Let’s view this post as part of a potential mini-series (or maxi-series, I don’t know yet) about anxiety. We’ll just dip our toe (yes, our collective toe) in the water here and see what it’s like, because I’m not sure exactly if/how I want to write about this. We’ll treat this as part 1 and maybe I’ll just reflect a little bit on my battle with anxiety. Part 2 might cover the period of time when I first considered seeking professional help… maybe part 3 will deal with having a panic attack while driving a moving vehicle. (Can you technically drive a vehicle that isn’t moving? Probably not.)

Part 4- Considering professional help again…

Part 5- Getting help from a (very lovely and much appreciated and seriously treasured) therapist

Part 6- Thinking I want to be my (very lovely and much appreciated and seriously treasured) therapist when I grow up… Wait, am I already grown up?

Part 7- Worrying about whether or not I am already grown up and the ramifications of this

Part 8- How old actually am I?

Part 9- Texting my parents to find out how old I am, hoping the answer is lower than I think it is

Part 10- My parents answer my desperate text message separately, with different ages, and now I’m spiraling…*

LET’S JUST START WITH PART ONE, OKAY? This might be as far as this mini-series ever gets. And that’s fine, too. I’m just spitballing here.

*This is what we call a joke. I never know if I have to clarify when I’m joking, but I feel the need to make it very clear that I think both of my parents know how old I am and I love them very much.

Anyway, I have what is called “generalized anxiety disorder,” also known as GAD. It’s an attractive name for an illness, isn’t it? “I have GAD.” It kind of sounds like the sister to acid reflux, which is also something I struggle with on occasion. I’m a real catch.

I have had anxiety for as long as I can remember. The condition has worsened over the years thanks to some traumatic experiences (a car accident here, a robbery there, a destructive relationship or two) but it’s my memory that anxiety has always been with me in some way or another. I didn’t need an imaginary friend growing up because I had the negative self-talk/worry monster by my side. (Hey, it’s not a healthy friendship, but there was a consistency to it that I couldn’t help but find comforting.)

Whenever I feel negative, the monster that is my anxiety pops out like the worst kind of jack-in-the-box (all jack-in-the-boxes are pretty much assholes) and makes me feel even worse. So say I screwed up at work or something, and then someone says, “While we are here talking about your sub-optimal performance, you’re not very attractive or talented either.” But my anxiety monster isn’t even that nice about it. She doesn’t break the news in a courteous way. She says things like, “Just give up because you’re fucking hopeless. You’re never going to be good enough. No one thinks you’re funny. Everyone thinks you’re ugly. And why did you buy those weird brown boots/clogs the other day? You are aging yourself like 20 years whenever you put those things on. They’re not helping your cause. Oh and also, why the fuck did you think eating a cookie for breakfast this morning was a good idea? You say you want to lose weight and be healthier and then you go and pull this shit? You have zero willpower, stupid.”

Now imagine those harmful thoughts swirling around your head at a large event, where there are a bunch of people and lots of opportunities for comparison. An event that is supposed to be joyful, like a wedding or a birthday party, but you can’t enjoy it because you’re too busy living in your own head with your anxiety. Your head is like an escape room, but one from hell where there’s actually no escape, and you just want to give up on everything and climb into a hole for the rest of your life.

If I had to describe my specific experience with anxiety in a way that’s relatable to people who have never had frequent anxiety (do these people actually exist?) I would say it’s like you’re living in a high-stakes job interview all the time. (I’m not sure that this job interview thing is the best analogy, because surprise surprise I might be a more anxious interviewee than the average bear. Oh well.) There was a time in my life when I felt like I was in a job interview 24/7 and I had a gnawing feeling of impending disaster. I felt like everyone was watching me and judging every little move I made, and that every little move I made was somehow wrong and would end in catastrophe.

I also felt that everything was a rush job, like I had to finish whatever I was doing quickly so that I could move onto the next thing. I always felt like I needed to perform. To succeed. To impress. To make sure no one got hurt. To please everyone (except myself). I couldn’t control my worry and self criticism regarding numerous, everyday things (ranging from driving [parking especially], to the cleanliness of the house, to the neatness of my handwriting that may or may not be seen by my co-workers/supervisors) and it would often snowball out of control.

Because this is not a sustainable way to operate on a daily basis, I would boil over and have anxiety attacks in various places. I had an anxiety attack while working in retail, when I had to leave the sales floor and sit in the fetal position in the storage room until I was able to walk without struggling to breathe. I had an anxiety attack while driving a car, when I had to pull over and call someone to pick me up. (Luckily I was down the street from my parents’ house during this attack, which really started to gain steam as I was hurtling down the road at 50mph, and someone was able to come and get me immediately.)

The lead-up to the attack is uncomfortable to say the least. You feel like you can’t take a full breath, like you’re operating on a frequency that is too high and dangerous to last. The attack itself is excruciating. You feel like a fish out of water gasping for air. (Did that make any sense at all? Fish out of water aren’t actually gasping for air, are they? They’re gasping for… water? Whatever.) My attacks usually involve lots of tears because I feel like I can’t breathe and I’m convinced I’m dying, and then I beat myself up for panicking in the first place, which I worry has seriously inconvenienced anyone who might be surrounding/supporting me at the time. (Yes, even during the attack your negative self-talk can rear its ugly head.)

But in a sick way, there’s something I’ve come to like about having an anxiety or panic attack. I love the feeling right after it ends. I’m so calm for once (or maybe I’m not actually calm. It just feels that way because compared to the hell I just went through, I feel very much at peace). I’m reminded to slow down and that I shouldn’t push myself so hard. I’m fragile. I need extra protection for a little while and I’m not afraid to say it. I’m so relieved that I can breathe again.

