(Disclaimer: In this post I talk about mental health issues and the tools that I have learned and that work for me in dealing with these issues, but I am in no way a mental health professional and this post should not be taken as medical or professional mental health advice of any kind.)
Hi!
So, I want to start this post off by being really honest. I’ve been trying to get up the motivation to write this post for a while now, but I went into a pretty deep anxiety hole for a while and just didn’t feel like writing at all. Which sucks but is also quite appropriate for the topic of this post.
My Anxiety
I struggle with both general anxiety as well as social anxiety. I think I have always been a little bit of a worrisome person, like I’m the type of person that if someone has told me they are coming over at a certain time and I know they are driving and the weather is a bit on the ugly side and they are late I start thinking “what if they were in an accident?” and “will the authorities know to contact me if they are in the hospital?”, thoughts along those lines.
I had my first ever panic attack when I was 15. I remember it so well, I was in my room and I was just sitting on my bed, and I don’t know exactly what triggered it, if I had been thinking about something specific beforehand, but all of the sudden I started hyperventilating and my heart felt like it was beating a million beats per minute and I freaked out. My mom came into my room and asked me what the matter was, and I started crying because I didn’t know. I just remember that feeling, of not knowing why this was happening, and what was happening, and I just wanted it to stop, but I didn’t know how to calm myself down.
Anxiety can be so different for many people, but the symptoms I notice the most in myself (and that other people can sometimes point out to me) are:
- Irritability – I can become annoyed at pretty much anything and the irritability can grow into almost rage at the smallest things
- I feel like I’m walking around with a heavy ball in my stomach all the time
- I become lethargic and lose all my motivation
- Sweating and feeling hot, and then all of the sudden I’m freezing and have to bundle up
- Overthinking, and I mean everything!
- Sometimes I can feel like it’s hard to breathe, like I have a heavy weight on my chest
- I have a hard time falling asleep at night
These are the things I experience on a day-to-day basis when I am feeling anxious (which for me is not all the time, it can come on like a wave sometimes). The symptoms for when I am having a panic attack are different.
So like I said, I’ve always been a little bit of a worrisome person and I believe I’ve had some general anxiety for a long time, but something that has developed over the last few years is my social anxiety.
If you’ve read my post on my journey to getting diagnosed with hypothyroidism (link) you will know that through that whole ordeal I was isolated for the majority of a little over two years. As I assume a lot of people will know from going through this last year of lockdowns and quarantines due to Covid-19, being in isolation for a longer period of time it can be hard to go back to being around people and socializing again. And for me who has always been more on the shy side and definitely an introvert to begin with, and coupled with my already existing anxiety, being by myself for that long period of time and dealing with my health issues, I developed a social anxiety.
Another part of my anxiety that I feel like I need to include is my fear of being trapped, as this fear is what has led to most of my panic attacks. I think a big part of anxiety, at least for me, is feeling out of control and the want, or need, to regain control. When I am in a situation where I don’t have control over the situation or if something triggers me and I can’t get out of the situation, that’s what can make me feel very claustrophobic.
I think the first time I really truly felt this claustrophobic feeling was during the first leg of my trip back home from Australia. I was on a 14 hour plane ride from Melbourne to Abu Dhabi when I was squished between a very large man to my right, who took up not just his own seat but half of mine as well, and a very tall man to my left. Not only did I feel completely crushed in between these two men, but the very tall man that was sitting by the aisle had such long legs that it took him a few minutes to unfold himself out of his seat every time he had to get up, which meant that the whole 14 hours I just kept thinking that if we crashed I would probably die because he would take so long to get out of his seat that I would just be stuck there, unable to do anything. It was truly a horrible experience.
Before this I had always loved flying but now I get anxiety about any type of similar experience happening again, which means I always pay extra to select my seat to make sure I’m by the aisle and if I’m flying on any type of long haul flight, so like two hours or more, I try to fly in a plus seat, which is in between economy and business, where they have slightly larger seats and more legroom. That way I don’t have to sit too close to anyone and I have plenty of space so I won’t feel trapped and trigger my anxiety.
