Anxiety gives me the shakes
What anxiety feels like, why it made me run, and how I finally stopped shaking
“This is my life, it is my one time to be me. I want to experience every good thing.”
Maya Angelou
“The danger of isolation is much greater than the risk of intimacy.”
Pastor Steven Furtick
I’ve held on to these two quotes throughout this year and consulted them as Santiago did his Urim and Thummim stones in The Alchemist. One encouraged me to always seek the best version of my life that I could grasp, and the other encouraged me that connecting with others, even over the most vulnerable topics, was part of that best version.
When I thought about beginning to write around BIPOC Mental Health Month, knowing that I have been transformed tremendously this year by focusing on my mental health, I only intended to share resources that helped me. But, I felt God calling me to share a snapshot of my journey as well. Perhaps it is meant to resonate with someone or perhaps it is meant to get rid of my own fear about using the words “me”, “therapy”, and “anxiety” in the same breath. Whatever the purpose, I am too grateful for being given a new sense of peace and breath of life to disregard the Giver.
There was a point, I believe as a 22-year old, where I noticed that my hands would often shake uncontrollably. At first, I just assumed I had early-onset Parkinson’s disease (I heard that diagnosis in Love & Other Drugs and, according to Dr. Me, my symptoms were identical.) I also had days where I felt it was noticeably hard to catch a good breath; all I could manage were shallow breaths that left me wanting something deeper and more restorative. My heart would beat so fast that I would try to slow it down by pressing down on my chest or folding over in half, in case that would help me get stability. With time, I noticed that my symptoms would appear mostly when I was on the way to work. And then, I noticed, actually, it happened around people I didn’t know well. And, actually, it happened many times when I was stressed. And, actually, a lot of things stressed me out, though objectively, I didn’t have any major life stressors.
I didn’t know what to do or, rather, I accepted there was nothing to be done. I didn’t have the habit of seeking help from medical professionals except for preventive checkups and emergencies. And it seemed a pretty harmless, albeit embarrassing situation. So, I just accepted my symptoms as who I am around stress and moved on. Literally.
I had developed a habit of moving locations to have a fresh start, anytime I became unhappy or restless. In high school, that looked like taking frequent trips to the restroom or around the school and staying in my new hiding spot for a while until I felt calm. When I first moved from Texas to college in New England, I blamed my sense of restlessness on the extremely different environment and Boston. Because Boston would do that to a person. I took a lot of long walks through Cambridge, Somerville, along the Charles River, and around campus. But, as my stressors became greater, my moves had to correspond. I went abroad to Cuba, falling in love with the country, but the independence of my program left me feeling easily stressed and overwhelmed. I took a lot of naps to calm me down thinking it was better to slip off into daydreams than be with my panicky thoughts in my waking hours alone. After college, I moved to DC, loving it at first, but eventually feeling like something wasn’t sitting right with my spirit. And then the shaky hands came. And the heartbeat and all that. So, I moved again.
After having spent time in 8 different countries and living in 9 different cities, I slowly became more aware that, in all the different places, the only constant was me. It wasn’t the jobs, the weather, the people around me, or the people far from me that made me restless and constantly seeking peace. It was me.
The thing is, I’m notoriously a fairly happy, optimistic person. I believe greater things are to come and I feel blessed by all the things that I experience every day. I laugh a lot, I dance a lot, I sing a lot. I seek the best in life and I don’t like to be weighed down by negativity.
However, internally, I worry. A lot. About all things. And, internally, I get easily stressed. A lot. About all things. And, internally, I assume things. A lot. And if I don’t have enough information to assume, I internally panic. Nothing is too big or too small. Various people, including a former therapist, have described my thoughts as overthinking on steroids. I wouldn’t be able to write this if all of it was still 100% true of where I am today, but it is still my baseline if I don’t check myself. It’s not enough to stop me from living, but it does give life an unnecessary bitter taste at times and makes a lot of simple things unnecessarily taxing.
Even when I began to have more of an awareness of my delicate mental health, it seemed like something I could affirm myself out of. I didn’t link anything to a need to address my mental health, because I was always able to manage.
When people talked about the kind of person who seeks professional help, I either imagined white people (blame social segregation), people who liked hot yoga, chakras, and incense, or homeless people and veterans. When I heard mental health, I heard people talk about suicides, eating disorders, uncontrollable anger. None of it resonated with me; I was just somebody who worried herself breathless and shaky.
It wasn’t until almost 7 years after experiencing physical symptoms of anxiety that I started actually addressing my own mental health. I entered a graduate program for School Counseling on a mission to help young people who dealt with mental and emotional distress. As I sat in course after course intended to prepare myself to support the mental health and positive development of young people, I found myself relating deeply to the indicators of a person in chronic mental distress and the cognitive distortions associated with anxious thinking.
It is not uncommon in the mental health profession, or in any helping field, to find that people are drawn to the work because of their own personal histories with the same challenges they go on to help others navigate. However, without addressing my own issues, I couldn’t hope to be a useful tool for others.
I finally began to seek professional help, partially to see what a mental health professional looked like in action, and partially to see if I could finally figure out how to stop stressing myself sick. I set up counseling sessions with my university health center and, honestly, the first experience wasn’t great. But, I tried again and I walked away with my first nugget of new thinking.
Having new thoughts introduced in therapy challenged me to see formative experiences from a detached third-person perspective, from family dynamics to workplace stressors. From that perspective, I learned that what I internally processed as hopeless, dramatic, stressful persistent puzzles were actually circumstances of life that I could change or accept. Simple.
I couldn’t believe it. It’s like when you learn for the first time that people you have been comparing yourself to in life had a leg up the whole time. Like, you mean people are out here living freedom on another level of free?
And that’s how it built on itself. Over 3 years, nugget by nugget, I challenged my own thoughts with curiosity and changed how I responded to stress and the factors that I could eventually identify were negatively contributing to my life. And nugget by nugget, spending time alone with my thoughts felt less suffocating. My creativity was unlocked, my energy was unlocked, and the idea of staying put was one I could handle (in doses, I still like to move around).
When 2020 hit, I could not do anything but thank God for providing me with the foundation of help and restructured thinking. My dad passed away in January, we lost 3 more dear family members within the span of 4 months, and then, of course, there is a global pandemic and an explosion of critical race conversations. I feel able to navigate every day and still have hope and be a source of stability and positivity for others because I already had greater internal peace. And unlike what I wanted to believe, securing that peace takes great effort.
It has been a journey of putting myself in the flow of resources and understanding how the way I think can contribute to my actions or paralysis. I still feel silly and overly privileged to focus so much time on reprogramming my mind. At times, I also feel silly for focusing on the ability to do things like breathe deeply and relax. How is this something I have to learn? Shouldn’t it be natural? But, “should”s are useless if you can’t get them to align with what really is, aren’t they?
Like with physical health, there is no consistent prime or peak. I can’t maintain by having a good revelation or conversation once a year and a few weeks of good sleep and eating healthy. It takes a consistent lifestyle, some check-ups, and some attention. It includes different goals, strengthening different muscles in new ways, and seeking help when it’s beyond me. I can mentally and physically feel the continuing transformation and I hope that some things shared here can be a part of inspiration to a mentally stronger and transformed you.
