When did I first realise that I suffered from bouts of anxiety attacks? I was about twelve years old when I started having them, but I didn’t understand or identify them as attacks until I was a lot older. At that age, they were almost always triggered by misunderstandings with friends. What went through my head was intense fear and worry over losing a friend, accompanied by the physical symptoms of struggling to breath, my heart beating so much it ached, and my body immediately feeling like it had caught on fire. What followed were my desperate attempts to amend the situation and fix a friendship, no matter the cost of my own feelings – for the relief from the anxiety was better than standing up for myself. Back then I thought I was just obsessed with being liked. I didn’t associate the feelings of anxiety with anything else other than the fear of being hated. So, when a couple of years went by and I finally understood and accepted that not everyone is going to like me, I thought the anxiety symptoms would stop. And when they didn’t, life became a whole lot more complicated.
As it turns out, there are a lot of things that trigger these anxiety attacks. Mostly, they are situationally triggered, much like when I had those misunderstandings with friends. The older I got, the more I became familiar with the type of situations that would bring on these bouts of anxiety. The unfortunate side of this is that I also became familiar with the extent of which I cannot prevent these situations from happening. As my anxiety attacks can be triggered from what seems to be the most trivial of situations, they happen all the time. The triggers are contemporaneous, and this is when I am at my worst. Sometimes it’s not just as easy as apologising to a friend. Sometimes it’s something only time can fix or sometimes it’s something that will never be fixed. My anxiety creates an ocean between myself and the place I need to get to in order to accept it and move on. So, it feels like I am just swimming, to reach this better place, but all the things my anxiety is making me carry forces me to give up and drown.
I take beta-blockers to help and control the physical symptoms of anxiety attacks. If I can reach these pills in time or predict an anxiety attack, it can help me focus on calming down and really try to understand how I feel about a situation without worrying my heart is going to burst out onto the floor. Unfortunately, it’s not always the case that I have beta-blockers readily available or I’ve successfully predicted an anxiety-filled day. If I am lucky, it’ll slowly build up, but mostly the attacks start within seconds of something triggering it. With my mind ready to overthink and assess every situation in my life one hundred times over, you can imagine how many times a day I have to deal with these bouts. It’s never as easy as just controlling your breath or listening to music because the anxiety doesn’t go away once the attack is over. It lingers there every second of every day, waiting for you to pay the slightest bit of attention to it so it can force your body to work double time once more. I am twenty-two years old and I am constantly exhausted.
Exhaustion comes from the physical aspects of anxiety attacks, as well as the emotional turmoil anxiety takes you through, from the moment you wake up to the seconds before you fall asleep. Recently, I've struggled a lot with thinking I have anxiety attacks because I am a bad person. As if the attacks are a way of my mind subconsciously telling me that what I have done or what I am doing is a bad thing. Due to the relief from the anxiety symptoms being all I ever crave during anxiety attacks, I often sacrifice things I stand for and believe in - including myself - for the bad feelings to go away and for my mind to be quiet. But all too often I am allowing myself to be shamed for things I didn't believe in the first place were wrong, I am accepting responsibility for things I didn't do and I am allowing myself to be walked over all for the relief from anxiety. It's bittersweet. Don't get me wrong, sometimes I AM a bad person, all humans make mistakes. But I guarantee I have taken on more than my fair share of responsibility and blame. I swear I spend more time constantly trying to change and improve myself as a human so these triggering situations don't happen again than I do just being a human.
Because of this, I’m used to being called ‘too soft’, ‘too sensitive’, ‘a doorstop’, ‘hypochondriac’ and all the other synonyms google can find. I am not denying that I am these things, but it’s not a conscious choice I’ve made. Due to my anxiety being triggered by trivial things, it is now just the rainbow of umbrella terms I fall under. Though an anxiety attack is something you can physically see, anxiety and everything that accompanies it before and after, is just not as easy to recognise and understand. It’s just as hard explaining you’re upset because your brain and body told you to do so, as it is for someone to understand why you’re not just “getting over it”. I couldn’t count the number of times people have told me to ‘stop being too sensitive’ and ‘stop thinking about things’ or ‘just forget it and move on’. Those are things I want to do and trust me; I give it one hell of a go. But I think it’s finally time for me to truly accept that these attacks are a part of my life and learn how to deal with them, instead of trying to ignore them altogether and deal with it the way “normal” people to do.
Unfortunately, I haven’t figured that part out yet. It took the best part of ten years to understand what anxiety attacks are, why I get them and to finally accept it’s a part of who I am. It was getting to the point where all these bouts of anxiety were building up and clouding my vision so much that I couldn’t see any good in my life. Someone I love told me to just wait for the good to come – and I know that it will. But after that, the bouts will come back, and they will always come back. It will never be a cloud-free life. And as much as I try, I cannot fix every bad and anxiety-filled thing that happens to me. I cannot mend all friendships, as much as twelve-year old me tried. I cannot constantly keep believing I am a bad person who doesn't deserve happiness. I cannot plan my life out step-by-step and hope that by following it precisely, everything will work out and bad things won’t happen. Because they absolutely will. Because that’s life. I just need to find a way to, not eradicate the anxiety (because that’s not possible) but force it to be a little quieter. From then on, I can deal with this situation rationally and hopefully be able to swim across the ocean to that better place.