Like I said, this fear of being trapped is the reason for most of my panic attacks. If I ever feel stuck or I’m in a situation where I feel like I’m out of control or getting out if the situation is out of my control, I start feeling that all too familiar feeling of not being able to breathe. I have become better at handling them now, and more often than not they don’t last as long anymore as they used to.
The most important thing that I have found when I’m having a panic attack is to find my breath again, and to really focus on trying to slow my breathing because that ties into everything else, the accelerated heart rate, the sweating, the feeling of being out of control and not being connected to my body. My breath is something I can control and taking control of that regulates all my other symptoms that are out of my control.
How I deal with it
I read this quote once, “The silence can be so loud” and I don’t know where it came from but it resonated so much with me. When I’m in a burst of feeling more anxious I cannot stand the silence, which I think goes together with the overthinking. When there is silence I can hear my thoughts and when my mind is racing a mile a minute and all the thoughts are about things that make me feel stressed out or worried, I don’t want to hear them. So a trick that I have started implementing when I’m by myself and it’s really quiet is constantly having something on, whether that is a tv-show/movie, a podcast or music. That way my mind can focus on that instead of whatever is running through my head. I only really do this if I’m having an anxious moment that feels a little overwhelming and I’m not sure if this is recommended but it works for me.
Also, when I’m not feeling my best I don’t tend to watch anything new but instead stick to my tried and true, my favorite tv-shows that I can watch over and over again. This way I don’t have to focus too much on what is going on because I already know what’s gonna happen. It also gives me a sense of comfort, because like I said, I know what’s gonna happen which I always like, and also, and a friend of mine said this really well, “watching a show you’ve seen before and know really well is comforting because you know the characters so well, it’s like you’re seeing old friends again”.
This issue of not wanting it to be silent is really hard when I’m trying to sleep, because then I’m just lying there in the quiet and the thoughts can be overwhelming. But something that help here is taking a GABA capsule before I go to sleep – GABA is an amino acid that is naturally occurring in our bodies and it can produce a calming effect. I take one of these before bed and it helps to calm my whole system down. And then also creating a good evening routine so that your body knows it’s time for bed and becomes tired and you can fall asleep quicker. Doing a meditation or body scan in bed can help with this as well.
Another thing that I have found really works is journaling. As I said I’ve being going through a little bit of a hard time recently and just the other night my mom asked me what I was feeling and I just stonewalled her, and then got annoyed with her because she didn’t understand. But then I took my journal out and started writing and I realized that the reason I didn’t want to talk to her was because I didn’t even really know myself exactly what I was feeling. And then I recognized that if I don’t explain to her what I’m feeling and why I’m acting the way I am then I can’t expect her to understand, because she is not a mind reader. And so, when I was done writing my feelings down, and untangling all my emotions, I went to her and told her about it and we had a really good conversation and it helped a lot. Journaling can help so much with sorting out what you’re feeling and why and that for me helps a lot with managing my feelings.
This also applies to meditation. I found mindfulness and meditation a few years ago and it has truly changed my life. Being able to recognize my toxic and negative thought patterns and finding a way to redirect my thoughts and really look at them and where they are coming from helps tremendously. Also, trying to live in the present moment as much as I possibly can helps, as the only place I can know exactly what is going to happen and where I can feel in control is the present moment. I can’t control what happened yesterday as that’s already happened, and I can’t know 100% what is going to happen tomorrow, but right now, in this very moment, I know exactly what is going on. And figuring that out has made it easier to function as well.
Another thing that has helped me immensely with my anxiety is my love, my puppy Happy. She came into my life just at the right time and is my emotional support dog and she has saved me so many times. If I’m feeling really anxious, just putting my nose in her fur and inhaling her scent always calms me right down. I will write a whole post about this and what it means to have an ESA (emotional support animal) later on, but having her in my life has helped my anxiety so much.
One last thing I will say when it comes to dealing with my general anxiety is that sometimes you just have to sit with your feelings. I know that this can be hard but actually recognizing my emotions and letting them just be there sometimes be the best thing to do. It can help to ride the wave of anxiety and just let it wash over you, because just like a wave, it will come but then it will go.
