An Open letter to those who don’t understand anxiety.

I have often heard the terms ‘OCD’ and ‘panic attacks’ thrown around precariously with no concern for what they really mean and what context they should be used in. I understand that for people who have never been through a mental ailment, it’s hard to understand what it might feel like, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s something we should be talking about much more than we do now. I have known quite a few people who suffer from various kinds of anxiety disorders, and I guess that’s what has made me realise that there are too many people going through it and so little awareness regarding it. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always had an acute fear of a lot of things ranging from interacting with new people, to getting lost in crowds, to exams. People around me would always dismiss it by saying that it was probably because I was an introvert, or that I was just shy and would outgrow it. But now when I look back, I realise that the degree of fear that I felt was not something I should have felt at such a young age. I still have moments of paranoia and excessive over-thinking which leads to sleepless nights and sweaty palms, but today I am better informed and equipped to tackle this problem. Any person with an anxiety disorder will tell you that every time they start thinking about something that makes them uncomfortable or fearful, they start to lose control and it’s hard to ground their thoughts and stop the raging chaos in their head. Anxiety could range from uneasiness due to an acute obsessive compulsive disorder, wherein you feel a strong urge to behave in a certain compulsive way due to excessive thinking, to severe panic attacks due to fear of losing someone. Anxiety has the ability to magnify even the tiniest of problems and blow it out of proportion. Probably, what I and a lot of other people have experienced is a very slight kind of anxiety and I can’t even begin to imagine what it must feel like to experience it on a higher level.

But the real problem here is the kind of reaction it garners from others. The common reactions are usually condescension, a lack of understanding of what the other person is going through, or advice like, “Stop overthinking it” and “Listen to soothing music because that helps.” There is a lack of basic empathy because a lot of people believe that it’s something that is made up and does not really exist, even though it is so rampant due to our chaotic lives and the culture of self-dependency that we seem to have adopted. This is one problem that is here to stay and we had better acknowledge it rather than dismissing it as something that is made-up. The best way to treat an anxiety disorder is to detect it early on, accept the fact that you need to do something about it, and not try to belittle your mental health.

I’m writing this letter to urge you to take mental health issues more seriously. Fitness is a broad term which refers to the well-being of the body as well as the mind. And in order to be truly fit, we need to give as much importance to mental ailments as we do to physical ones.

Yours truly.