Anxiety: My Past, Present and Future

Wear Your Label

Writing is therapy for me, so if any of you are interested, please read on. Please share this with anyone you feel may benefit from it. If it helps just one person, me, then it's done its job. I've always felt I've been too honest for my own good. Well, I think being honest will do me good right now. I'm going to tell you things I have never told my own family, they may have guessed, but I have never actually voiced these things. I have written about my anxiety before, in this blog too, especially a post for Mental Health Awareness Month. But I didn't go into detail. I want to go into detail now.

You may think you know what it feels like to suffer from anxiety and panic attacks, but you don't, not truly. You've seen lists of symptoms and may have had first hand accounts, but if you've never personally experienced it before, then you can't know. I'm going to make you understand, put yourself in my shoes, show you what it truly means to suffer from anxiety. I'm going to tell it like it is.

Why am I writing about it now? Especially as my last blog post on the subject was so positive; I overly optimistically called it Looking Forward to the Future. I got complacent. I thought I was over this thing. The big holiday I recently went on, that my last blog post was about? It made me think I had turned a corner, that I was capable of more than I ever thought. I am, but while the holiday combined numbers 2 and 3 on my top 5 causes of anxiety, it wasn't the top cause. I decided to tackle the top cause and failed, miserably. I decided to try and date and maybe find my first ever boyfriend. Yes, I am 32. Infer what you will. I went on a date, well a kind of date, the first time in many years. I coped better than I expected. But I had to leave early, though I didn't want to, because I was on the verge of a panic attack. I don't know what's going to happen next, but I'm determined to try and find another date. I battled for a time, wanting to take the easy way out, just give up. But if I do, I can see a life of loneliness ahead of me and no one wants that. There's got to be someone out there for me, so I'm optimistic.

How it feels:

Everyone experiences anxiety differently. There are common symptoms of course, but they can happen in different orders, at different levels and for different amounts of time. So I can only tell you about my own experiences. Many of my panic attacks come out of nowhere, or seemingly so. However they haven’t. They’ve been creeping up on me, sometimes minutes, days or even weeks in advance; the longest game of Grandmother’s footsteps ever. Anxiety is the most patient of life destroyers. It lies in wait, gradually wearing you down by increments. Chipping away at your confidence, at the walls you’ve built up, at your defence mechanisms until it reveals a vulnerability that it can exploit. It can be a crack that it prises open, or it blasts its way through. For such an unobtrusive thing, anxiety tends to have a flair for the dramatic.

Obviously, the unconscious has been working overdrive, preparing for this moment. Thinking isn’t an active thing, it works stealthily in the background. Thinking isn’t a bad thing. But even the best of thoughts, when thought often enough, obsessively enough, can become bad; you just get stuck in a cycle. I can’t say how many times I have woken up actually already in the middle of a panic attack. Waking up is jarring at the best of times, but waking up sweating profusely with a pounding heart and a cramping stomach is deeply unsettling. I have to talk the anxiety through with someone or write down everything it could be. Bringing the anxiety into the light, naming it, defining it and discovering the cause is the way to beat it. It’s the emotional equivalent of Rumpelstiltskin. This is hard if it’s the middle of the night and you’re still half asleep; I got a light for my bed mainly just in case, so I didn’t have to get out of bed. I have selfishly woken people up before because I couldn’t bear to deal with it alone, or couldn’t no matter how hard I tried. The middle of the night is my worst time. It’s dark; the seemingly infinite blackness of night has a way of heightening everything. All that is familiar suddenly becomes alien. There is no comfort in the night if you’ve woken up and you’re alone. You’re not sure what’s real and what’s not. Your mind is confused with sleep. However annoyingly you’re alert and ready because your body has gone into fight or flight mode. You may not need to think, but it’s like you’re navigating through fog. Once I’ve analysed the anxiety to the point of exhaustion, I hit on the right reason. I know, because I instantly feel worse and get more panicky. It’s as if my body doesn’t want me to get better; it’s a last ditch defence mechanism. However when I start to address it, I feel better. It’s been a long road to even get there and then a longer one before I can get back to normal though.

