Living With Anxiety

Hey Guys x

This is a post that's really personal and I've wanted to write it for a while, but now I don't know where to start, which is typical!

I guess I'll start by directing you to one of Zoe Sugg's vlogmas videos, where she talks in detail about the kind of things that give her anxiety.

Her 'Anxiety Chat' starts from around 11 minutes into the video and in it, she talks about finding massages anxious, and why she feels that way.

I've mentioned on my blog that I get anxious, but I've never gone into as much depth as I'm going to now, because I've never really known what's made me anxious until now, I've never done any research into it until now.

And that stems from the fact that I've booked a doctor's appointment to finally get some help with it, which is scary! But I want to do this, and I want to keep you guys up to date, in case this could help someone. So after I have my appointment (on January 25th) I'll write a post about what happened, what the doctor asked me, and what the next step is.

Just to make it clear, I haven't ever been to the doctor about this before so I don't know if I have a normal level of anxiety or an anxiety disorder. At this point, I'm just talking it through with myself (and you guys!).

But for now, I just want to talk a bit about what anxiety means to me, what kinds of situations make me feel anxious, the type of anxiety I think I have, and why I haven't done anything about it until now. So if you're busy, save this post, make a cuppa and come back to it because it's going to be a long one!

To me, anxiety takes a few forms. Most commonly, it manifests itself in stomach aches, shaking, heart palpitations, wanting to cry and just generally feeling a bit shit. I say wanting to cry because I usually feel like this in public, so I can't cry.
Other symptoms can include heart racing to the point where I have to force myself to take deep breaths, hot flashes, sweating, and if I have to speak, a shaky voice and stumbling over words. Wow, having this written out makes me sound like a mess!

But yeah, those are some of the symptoms that I experience... I'd say intensely about 4 days a week at multiple times during the day, depending on what's happening that day, but I can experience moments of them when thinking about something that made me feel anxious in the past, or something that I'm anxious about happening in the future. Because of this, I feel anxious in some shape or form every day.

Now, on to what makes me feel anxious.

Social situations make me feel anxious, causing me to believe that I do have social anxiety disorder. Particularly when it's me in person. I don't have that much trouble speaking to a stranger on the phone or answering the phone when I don't know who's calling, probably because I can easily hang up the phone and end the conversation whenever I want.

One thing anxiety really affects is my ability to speak, as strange as it sounds, particularly in classroom situations. When I'm in class with other people, I can't speak. Then I think that people are thinking that I'm weird or that I something's wrong with me, and this makes me even more anxious. When I was in secondary school, teachers used to tell me to make more of an effort, and when I think about that now it makes me hate them. It's not something I can choose to do, I feel like I have no control over it. Whether it's because I don't want to be laughed at or made fun of, I don't know, but this is my toughest thing to deal with, because in uni, seminars are all about discussion, and I can't discuss. It makes me dread going to uni and at least once a day I contemplate dropping out.

In addition to this, it's also hard for me to speak when I'm just with a group of friends, not in classrooms, even with people I feel comfortable with, and even if there's just two or three of them. I tend to feel like I'm being judged, which I doubt is true, which makes me quieter, reproducing the thought that I'm being judged and so on.

I'm not good with crowds, where people are all going in different directions with different purposes, but in addition to this, sitting in a lecture hall or cinema makes me feel anxious, mainly because I feel like I can't get out, which I guess is pretty normal, a kind of claustrophobia. For me though, I feel comfortable if I'm sitting on or near the aisle seat or near a bathroom. This sounds weird, but I know that I'll be fine if I can get up at any time and go to the bathroom without having to get people to stand up or move. I suppose the theater would probably make me anxious too but I don't attend enough to know for sure.

Being alone is another thing. I'm fine being at home alone, in fact more often than not I choose to be home alone, I love it. But I hate being somewhere, like uni, with lots of people, and being alone. Everyone is with someone else, and if I'm alone, I feel like people are thinking things about me and I can't handle it and want to go home.

Family events make me anxious. My sister and I are the youngest people in our family, so it makes me feel anxious to have to sit for hours around adults that treat me like I'm 5 rather than 19. I don't really know why this makes me feel anxious as such, but I dread family events!

I don't think I can list every single situation that makes me feel anxious, so I should probably stop here But again, the biggest thing for me is in classroom situations. I also tend to not go to parties, or clubbing or anything like that, especially if I don't know how I'm going to get home at the end of the night. In fact, that's another big thing for me so let me talk about that.

