What is anxiety?

The dictionary definition of anxiety is "a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome". Anxiety is something that many people experience every day. It's often not too bad and, usually, doesn't interfere with their daily lives and often goes away. However, for some people, the anxiety doesn't go away.

My Anxiety

My maternal grandmother is an incredibly anxious woman. She hates thunderstorms. She refuses to use two electrical items at once as she worries it'll blow a fuse in her old house. She won't use her dryer. She hates to be away from home for more than a few hours at a time. My grandmother has always been this way. I spent a lot of time with my grandmother as a child and it seems as though some of her worry has rubbed off on me. Genetics perhaps.

As a child, I was scared of everything. Literally. I was scared of the dark until I was in 7th grade (and I only got over it because my night light died and there were no replacement bulbs in the house). I was terrified of thunderstorms(to the point that I would hide under a blanket until the last drops of rain went away). I was horrified by any and all bugs and would scream if any came near me. There is one story my mom loves to tell everyone. When I was younger, I lived in Unity, Maine. It's a small town and my house was practically in the woods and there was a swamp not too far from our backyard. This often meant that there were a lot of bugs all the time. Apparently, I went outside as a toddler to play and started screaming. When my parents came out to investigate, it was discovered that I was being bitten by mosquitoes. I was scared of mosquitoes.

As I grew older, my fears started dwindling away. I can only sleep in the dark now. Thunderstorms don't scare me as much. And bugs are okay. My fears started to transform into something worse. Anxiety.

My anxiety started to get really bad my senior year of high school. I would be in the middle of class and suddenly I would get nauseous and extremely shaky. It got to the point that I would have to go to the nurse's office and sent home because the shaking wouldn't stop. This resulted in me going to my doctor's. I explained my symptoms. I was given multiple blood tests for things such as anemia, diabetes, and thyroid issues. Anything that could explain my uncontrollable shaking. All my tests came back clear. It was at this time that I was told I had anxiety.

I was baffled and even a little offended. I didn't understand what anxiety really was. I certainly had no idea that it was a real mental illness. I didn't want to believe that anxiety could make me as sick as I was all the time. My doctor prescribed me a medication and it helped a little. My anxiety was still pretty bad, to the point that I was referred to the therapist/social worker that worked in my school district.

I was incredibly apprehensive about it. I had done the therapy thing once and I didn't like it all that much (perhaps this is why I went the social work route instead of the psychiatry route in graduate school). I met with the woman once a week to talk about my anxiety and what I noticed it caused the most. Class presentations, a solo in band class and a guy were the three main causes. For class presentations and my solo, she gave me a deep breathing/ reassuring myself activity. Whenever I was about to present or so my solo I would take a couple deep breaths and repeat in my head over and over "I can do it". It seemed really hokey at first, but it helped a lot. Or maybe I just convinced myself it did.

Once I got to college, my anxiety really began to hinder. I wouldn't eat unless I had someone going with me. I couldn't join any clubs because the idea of having to talk to new people was exhausting and terrifying. My participation grades in class were always low despite getting A's on every test or homework assignment. It got to the point that living on campus was too much for me. My junior year I moved off campus and into an apartment with one of my close friends from high school. It helped a lot with the issue of eating. Not so much with the social issue. I came away from college with very few friends.

Anxiety has made my dating life hard for a long time. It makes trusting people incredibly difficult because I can't get out of my head that perhaps I'm only here for convenience or that maybe it's all one big joke. It makes having conversations about the hard stuff even harder because I'm scared of confrontation because it makes my anxiety go through the roof. And when we do argue my anxiety makes me cry and I turn into a pathetic, blubbering idiot who can't even have a mature conversation. This often results in me keeping things that make me uncomfortable or upset to myself.

I am thankful that I have a fiance who is willing to work with me on my anxiety. But it still frustrates him. It annoys him that even making simple decisions such as which restaurant to eat at makes me anxious. It annoys him that I ask him 90 times a day if he still loves me because my anxiety tries to get me to believe otherwise. It annoys him that he can't joke around without me thinking he's serious and starting to cry.

I've kept how bad my anxiety is to myself for a very long time. People know I have anxiety, it's not a secret. But perhaps people don't realize that it keeps me up at night because all I can think about is playing out every situation over and over in my head, to replay conversations or arguments that I had months or even years ago, to not be able to shut off my brain to go to sleep.

Mental illness is not something society really talks about. If you're mentally ill in any way at all, you are an outcast deemed unworthy by society. As someone with an degree in psychology and soon to have a Master's in Social Work I want to help end this stigma. Mental illness is a real disease and it deserves acknowledgement.