My Battle with Anxiety
Everyone has a success story. This is my version for it. I hope you get strength from it.
Success and achievement are subjective concepts, perceived differently by people depending on their preferences, thought processes, contexts, and circumstances. Therefore, people set themselves goals and aspirations that will eventually lead them to a state which they believe to be the meaning of achievement and success.
The meaning of achievement is different for different people, yet, the two integrating and unaltering factors that are common factors when it comes to success, are: to be better than our current state, and be happy and content. Accomplishments do not always mean achieving excellence or reaching a certain benchmark, it also means overcoming the challenges thrown at us by life, fighting our personal demons, getting rid of bad habits, or simply our struggle to become better human beings.
For me, there is much more to success than just monetary values and recognition. I assess my success in terms of my ability to improve the way I respond to difficult situations.
There are times when I fail to achieve the ultimate goal, but if I can look back and say that I made a sincere attempt and gave it my all and that I gained something from the experience in any capacity e.g., a lesson learned, a skill developed or broadened my perspective, I consider it a success. In that regard, when I look back , I can think of a few accomplishments that have helped me evolve as a person. Among them, my greatest accomplishment has been overcoming fear.
Ethologists have defined fear as an emotional state that is triggered by specific stimuli, serving as a motivator for escape or defensive behavior. There is a strong interrelation between fear and anxiety, where fear can cause anxiety and anxiety can lead to fear (Steimer, 2002). When fear is not handled properly, it turns into anxiety and when the anxiety is not managed, it escalates into a phobia. According to Brazier (2020), a phobia refers to a type of anxiety disorder that leads a person to experience an extreme and irrational fear about a living creature, object, place, or situation.
I was about 10 years old when we shifted to our newly built house. Being one of the earliest constructions in the area, the neighborhood comprised of a few houses only and it used to get quiet right after sunset. I didn’t have any friends in the new neighborhood and to kill time, I began to borrow books from my elder brother’s collection. He was a huge fan of the horror genre which means most of the books were horror novels. I started reading them and began to enjoy the thrilling sequence in the beginning. However, gradually and without me noticing, the contents of these novels engulfed me.
I began to picture the situations in those fictional novels in my own life. I was finding it increasingly difficult to be alone or in the dark, even in my own bedroom. Despite mentioning my problem, it was laughed off as a temporary side effect of the reading material that I had exposed myself to. Unfortunately, the fear that I had developed was not properly managed and it first translated into an anxiety disorder where I was always preoccupied with the thought of being alone and experiencing something supernatural, and later translated into full-blown phobias such as monophobia, the fear of being alone; xenophobia, the fear of unknown and phasmophobia which is the fear of ghosts, etc.
As I grew older, the phobias became more and more deep-rooted. Also, I found it increasingly difficult to talk about it as these were considered to be a sign of cowardice and frowned upon. So hiding these fears led to even more psychological stresses and anxieties. It has a severely adverse effect on my studies because I couldn’t sleep in my room at the dorm and neither could I concentrate on my studies at night. The negative psychological effects it had on my personality were becoming visible as I would always avoid situations where I would be alone, in the dark, or in an unfamiliar place or situation.
Moreover, I used to envy my friends living in the freedom of these phobias and enjoying their lives much more than I did. I was deeply affected by the opportunities that I was missing out on just because of my inner irrational fears. Finally, it got to a level where I just couldn’t continue living like this anymore. I somehow mustered up the courage and fixed an appointment with a psychiatrist.
The sessions with the mental health specialist had a profound effect on the way I perceived and managed my phobias. One of the major problems that I had was that whenever I was alone, I used to hear disturbances nearby me. e.g. the sound of dishes clattering in the kitchen, something falling off the table, and some irrational and unexplainable movements or sounds that I would almost always associate some sort of paranormal activity. The specialist that I was consulting encouraged me to take my fears head-on by putting myself in situations that I fear the most such as being alone or in the dark for short intervals, and investigating anything that I might hear or see and find disturbing. However, despite committing to such practices, I just couldn’t do it.
Then I encountered a situation that would prove to be life-altering. It so happened that one night, I was home alone. In a typical horror fiction way, a strong wind began to blow and was followed by a heavy thunderstorm. It was one of the most frightening and challenging experiences for someone with multiple phobias. It stopped raining after a while and became eerily quiet. Then I began to hear a sound as if someone was knocking on the window of the adjacent room. I was engulfed by extreme fear and couldn’t even move. The stress and fear got to a level that triggered an adrenaline rush and I decided to just go out and see it for myself, come what may. I got up, took my torch, and followed the knocking sound. As I tracked the sound, I realized that someone had left the window unbolted and the slow breeze, along with the tension on the hinges, was making it move back and forth to create the knocking sound.
Taking a sigh of relief, I just sat there and laughed, for I had finally found a way to beat the psychological demons that had troubled me for so many years. Since then, I have made it a habit to take any irrational fears or worries head-on. It has had a profound effect on my personal, social and academic life as I feel much more confident than before. Being alone, which had limited me in so many aspects, is no longer a problem.
I consider it as my greatest accomplishment as not only have I overcome the irrational fears, but also freed my mind from the accompanying preoccupations and worries. I believe I have become a much better version of myself since overcoming these phobias.