As it turns out, there are a lot of things that trigger these anxiety attacks. Mostly, they are situationally triggered, much like when I had those misunderstandings with friends. The older I got, the more I became familiar with the type of situations that would bring on these bouts of anxiety. The unfortunate side of this is that I also became familiar with the extent of which I cannot prevent these situations from happening. As my anxiety attacks can be triggered from what seems to be the most trivial of situations, they happen all the time. The triggers are contemporaneous, and this is when I am at my worst. Sometimes it’s not just as easy as apologising to a friend. Sometimes it’s something only time can fix or sometimes it’s something that will never be fixed. My anxiety creates an ocean between myself and the place I need to get to in order to accept it and move on. So, it feels like I am just swimming, to reach this better place, but all the things my anxiety is making me carry forces me to give up and drown.
I take beta-blockers to help and control the physical symptoms of anxiety attacks. If I can reach these pills in time or predict an anxiety attack, it can help me focus on calming down and really try to understand how I feel about a situation without worrying my heart is going to burst out onto the floor. Unfortunately, it’s not always the case that I have beta-blockers readily available or I’ve successfully predicted an anxiety-filled day. If I am lucky, it’ll slowly build up, but mostly the attacks start within seconds of something triggering it. With my mind ready to overthink and assess every situation in my life one hundred times over, you can imagine how many times a day I have to deal with these bouts. It’s never as easy as just controlling your breath or listening to music because the anxiety doesn’t go away once the attack is over. It lingers there every second of every day, waiting for you to pay the slightest bit of attention to it so it can force your body to work double time once more. I am twenty-two years old and I am constantly exhausted.
Exhaustion comes from the physical aspects of anxiety attacks, as well as the emotional turmoil anxiety takes you through, from the moment you wake up to the seconds before you fall asleep. Recently, I've struggled a lot with thinking I have anxiety attacks because I am a bad person. As if the attacks are a way of my mind subconsciously telling me that what I have done or what I am doing is a bad thing. Due to the relief from the anxiety symptoms being all I ever crave during anxiety attacks, I often sacrifice things I stand for and believe in - including myself - for the bad feelings to go away and for my mind to be quiet. But all too often I am allowing myself to be shamed for things I didn't believe in the first place were wrong, I am accepting responsibility for things I didn't do and I am allowing myself to be walked over all for the relief from anxiety. It's bittersweet. Don't get me wrong, sometimes I AM a bad person, all humans make mistakes. But I guarantee I have taken on more than my fair share of responsibility and blame. I swear I spend more time constantly trying to change and improve myself as a human so these triggering situations don't happen again than I do just being a human.
Because of this, I’m used to being called ‘too soft’, ‘too sensitive’, ‘a doorstop’, ‘hypochondriac’ and all the other synonyms google can find. I am not denying that I am these things, but it’s not a conscious choice I’ve made. Due to my anxiety being triggered by trivial things, it is now just the rainbow of umbrella terms I fall under. Though an anxiety attack is something you can physically see, anxiety and everything that accompanies it before and after, is just not as easy to recognise and understand. It’s just as hard explaining you’re upset because your brain and body told you to do so, as it is for someone to understand why you’re not just “getting over it”. I couldn’t count the number of times people have told me to ‘stop being too sensitive’ and ‘stop thinking about things’ or ‘just forget it and move on’. Those are things I want to do and trust me; I give it one hell of a go. But I think it’s finally time for me to truly accept that these attacks are a part of my life and learn how to deal with them, instead of trying to ignore them altogether and deal with it the way “normal” people to do.
Unfortunately, I haven’t figured that part out yet. It took the best part of ten years to understand what anxiety attacks are, why I get them and to finally accept it’s a part of who I am. It was getting to the point where all these bouts of anxiety were building up and clouding my vision so much that I couldn’t see any good in my life. Someone I love told me to just wait for the good to come – and I know that it will. But after that, the bouts will come back, and they will always come back. It will never be a cloud-free life. And as much as I try, I cannot fix every bad and anxiety-filled thing that happens to me. I cannot mend all friendships, as much as twelve-year old me tried. I cannot constantly keep believing I am a bad person who doesn't deserve happiness. I cannot plan my life out step-by-step and hope that by following it precisely, everything will work out and bad things won’t happen. Because they absolutely will. Because that’s life. I just need to find a way to, not eradicate the anxiety (because that’s not possible) but force it to be a little quieter. From then on, I can deal with this situation rationally and hopefully be able to swim across the ocean to that better place.