As for my social anxiety, I had started seeing my therapist during the time that this developed, mostly to work through my many years of stress build up, which I think is the culprit for my hypothyroidism, but she also helped me so much with my social anxiety. I remember that for new year’s 2017 I was invited to a party with a friend and her boyfriend and I wanted to go, because even though new year’s is not my favorite holiday I still wanted to celebrate it and I was glad that this friend, who was a relatively new friend, had invited me. But as we got closer and closer I started to feel those feelings of not wanting to go, the panic whenever I thought about it, of all the new people that I didn’t know and that I would have to talk to and socialize with. Thinking about what they would think of me and how I would be perceived. So I talked to my therapist about it and she said something so simple but effective, she said “what’s the worst thing that can happen?” and as I thought about it I realized that the worst thing that could happen would probably be that I didn’t enjoy myself or I started to feel panicked and then I would have to leave.
Because she asked me this question I was forced to really look at my thoughts and realize that the panic I was feeling was all just in my head, because that’s what anxiety does, it takes your fear and makes you imagine all the worst case scenarios and then makes them feel like they’re so much worse than they actually are. I most likely wasn’t going to die if I went to this party but that’s what it felt like to me, and when I had to answer her question I realized that the worst thing probably wasn’t going to be death or anything that severe, but simply that if I felt badly or panicked in any way I could simply leave.
I think that’s a big part of it for me, feeling like I’m in control of the situation or that if I feel uncomfortable in any way, I am in control of the fact that I can leave if I want to. So now that’s one technique I use a lot, if I’m faced with an event or a situation where I do actually want to attend but I feel really anxious about it, I ask myself, “what’s the worst thing that can happen?” and a lot of the times the worst case scenario isn’t as bad as I was making it out to be and I am able to live my life a little more freely. That such a simple technique, only seven words, can make such a difference.
Another thing I’ve had to realize is that while I absolutely don’t want to let my anxiety limit me in any way, there are certain things that maybe just aren’t for me. Like when I was in Bali with a friend and we tried sea walking, which is when you put on what looks like an astronaut helmet with a tube at the top that supplies air and you go under water and walk along a trail to experience the underwater wildlife. I had a feeling this might trigger my claustrophobia but I wanted to try it so I did it anyways, but as soon as I went under water I panicked and felt like I could not breathe, I had a massive panic attack and felt so claustrophobic, it was a truly horrible experience.
I don’t have any photos from the sea walking, even though the guide was adamant about capturing the experience, because I sent my friend her photos and then threw away the cd with my pictures. I didn’t really want a reminder in the form of pictures of my crying face under water. Thanks, but no thanks!
When I came home again I told my therapist about it and said it made me sad because I realized I would never be able to scuba dive, which is something I had wanted to do. But as we were talking it through, I realized that if I never go scuba diving it’s not like I’m missing an integral part of life and for me the whole idea of scuba diving was about having adventurous experiences and I can get that through other means, like I don’t have an issue when in the air, doing things like bungy jumping or parasailing, where I will still get that adventure and adrenaline kick, but without the panic. I see now that it’s important to realize where your limits and boundaries are and accepting those and sticking to them.
One final tip I can offer up is making sure you are cleansing your social media every once in a while, making sure you are following accounts that make you feel good and safe. In this increasingly global and social world we are living in there are more things and people that can trigger our mental health struggles. But following accounts that make you smile, or that can offer you good advice and positive affirmations, that can really help. If you guys want some recommendations of accounts that I have found really helpful and magical, please let me know in the comments!
I think I could probably talk about anxiety and the things that have worked for me for ages, but I don’t want this post to be too long, haha!
If you have any questions or want me to elaborate on any specific topic that I have touched on here, please let me know in the comments! And also, if you struggle with any type of anxiety or other mental health problems, and if you have any advice or strategies that work really well for you! Let’s help each other out!
And please know that if you do struggle in any way with your mental health, you are not alone, and there is help for you out there. Seeking help from a therapist was the best thing I’ve ever done and if you are also looking for help I know there is someone amazing out there for you as well!
Until next time!
One Response
You could definitely see your enthusiasm in the work you write. The world hopes for more passionate writers like you who aren’t afraid to say how they believe. Always follow your heart.