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How I Overcame the Dissonant Duet of Anxiety and Panic Attacks

Surviving the battlefields of neuroses, exploring the hows and whys, and learning to coexist with the enemy

Joe Treetop
Invisible Illness
Published in
8 min readOct 4, 2024

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A black-and-white image of the author in his mid-twenties, with Brylcreemed hair, donning 60s clothing inspired by the TV series Mad Men.
Me circa 2013 (the aesthetics result from bingeing Mad Men). Newly in love, reformed, and artistically hungry, yet drowning in neuroses. You’d never know it unless I told you — I never would.

First came anxiety, a lingering dread, stabbingly present yet often without a clear cause.

I was dogged by an inferiority complex and the spotlight effect, with pencil-chewing nervousness and constant overthinking.

As a boy, I couldn’t articulate these feelings. Once anxiety hardwired itself into my responses, it became normal, and I stopped questioning it.

Besides, it’s easier to deny that which has no name.

No one fancies themselves a neurotic. It’s about as sexy as stale bread.

I spent my teens with a constant unease pressing against my ribs.

I gasped for peer approval and tried to get girls to notice me, but my scrawny frame and matching insecurity weren’t exactly selling points — all while dodging head-stompings on my way to and from school.

Then came the hash venture, an odd choice for someone anxious, leaving me in simmering paranoia, always on edge about cop raids or warring drug gangs eager to tax overambitious “startups” like mine.

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Invisible Illness
Invisible Illness

Published in Invisible Illness

Medium’s biggest mental health publication

Joe Treetop
Joe Treetop

Written by Joe Treetop

Ex-hash dealer turned writer and incurable satirist, leveraging a shadowed past of strange encounters and even stranger people to examine self and culture.

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