Anxiety And How It Affects My Day-To-Day Life.
How it feels like to worry endlessly about anything and everything.
Sometimes, anxiety takes over and lets you watch from far away as it controls your life and eventually destroys it. Everyone worries and gets nervous or anxious during certain moments in their life. However, not everyone suffers from severe anxiety when that worrying dominates your brain and interrupts your daily activities.
I consider myself one of the unlucky ones who were cursed with anxiety. It started small and grew into an uncontrollable monster. The monster from Frankenstein is more controllable than the anxiety I have.
I don’t remember when it first invaded my mind, but I’m sure it got worse with the lovely year we had, 2020. The global pandemic, in my mind, was the end of the human race. That’s when shit hit the wall and my brain decided to quit functioning and to just panic about everything.
Every small thing that has happened to me since then had caused me severe mental problems. I had a history of panic attacks before so my mind was already fucked. Now, it’s fuckier. (Did I just invent a new word?)
I want to tell you exactly how it feels, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to put in words what that mental state is like. It usually happens when something new occurs in my life. it can be as small as getting a new book. My brain will start unraveling and going down a route of horrible thoughts, each thought I get is worse than the latter.
I’ll use getting a new book as an example. My brain will remind me of the number of unread books I have on my shelves, then of how much time I have to spend on reading them and whether I will find that time or not. I might die before I read them all and that stirs up another pot. What will happen to my books when I die? Who will take them? No one will give them the same attention and love I give them. They will never be read. They’ll probably get sold and eventually ruined. Now the big question is why the fuck should I even care about them when I’ll be fucking dead?
I’ll give you another experience that had just happened to me and was the reason behind this blog. I contacted an old acquaintance about some personal stuff and they didn’t reply at once. I assumed they were busy and didn't give it a second thought. 24h later, I started to panic. 48h later, my brain convinced me that they were dead. I started looking up death news all over the country, and I believed what my mind told me. I couldn’t function properly for days until I caved in and called them. Then I started breathing normally again and felt super embarrassed.
You might say, well Ehssan, you just care a lot. EEEEEEH, no! I don’t! I care very little and I have a limited number of fucks to give. Yet when I get inside my head and let my thoughts control me I get fucked (nonconsensually).
Now, what can I do to fix this? Every problem has a solution, right? Can I fix this excess worrying? Well, I don’t fucking know! I should go to therapy for sure but that’s a whole wormhole that my brain isn’t ready to handle.
I used to have it under control a bit, but lately, I feel as if I’ve been pushed to the side by my thoughts. Do you know that little voice in your mind? the one that’s reading this article now? Well, that voice never shuts up in my case. It convinces me that every small thing I do will have a horrible consequence. I tried everything to tone it down because I can’t ignore it. There is however one thing that seems to be working although it’s unhealthy. I’m very good at distracting myself from my own thoughts. I can not think for hours if I have a good distraction. I think I’m mainly into reading because it helps me escape my thoughts.
Please note that these thoughts are not supposed to be ignored. We are encouraged to face them so we can understand and overcome them. However, I personally don't feel mentally stable enough to face my own thoughts. I don’t want to listen to them just yet because I know that they will unveil some deep-rooted trauma and I’m just not ready for that. I don’t know if I can handle it.
I want to go back to therapy but I know what’s going to happen there. I’ll talk about these thoughts and we’ll try to find the source of them and then I’ll get depressed. Read that sentence again and tell me if you can see how wrong I am and how severe my anxiety is. My mind went straight to depression as a result of going to therapy, ironic I know.
Although distraction helps, it’s a temporary fix. It’s like putting duct tape on a leaking roof. The leak will be waiting to explode on your head when you are trying to take a shit.
Another thing that I started doing that’s probably a result of my anxiety is plucking my own hair and playing with my cuticles. I wake up to a huge pile of hair by my side that I barely remember pulling and my cuticles suffer a lot and that’s not good for my beautiful beautiful nails whom I care about a lot! I bought a fidget ring and it helped! Whenever I find myself playing with my hair, I wear the ring and direct my attention to it. I also tap my legs a lot!!! I always tap my legs and it annoys my family and that makes me tap them even more.
When I'm anxious about something, I can’t breathe properly, my heart starts beating too fast I could hear it. I feel butterflies in my stomach but they feel more like a zoo. I lose sleep completely, and I tremble like a wet puppy.
With each year passing by, I collect a new mental illness. I should add that to my resumé. Skills: collecting mental illnesses and seeing if they’ll kill me or not.
While waiting for my thoughts to cool down and/or shut the fuck up completely, I read a book called Overcoming Anxiety by Hellen Kennerley. It was pretty good as it explained to me that although my anxiety is bad, it’s not as bad as some people have it. It’s manageable with the right tools.
I wonder if any one of you has had a similar experience, If you did, would you be open to talking about it? I would like to know how other people feel regarding their anxiety.
Please remember that I'm not a professional and that I shouldn’t self-diagnose, but I’m just telling you exactly what I go through. I don’t know if this happens to some of you but I know that it’s not normal and that I should seek help.
PS: The illustrations were made by my talented friend Mizus. Check out his work on Instagram.
Until next time, worry less xx!
Also check: The 12 Stages Of A Depressive Episode