I just wish I didn’t have to have an anxiety attack to remember all that.

I decided to get help a few years ago, not because I knew for sure that I had an anxiety disorder and wanted help managing it, but because I did not feel good physically or emotionally. I couldn’t shake the feeling that my personal world was ending all the time, and I had a sneaking suspicion I could feel better. (Quick shout out to Justin for pushing me to talk to someone about my deepest insecurities and giving me the courage to do so.) Physically, it felt like my heart was running a constant fever. I was like the glass of water you fill up before bed. You filled it up too much and now you’re carrying it to bed with you, but you’re also trying to carry your phone and a book or something and the water ends up spilling out every few steps because you’re not paying attention to it anymore. I was always at risk of overflowing. Emotionally, it was like I was in an abusive relationship with myself (and my relationships with others were admittedly suffering, too). I was beating myself up all of the time and I couldn’t stop ruminating. In my anxiety riddled head, everyone I knew was joining in like an evil and repetitive chorus of doom.

Once I went to therapy, I realized that not everyone else was anxious like me. This may seem like an obvious thing after the whole “anxiety attack at work and also in a car thing” but it really wasn’t. After therapy I had thoughts like, “Wait, not everyone reads an email 3,000 times before sending it? Other people don’t feel like they absolutely must use a ruler to draw lines on a piece of paper if it’s not already lined before they write everything down, to ensure the text will be perfectly straight and evenly spaced?” News to me.

I remember coming home after the first few weeks of therapy and asking Justin, “Do you think I have an anxiety disorder?” It’s my recollection that he basically just laughed at me (in a very loving way). He knew. I guess I always knew, too. But something about the term “disorder” was startling. It was startling and also very helpful. This gave me hope. I hadn’t felt that I was living a very fulfilling life. (I thought maybe that was just… life.) But now I saw a glimpse that there was something more out there. Now that I knew this thing called “an anxiety disorder” was in my way, I could just kick that nasty thing out. Evict that motherfucker. And then I, too, would be living life. I, too, would be sending emails in a reasonable amount of time!

So I tried to live my new life. I tried to leave the dirty dishes in the sink. I tried to send a letter without the perfect, pretty, little lines. I tried to give my boss a note that I hadn’t re-written ten times until I was satisfied with my handwriting, but it was too hard. I struggled and broke down. It turns out just knowing isn’t enough, which is the same for a lot of things in life (probably the majority of things). Identification was an empowering first step, but more action was needed and I realized the work was just beginning.

I’m not going to go into graphic detail about the time spent with my (very lovely and much appreciated and seriously treasured) therapist, or the realizations I had to come to (and accept) about my past in order to move forward. At this moment, and probably until the end of time, it’s very personal and very protected. I treat the journey like treasure. Who wants to share their treasure with everyone? I mean, yeah, sure, give some treasure to your close friends if you trust them with it, but you don’t want to go handing out your treasure all willy-nilly.

I will say that evicting anxiety is like breaking up with an incredibly toxic girlfriend or boyfriend. Anxiety repeatedly tells you, “You’re nothing without me. I’m the reason you’re successful. I push you to be your best. The only reason people like you is because of me.” But once you’re able to say, “Look asshole, this isn’t working and you’re taking everything out of me and making me hate myself and I can’t handle this constant pressure in my chest anymore,” a weight is lifted. Sure, your anxiety might try to sneak its way back into your life when there’s an opening. It might try and lure you in, as an ex would do, with promises of change. But your anxiety is ultimately just trying to own you. It’s trying to live inside of you rent free. It’s squatting. It’s drinking all the beer and throwing the empty cans all over the place without any regard for your soul.

My anxiety still taps me on the shoulder from time to time. I was recently a reference for a cat adoption and treated it like I was being interviewed to work for the CIA. What if this woman thinks I’m lying about my boyfriend’s sister’s cat ownership history? Am I a fraud? Is this punishable by law? Does Betty at the cat adoption center know my full name, where to find me? But of course, the adoption was a success and I breathed a sigh of relief knowing I contributed to something special. I still get a little anxious when I have to drive with someone else in the car, or when I have to go into the dark basement to get my laundry, or if I am going to have company at the house. I still hesitate to call my family members because I worry they might be driving and that when they pick up my phone call, they will be in a horrific car accident and I will feel guilty for the rest of my life. Sometimes, I still get the creeping feeling that I am not enough. There are also weeks that have serious, full blown anxiety attack potential, which let’s be honest is probably very much a shared experience in the Year(s) of our Lord 2020/2021.

But thanks to myself, and my very lovely and much appreciated and seriously treasured therapist, and my loved ones, I know that I will be okay. That it only feels like the world is ending. I can reset. I can talk to myself using kind words. I can go for a walk. I can remind myself (and now actually believe) that I am enough. I can separate myself from the GAD and overcome it. (Separating myself from the acid reflux is still a challenge. I like buffalo chicken too much.)

I’m not really sure where this is going, but I feel as if I should stop writing because I’m ready to launch into a tangent about my best buffalo chicken experiences. It’s not that I don’t want to go into detail on this topic, it’s just that I think my favorite buffalo chicken wraps in the tri-state area deserve their own post. I ended up covering a lot of ground in part 1 here… I think I need a vacation from writing about anxiety. Maybe I’ll just write whatever I want about my anxiety whenever I damn well feel like it. No structure needed! Sounds good to me, how about you?

Well, you don’t really have a say in the matter anyway. 😉