Today I have a heaviness on my heart. A series of events of late that have led me to the conclusion that people just don’t understand anxiety and other mental health issues. At all.
This makes me ask the question ‘..but why would they?’
Before I was diagnosed with anxiety, I have always struggled and always found my struggles that little bit harder to shift than people I knew. For example, a fall out with friends at school always seemed that little bit harder to pick myself up from. Or the break up with what I then thought was the love of my young life, had me listening to love songs on repeat for months. These may seem like normal teenage problems, however compared to other people my age I started to notice how I would take longer to get over things, internalise things much more and how life in general and peoples behaviour became a huge confusing mess for me. And in all honesty still is a huge confusing mess for me now. People’s behaviour has become more alien to me but on the plus I understand myself and my illness much more.
I had a troubled childhood, parental divorce, mental illness in my family homelessness and I saw my fair share of abuse. These things may well be the root cause of my anxiety that I now suffer with as an adult, but maybe not.
I am now a single mother, a teacher and have my own share of ups and downs in my adult life ( which I will get into another time). Do these external things mean that I am somehow more likely to suffer from a mental illness? Or that it is somehow expected that a troubled childhood and single parenthood automatically equal anxiety and depression?
I do not think they do. Now, I am not an expert on these things and of course people may suffer trauma which can affect them in later life, myself for example, equally these hardships also become strongholds of wisdom and understanding about yourself and your own capabilities. What I am trying to say is, I see my anxiety as a strength as much as a weakness. I have had to spend time noting my sleeping and eating patterns, understanding and recognising triggers and emotional vulnerabilities in my life that can cause anxiety black holes. I now do these things as a matter of habit, I know that if I do not eat regularly that my blood sugar will fall and intrusive thoughts will begin to enter my mind. I am aware that restless or short sleeps will leave me feeling very low and paranoid. The same goes for interpersonal triggers.
Some people are very quick to say things that they don’t mean in the heat of anger, this is like poison to the soul for a person who suffers with anxiety. As, only speaking for myself here of course, saying things in the heat of the moment does not exist, words only leave my mouth after they have been processed and over thought, ensuring that I am being sensitive to people and how they could possibly take my tone or my choice of words.
Therefore when met with someone who says things in the ‘ heat of the moment’ this leaves me bewildered and confused, and often heartbroken as I literally feel peoples words. The words people say to people with anxiety are felt with every cell in their body, each word ripples waves through their body and each tonal choice can either add an electric current or subdue.
Words can be felt, and not taken back , and cruel or thoughtless words said to someone who suffers with anxiety is like giving someone with diabeties a huge chocolate bar and not expecting there to be any reprocussions.
This leads me to the main point of this blog tonight. The stigma that is attached to anxiety as being something you can just get over.
Don’t be so sensitive.
Don’t take things so personally.
Stop overthinking everything.
Why are you worring about that for?
The above are just a few examples of the common conversations I have had with people when in the midst of an anxiety episode.
Just tell your body to fight the cancer harder.
Produce some more white blood cells and you will be fine!
Just concerntrate a little harder on your broken leg healing.
The above comments may seem ludicrous to you, however there is absolutley no difference in making these comments to someone suffering a physical illness as there is to someone suffering a mental illness.
Of course you have the people that ruin it for all us, the hypochondriacs of the world have made it common to say things like ‘omg I am sooooooo stressed out right now, I mean this is just making my anxiety sooooooo through the roof, I mean my life is literally over!!’
Every person with anxiety and depression has heard this sentence pass from the lips of a person who has no understanding of what they are actually saying. Are we mad? Speaking for myself, no. I find it nice that some people havent experienced the intensity of those feelings that their body shakes. I am glad that not everyone has to feel the physical pain of anxiety and the daily battle of fighting with ones own thoughts.
Iam not angry, bitter, or any other negative thing when I hear these comments. It just makes me realise how little understanding there still is in this modern world for the suffers of these very real illnesses.
This brings me to my next thought procress. How can I help break the stigma. Well this is why I have started this blog. I would like to think of myself as a successful woman, ambitious and career driven, a proud mother to a beautiful boy and would like to think a good friend, who also suffers from a mental illness.
Has this stopped me achieving things? No.
Has this hindered me? At times yes. As I feel there needs to be more voices in the world that show you can live with mental illness, more voices that show that just because you are on medication for an illness out of your control you are not crazy, or super sensitive, or paranoid. You are a sufferer of an illness that people know little about what it is really like to live with because people are still scared to speak up.
My goal, is to share with my workplace my anxiety, publiclly. My managers know and are aware but I feel that students who do not understand their emotions at the best of times need to be shown that that is ok, that sometimes we never really get a handle on them, that somedays things can be really hard, somedays can be better, somedays you can feel misunderstood and isolated, and others on top of the world. However, a life with anxiety is still a life, its just a life thats a little extra.
