Dear Anxiety, You Will Never Win

You know when you have a thousand tabs open on your computer and then out of the blue, one of them starts playing music? You frantically flick through the tabs, searching for the culprit. Because, of course, you are in a quiet library and your mute button isn’t working. Your hands start to get sweaty, they might even twitch a bit, clumsily trying to find the tab where the music is coming from. Well, that feeling, the ‘noise’ coming from somewhere (with no logical ‘quick-fix’ way to turn it off*) and the frenzied panic of trying to stop it… that my friend is what anxiety feels like to some of us.

I say us because two years ago I was told by the doctor that no, I did not have a chest infection, but I had anxiety.

It was a light switch moment for me. All those years of worrying over everything and thinking out every possible scenario for any given situation, I learnt this was not how everyone approached life (though I had figured that out to some extent before then). But it was the way an anxious person approaches life. Constantly asking ‘why’ and worrying about the ‘what ifs’.

Sometimes [anxious thoughts] are whispers that you can ignore and other days, well they’re a one-woman show with a loud as fuck microphone and, you better believe it, they are doing an encore.

I know that anxiety is not one size fits all so everyone will have their own experience with anxiety, their own way of coping and their own way of describing how it feels. But in light of today being World Mental Health Day, I want to shine a little light on what anxiety does feel like (for some) and how you can be there for people who are experiencing it.

After all, it’s no secret anxiety is increasing, and that millennials seem to be experiencing it more than any other generation ever before. It’s also not really a surprise. So chances are a loved one, a close friend or even a colleague is going through this.

The Monster in my Head

My fingers are tingling, my chest is tight and getting a deep breath is a luxury I haven’t felt in a while. I’m starting to sweat now, which is no surprise because I’ve been having hot flushes for the past few days. My head, oh my head is like a stadium during a final sports match; There’s high pitch screaming and low hushed whispers that linger. There’s so much noise in my head I can’t quite figure out what is going on. All of this is happening, well, I can’t finish that sentence because I don’t really know why. I am worried about something, probably nothing, but it could be something. Couldn’t it? 

This irrational (most of the time) fear and worry, that’s what it’s like to feel anxious all the time. Picking apart every possible scenario because something could go wrong. It’s not having anxious thoughts about a situation once in a while, it is having these anxious thoughts always in your mind, lingering. Sometimes they are whispers that you can ignore and other days, well they’re a one-woman show with a loud as fuck microphone and, you better believe it, they are doing an encore.

Dear Friends and Family

It can feel hard, and you can feel a little helpless when someone you know is down. But the solution, it’s just being there and never, ever belittling how someone is feeling. Sure, to you it might seem completely logical and easy to say ‘but that won’t happen’ or, worst, ‘stop worrying about something that *gasp* may never happen’. But to us…Let me tell you something – that. does. not. help. at. all.

We know you are just trying to help, and we appreciate you, but … it’s kinda making us aware how differently our brains are working, and now we are just trying to figure out how to be ‘normal’ until we can go home and slump on the floor in a ball of worry while going back over the whole conversation, dissecting it and re-thinking everything we said. Was it stupid? Did we upset someone? Uggggh.

You just see the world in a different way and handle things differently.

I think the most important thing to remember is just trying makes such a difference. Try to be there and try to understand. Even if you don’t get it, try.

For those of us struggling, just knowing someone is there can make a bad day easier. Knowing that if we text you saying ‘it’s a shitty day’ you will respond in a way that brings a little happiness back into our day.

Please Read

I think the most important thing we need to know – and something that took me a long time to figure out. Is that it is okay not to be okay. Mental health is not a weakness (it took me a long time to say that and believe it. So if you’re at that stage, it’s okay.) But please, please, remember you are not weak. You are not stupid, silly, useless, a waste of space. You just see the world in a different way and handle things differently, and that my dear friend is okay.

*In other words no mute button!