Not knowing how to get home is something that will make me not attend any social events. I have to have a clear way of getting home and I need to know that I can get home no matter what happens, which I guess is also pretty usual and might not be about anxiety, but I need to carefully plan out how I'll get home, otherwise I won't be going!

In Zoe's video, she said that she doesn't want her anxiety to define her, it's just something she lives with. But she doesn't want to just live with it, she wants to get to the point when it doesn't stop her from doing things and I really envy her for being able to think about her anxiety in this way!

Being 'quiet' or whatever, has been a part of my personality for so long that I don't know who I'd be if I wasn't worrying about something, and this scares me. I don't really know who I am yet, the only things I know for definite is that I like to read and write, I want to be an author, and I have anxiety maybe more than the average person. I don't remember the last time when I didn't feel anxious every day. In fact, that's a lie, Summer. Since August ended I've felt anxious every day, but in the holidays I was fine because there was nothing scary in the immediate future.

Anyway, I didn't do anything about it before now for a few reasons. Mainly, because I didn't (and don't) want the doctor to tell me that I don't have it, that my anxiety level is normal, because I don't think it is. And if everyone has the same level of anxiety that I do, then I am in awe of how people manage to be so outgoing and social, because I could never do that.
But also, I didn't want my anxiety to define me. I'm scared to say the words 'I have an anxiety disorder' to anyone. That makes it a real thing, and that means that I have a mental health condition, which is so scary! And I worry about what people will think of me for having that, as mental health conditions do have a stigma attached to them.

But in the same way, I want a definite answer. In a way, I want to go back to my secondary school teachers and say 'see, I told you, it's not my fault!', but also, I want to get help, I want to not have to avoid being social, to not want to avoid being social. And the only way that I can get help is to know if I need help in the first place!

One thing that worries me is that people don't understand, and I'm not good at explaining it out loud. Some of my friends get it, or get as much as I can tell them anyway. Some don't, and so I don't talk to them about it. I remember one of my friends saying 'Everyone gets anxious though', as if I didn't already know that! To this day, I haven't said anything to that friend about it since, because they obviously don't get it, and there's no good time to sit someone down and explain the ins and outs of your anxiety. But even in classroom situations, it worries me that my friends don't understand why I can't speak.

The words 'quiet' and 'shy' come into it a lot, and this upsets me. I don't think I'm shy. I can have a one-on-one conversation with anyone, authority figures, doctors, anything, and I don't feel anxious, which maybe I would if I was shy, I don't really know. But when people are quiet, everyone just goes 'oh, she's just shy' and puts them into this box and discounts them, and in my experience, ignores them. I've been in that box my entire secondary school and college life, and I didn't want to be in the box for uni too, but I already feel like I am. And that makes me want to quit. In fact, the only thing stopping me from quitting is the fact that I don't have something else to go to. If I had an internship or job lined up, I'd quit in a heartbeat!

I've rambled on for a while, and still feel like I haven't even scratched the surface. Nevertheless, I'm stopping here because I don't want you guys to be reading forever!

I'm sure as soon as I hit publish, I'll think of more situations that make me anxious, more symptoms I get and more things to say about them, so I'll probably end up doing another post to accompany this one.

But I hope this helps someone. It's been hard to articulate this and put it into words because I've never gone to this much detail about it before, to anyone, speaking or writing or anything. If you have any tips for overcoming anxiety, or your own experience of anxiety or anything that you think will be helpful to anyone reading this, please leave it in the comments.

If you want to ask me personal questions about my anxiety, leave them in the comments or email me (lous.world@hotmail.com) and I'll answer any that I'm comfortable with answering in another post. I'm willing to be open because so many people have anxiety and I've found it really helpful to read different posts and watch different videos about it, so I'm willing to answer questions that help others too. But also, so many people see people like Zoe and think it's the next trend, having anxiety. I guess this post is also for anyone that thinks it's cool to have anxiety or wishes they had anxiety so that they could be like Zoe. I don't know if I have anxiety or not, but whatever I do have completely sucks and I wouldn't wish it on anyone! If I could flick a switch and have it gone, I'd do that in a heartbeat. It's stopped me from living my life, and I don't want that to continue.

If you relate to anything I've said or think that you have an anxiety disorder, please talk to someone who is in the position to be able to answer your questions, as well as a parent or friend. Even write a blog post, as writing this has been really helpful for me. Zoe said she saw multiple doctors until she got a diagnosis that she was happy with, and I found that interesting because, at the end of the day, you know what's happening in your body more than anyone else.

Thanks to Chloe for telling me to post this, I'm really glad I wrote it!

Thank you for reading.

Keep Smiling, Lou xx