How I Write My Way Out of Anxiety
Dealing with the uncertainty of a general anxiety disorder
One night this October, I found myself wide awake at 1 AM. It was an all too familiar feeling, one that I had felt many nights before. I had awoken suddenly at 10 PM. The tears had started at 11 PM, and they had come on-and-off since then. I couldn’t catch my breath. I had taken the sleeping aids. I had tried all the breathing tips I had learned in therapy. Yet here I was at 1 AM, ready to scream because I just couldn’t keep everything inside anymore. My partner was stirring, so I went outside to sit on the patio and wait for the feeling to pass.
I was having a panic attack, and I didn’t know why. There was nothing that had triggered me as far as I knew. So how could this possibly be happening to me again?
The first panic attack I remember was when I was 20 years old. I had received a text from my 17-year-old brother saying “you need to call mom now.” Knowing she had just left me in Texas 24 hours earlier (and knowing Michael is a free spirit who was not fond of parental supervision), I knew this was serious. When I called my mom, she informed me that my dad had asked to separate.
I don’t remember really having much of a conversation after that first sentence. I couldn’t tell you if we talked for 30 seconds or 30 minutes. The next thing I remember was being on the opposite on campus, completely alone and completely out of breath. I had tried to outrun the panic attack, and it had caught up with me.
The divorce became my biggest trigger point for the first few months, but it didn’t take long for the anxiety to move beyond the dissolution of my family. I was entering my final year of college, and I was drowning. My panic attacks were hard to explain, so I started losing friends who didn’t like the way I was “changing.” My boss was less than understanding, and the fear of failure I felt only amplified my anxiety. I was coming to terms with my sexual assault, my bisexuality, and my future. I would wake up in the middle of the night in cold sweats, and it would take me hours to get back to sleep. I developed an ulcer from the stress, so I wasn’t eating either. I was a mess, and I couldn’t get my head above water.
I started going to therapy through my university’s mental health program. I ended up with the school’s psychiatrist because they wanted to try and get me on medication, but I hated how cloudy it made my brain. So I ditched the drugs, kept the therapy, and focused on a coping mechanism that worked. I was able to identify the moments that made me feel most anxious, and I started sleeping again. My ulcer went away, and I started eating again. I was able to articulate my anxiety better because I knew what was causing it. I felt like took some control back, because I was able to identify things that would upset me before they occurred.
The problem was, all of the tricks I learned were “trigger” related. What I didn’t learn was how to cope with the anxiety that came unexpectedly. Somehow, in my first three years of regular therapy and regular panic attacks, I never discussed anxiety attacks that occurred when there wasn’t an immediately obvious reason. I didn’t know that sometimes, my anxiety would come for you in the middle of the night, stealing your breath and crushing you with the fear of all the “what-if’s” that you can’t identify.
When you have an anxiety disorder your brain is no longer regulating your fear properly, meaning there won’t just be one or two doors that your anxiety walks through. The doors stay ajar, allowing for unexpected moments of “why now?” and “why me?”.
In more scientific terms, according to Boston Children’s Hospital website, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and its sister panic disorder are a disruption of the normal fight or flight instinct in your brain. The site explains:
“While everyone experiences anxiety at times, [people] with anxiety disorders contend with excessive worrying that does not subside the way normal anxiety does.”
Additionally, in an article by Phillippe Nuss for the Department of Psychiatry, Hôpital St Antoine, AP-HP, Paris, France, he explains how “anxiety disorders arise from a dysfunction in the modulation of brain circuits which regulate emotional responses to potentially threatening stimulus.”
I learned all of this on that cold October night, as I tried to come to terms with the reality that I would never have control over my anxiety. But I knew that I couldn’t stay helpless. In that dark moment, alone on the patio staring into the darkness, I heard the voice of my former therapist saying, “penny for your thoughts?”
It was an exercise I used to do when I was having anxiety attacks about losing my cousin to cancer. My therapist told me to set a timer for 5 minutes and just write, completely unfiltered. Once the timer stopped, I was supposed to stop, absorb, and make an action plan.
So I pulled out my phone, at 1:30 AM, and I set a timer for five minutes, and I started writing. I started writing about my panic attacks — where they came from, how I got here. I wrote about feeling like I had a half-broken heart because I felt like I would never stop running. And then the timer went off.
I stared at my words on my phone, and I realized the tears had stopped. I was able to breathe again. I absorbed everything I had written, and I made a plan of action. I realized that while I could not avoid the intrusive thoughts that woke me up in the middle of the night, I could apply the methods of my trigger related therapy to my general anxiety.
The most important lesson I have carried over is how to “write my way out,” in the words of the song “Hurricane” from the musical Hamilton. When I am lost, writing is my North Star. Whether or not I know exactly what my anxiety is about, writing for a few minutes every week helps me to orient myself to my feelings and helps me to find patterns that I might not have otherwise recognized.
According to a study published by the Harvard Medical School, writing about traumatic events is key to understanding them. Doctor James W. Pennebaker has led most of the known research on writing and trauma, and over his many studies, he has concluded:
“The act of thinking about an experience, as well as expressing emotions, seems to be important. In this way, writing helps people to organize thoughts and give meaning to a traumatic experience.”
The study showed that writing also helped lower blood pressure and heart rates for those with “health conditions such as sleep apnea, asthma, migraine headaches, rheumatoid arthritis, HIV, and cancer.” Writing is more than a way out of anxiety — it has proven medical benefits to improving your overall wellness.
The second most important thing I have applied to my unknown anxiety is regular breathing exercises. My personal favorite is four-count box breathing. In four, hold four, out four, hold four. I try to do this for a minute at least once a day, just for good practice. It’s made it more effective when I do have anxiety attacks.
At some point, I know I will need to go back to therapy. For now, I am grateful I was given so many tools I didn’t know I needed. I used to think of my anxiety as something I could pin down, but it was never going to be that simple. I am still learning how to cope, and that’s okay. I am a work in progress and I am not alone — and that helps me rest just a little easier each night.
