Anxiety: A comparison between theory and personal experience.
I’ll start with a bit of the knowledge that is readily out there. Anxiety affects around 30% of adults at some point in their lives. This can stay with them for a few weeks, a few months, a few years, or never leave. Treatment helps most people lead normal lives.
Anxiety can feel like restlessness, tenseness, or inability to focus. It can cause rapid breathing, increased heart rate, sweating, trembling, and a feeling of weakness. You can feel a sense of panic, danger, or impending doom.
There are a number of healthy life choices that can be made to mitigate the effects of anxiety. Stay fit and active thereby keeping your body balanced and those feel-good hormone levels high. Stay away from alcohol as that is a nervous system depressant which can increase the chances of experiencing elevated levels of anxiety. If you are a smoker, it is advised that you kick the habit. I don’t understand the reason for that one but I’m anti-smoking so any excuse to lobby against the stink sticks suits me. Limit caffeine intake. The last thing you need to do is get the jitters and have your anxiety kick into overdrive with all the extra energy that you are giving it. Prioritize getting a good night’s rest. Meditate and practice mindfulness. Eat a balanced diet. Practice deep breathing. Basically, work on keeping everything on an even keel because anything too stimulating, or depressing is going to cause an issue. Sounds fun right?
I sleep like the dead, a solid nine hours a night, I eat pretty well, try to stay active but admittedly am failing in that department at the moment. I meditate, yoga, have one or two coffees a day spaced out nicely, don’t smoke, and am generally being quite boring. Still, my anxiety seems to have set up camp and loves for me to hang out with it. I’ve tried sitting with it and acknowledging it, that seems to make it feel appreciated and stay on longer.
There are a few descriptions of anxiety that I haven’t seen in the theories. One is the feeling of needing every plan and every goal to be gone. Too long to be in a little bubble of nothing. Totally overwhelmed to the point where the thought of eating, even when I feel starving is too much. To answer a simple question feels like an imposition. Sometimes, I get the feeling that I am watching myself from a dissociative shelf on the wall. Feeling nothing and everything at the same time. Telling that crazy person in the middle of the room to calm down. Everything is going well. The crazy person is not connected to anything that resembles logic. Nothing that resembles calm. She looks like she’s having a really bad trip without the aid of narcotics. I’m getting frustrated with her. She won’t do all the things that we read together in the self-help articles. Why won’t she do box breathing? It’s like she’s not even listening. How can I help her if she’s not listening? She takes the emergency anxiety meds, thank goodness. Hopefully, that works soon. Twenty or so minutes pass. We are knocked out. Thank goodness. Sleep.
There are times when I have a more “standard” anxiety experience. A shiver down my spine which feels like it’s taken my heart with it. A cold sweat breaks out all over and a tingling sensation in my lower back. My heart feels like it’s beating much bigger beats than before. Pressure in my head interferes with calm and rational thinking.
These experiences are pretty uncomfortable, to say the least. I get the feeling that all my nerves are on fire, like my nausea will never subside, that I’ll never feel normal. Weirdly, being cold helps me during these times.
The worst thing to be asked while I have so little connection to my logical brain, “But what are you worried about? It surely can’t be that bad?”
No, it isn’t, because I really am not stressing about anything enough to cause this absolute overreaction. I’m pretty sure that this is a crazy chemical reaction in my brain that short circuits at random. If I could do away with the anxiety forever I would. If I could never be asked what I’m worried about again, I would take that path, but it doesn’t seem like I can. I do have an excellent doctor who has my anxiety managed most of the time with a good albeit mild prescription medication.
This may not be helpful to you, but I wrote this to explain that not everyone experiences the same thing and not everyone has anxiety over a specific thing. Not everyone can be helped with slow breathing, calming thoughts, and pretty music. Some people go proper bat-shit, out of their own heads, full-tilt panic mode. Sometimes, there’s nothing you can do for that person in the moment.
Even though I have a very good understanding of how my own anxiety feels, there are often different types of anxiety that I don’t understand. What I am working towards doing, is providing anxiety aids in the form of fidget objects and distraction pieces to prevent the harmful effects of anxiety. I see a lot of bitten nails, scratched skin and hair pulled out. Here’s to hoping I can help some of you through your most challenging times. Remember, you are not alone and that feeling will not last forever.
If you’d like to chat to me about anxiety, please feel free to get in touch.