears. You’ve stopped talking. You didn’t notice until now. Now you’re waist deep in an anxiety attack.
This is what I struggle with daily. Episodes like this. If it’s not daily, it’s at least three times a week. There’s some days, sometimes even spans of days where I experience no anxiety attacks but then there’s days where I have three panic attacks in one day. I’m mostly quiet about it, drawing another person’s attention to it isn’t really my thing. When I talk to my friends or my therapist about it they always ask the same question, “What do you think triggered it this time?” Most days I don’t know, it could be that I was in a large group of people and my lungs forgot how to properly function, it could be someone I care deeply about being upset with me, it could be the fact that I was driving and my car was too hot inside. I always want to ask, “Does it matter? It happened again. How do I get it to stop?”
In the past few weeks, I’ve bit the bullet and decided to get some professional help, which is a long time coming. I’ve learned that anxiety is like a ninja, you can’t see it coming until it’s right on top of you. BUT, there are ways to make yourself aware that you are having a panic attack. For me, I started writing down how I feel when I had panic attacks and tried to see which symptoms were a constant. When I’m in the throes of an anxiety attack I mumble under my breath my symptoms, reminding myself what these symptoms mean and telling myself that I’m not being crushed, I can breathe and I am fine. I mumble those things under my breath until the pressure starts to subside. This, for me, is a form of grounding. Grounding is something you can do when you’re having an attack that can help calm you down. I used to look around the room and see what stagnant objects were around me and say their respective names, like “Chair, left side. Door, closed, straight ahead. Desk, left, in front of chair.” It was like taking notes but as I said them out loud and analyzed the place I was in, eventually the pressure would disappear. I sought professional help because I felt as though I needed someone to tell me that this is normal, which it actually is. Many people struggle with anxiety daily. I also needed to know that I could get better.
Here’s what I’ve learned:
-
There’s no cure for anxiety. It’s not a disease, it’s a psychological disorder. Your family physician can’t prescribe you antibiotics for it. It doesn’t work like that. It’s in your mind. It’s actually caused by your mind. Triggered by fear typically and you fall into your flight mode.
-
Once you have one anxiety attack it is so much easier to have another, maybe an hour after, maybe the next year. Once you have one, you may have many.
-
You shouldn’t be scared to say you have anxiety. It doesn’t make you a freak. It makes you human. Perfectly imperfect.
-
Not everyone’s symptoms are the same.
-
It doesn’t have to rule your life. I, despite struggling with this, still get up every day and go to class. I still chase after every career opportunity I find. I still try new, scary things. And I continue to test my fears. It doesn’t have to reign over you.
If you feel like this, here’s what you can do:
-
Seek professional help. Seeing a therapist of psychologist (no they are not the same thing) can be scary. I was always afraid of them. But they actually help. They can give you techniques to calm yourself or medication to help you.
-
Talk to your friends. Through this, I’ve come to realize that many of my close friends and even family members struggle with anxiety as well. They can offer company, advice and understanding.
-
Download an app. It sounds weird and like something a millennial would say. But there are apps to help you track what you are feeling and your progress in getting better.
-
YouTube DBT Breathing or other strategies to ground yourself. Sometimes this can help. It’s a lot like meditation.
-
Keep trying new things. Don’t let it cage you. Remind yourself that you are more than your fears.
Living with anxiety is hard, I’m not going to lie and tell you that it’s rainbows, unicorns and gumdrops daily. BUT, you can overcome it. You can decide whether or not it’ll rule over you and stop you from chasing your dreams. We just have to take it day by day and keep our chins up. Remember, when Pandora opened the box, the only thing left was Hope. There’s always hope. You are never alone.