Anxiety and Me. Me and anxiety. It's strange seeing it written like that as for a long time, it was me vs. anxiety. However Nadiya's
Anxiety and Me programme has given me new perspective on something I thought I knew everything about. I've been living with it long enough! Sometimes in my life, it was Anxiety with a capital letter as it felt like another being, a thing separate from me trying to take over. Sometimes anxiety felt like a permanent part of me, lurking in the background. But it's something that's always there, no matter how much a handle I have on it. The trick is not to treat it as a battle, not to be a victim suffering from it and not to look for a cure. It will always be anxiety and me.
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| Anxiety makes you feel crazy, you're not |
This post has been prompted by watching Nadiya's programme, but it's not about her as a person, famous as the winner of
The Great British Bake Off (GBBO), or about her work. I'm not going to go through reviewing everything she's done on
Bake Off and beyond. Nadiya Hussain is an incredible person. I will get that out the way. I admire her. I loved her on
GBBO. I have seen all she has done since or have it recorded to watch later. I had to call this post partly The Chronicles of Nadiya,
as one of the first programmes she did after
GBBO had that title and I thought it was genius. I hope she was the one to come up with it. I'm here to write about her most recent programme about anxiety.
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| Anxiety gives you tunnel vision |
While I am not writing this post as a salutatory tribute to Nadiya Hussain, it will be salutatory as she has done incredible things all while living with crippling anxiety. It started when she was at school and despite all that, she has had an arranged marriage, fallen in love, had three children, was a contestant on a major TV show in
Bake Off, won it, done numerous TV programmes and travelled the world. If you haven't seen
Anxiety and Me, watch it:
https://t.co/br19tfDwdq. It'll only take an hour of your life and there's still time left to watch it, but not long.
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| You are not alone |
The reason I want you to watch it is it will give you an insight into what my life is like, at least sometimes. Nadiya is living my life of 10 or so years ago. It's shown me how far I've come, how much of an impact it had on all areas of my life and how strong I was back then, though I felt myself weak at the time and still do to some extent. It has also shown me things I didn't notice I do that are related to my anxiety; I've decided to own it as it will always be a part of me and because everyone's experience of anxiety is different.
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| Anxiety can make everything feel a bit much |
I knew I had to be in the right mind, the right state and the right moment to watch it. I was right! There were moments where I felt uncomfortable, because of what was being shown and described, but also due to the revelations I was having. Watching
Anxiety and Me did make me feel anxious at times as well. For some who aren't as far along in their recovery, it should come with a trigger warning, especially when Nadiya describes her symptoms and the bullying she went through.
It took me a while to write this as I didn't know what to focus on. Should I dwell on the similarities and differences between our experiences of anxiety? Should I cover the symptoms, the background or both? Should I talk about how I got through it and Nadiya's therapies? Each would be helpful and the more we talk about it, the more commonplace it will seem, allowing us to get past the stigma. Anxiety is a personal thing and everyone's experience is different, but there are commonalities.
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| Anxiety is not obvious to everyone else |
The internet is great for the symptoms: try the
NHS,
Mind and
Anxiety UK. I've written posts about the
physical effects and
history of therapies. But there is varying help on the internet and no self-help cure. A professional must be consulted, using a combination of methods. Locals to Cambridgeshire can get help by self-referring to the NHS's
CPFT service, which was the breakthrough for me.
The first step is talking to someone about it, whether it's a family member, colleague, friend or a stranger if that's easier. If you've been living with anxiety for some time, been through therapy, medication and other methods, but you're still struggling like Nadiya, enough hasn't been done. It's hard when you're tired, but continue to force the issue. Anxiety isn't a battle, but getting help can be.
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| The spiralling thoughts of anxiety |
What is important is that people like Nadiya sharing their stories help others, not only in terms of recognising their own mental health issues, and encouraging them to get help, but also showing how much you can achieve despite the difficulties. It's truly inspirational.
The programme and Nadiya are proof that mental health issues aren't down to weakness, they show strength. There's strength in living with anxiety and still continuing to live your life, hold down a job and maintain relationships.
Repeat it. Anxiety isn't weakness. Living with anxiety takes strength that many can't even imagine.
In the dark times, that makes for a great mantra.
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| What I do when having a panic attack |
N.B. All the images in this post are copyright free taken from Unsplash and Pixabay. They are my favourites when I did a simple search for anxiety, but there are some terrible and downright shocking ones out there, so many stereotypes and tropes!