There’s a difference between an anxiety attack and a panic attack. Panic attacks are more severe and anxiety attacks can lead to panic attacks. Anxiety is the devil on your shoulder, constantly dogging you, digging at you, voicing your darkest thoughts, always saying “what if” and “if only”, dwelling on past mistakes, bringing up old grudges. Anxiety is paranoia, it’s your conscience and your darkest thoughts rolled into one. Anxiety is the fear of the unknown, seemingly a good thing, trying to anticipate what happens next, readying you for the future. Anxiety is not your friend. Nerves can be channelled and turned into an ally. Anxiety is nervousness that’s too far gone. There’s no turning it back. It can only be beaten. Anxiety is a bully, voicing the worst about you, setting you apart from everyone else; bullies target what makes their victims different. Anxiety narrows your view of the world. It makes you feel as if you can do no right, as if the world is better off without you.

The Breakfast Club

You focus so much on yourself and your own experiences that you become self-centred and selfish and boring. Yet that’s all you want to know, you don’t have the energy for anyone else’s life; you become a hermit. You feel suffocated and alone. That loneliness comes from the fear that no one understands you, that no one has ever felt the way you do. That voice becomes the only thing that gets you, which is almost definitely a fallacy. In the midst of a crowd, you have never felt so alone. You’re stuck, trapped inside your own head. You go round and round in circles, constantly searching for a way out, which is exhausting. You get bored of yourself so much you start hating yourself. Then you start to get depressed, uninterested in what you once saw as fascinating. Your work suffers as you can’t concentrate. Your mind can never settle on anything for long, apart from the obsessive thoughts of course. You focus on your emotional crutches, obsessive behaviour that borders on OCD, such as mine which is doing things in threes. You have a particular book (usually chicklit or children's books), song (Gotta Get Thru This by Daniel Bedingfield), film (Notting Hill used to work) or TV programme (Gilmore Girls got me through a very dark time) that you rely on, watch, read or listen to over and over again so that it starts to lose its efficacy. This makes you panic all the more. Panic is anxiety that has lost sight of itself. You’ve gone too many times round the hamster wheel. There is no light left in the dark.

Anxiety symptoms

There are physical symptoms too. Your shoulders ache as you hunch over, looking down at the floor instead of up at the world. Your stomach is often upset because it contracts so much. You feel tired and heavy, as if the weight of the world is on your shoulders, usually because you tense your muscles. You wake up feeling exactly the same as the night before because you don’t sleep deeply enough, which can also cause vivid dreams. You feel light-headed because you’re not breathing properly and get out of breath more easily. There are all these symptoms and more. There’s the fact you can't settle on anything for very long, the sweating, self-harm, mine was pinching so bad my legs were covered in bruises. Symptoms trigger symptoms. You are irritable and your temperature changes as you’re not sleeping well, and often not eating well either. You either don’t eat enough or comfort eat. You get sugar cravings, so you gorge on sweets and then your skin breaks out. You stop living and start existing.

However when a panic attack starts, these symptoms get worse. Not just the physical symptoms, but the mental ones too. The walls are down and chaos ensues. You lose all sense of control. Nothing seems right anymore. You feel a sense of doom, as if not just your world, but the whole world is coming to an end, as if nothing good can happen ever again. You get annoyed that no one else can see it, which alienates you all the more. Pins and needles start as you hyperventilate, which makes you feel dizzy and faint. Your equilibrium goes so you feel off kilter. Your limbs start to seize up and your stomach starts churning, this is because your muscles are tense. It’s the bodily equivalent of trying to find a hole to swallow you up. Then you start to think you’re ill which only makes the panic worse. Every thought you have plays out to the worst possible scenario: headaches become brain tumours, nausea becomes swine flu, and pain becomes a heart attack. You feel you can’t breathe at all, even though you can as what you’re doing is breathing too much. Your heart was fluttering before, now it’s pounding so you can hear it in your ears. It rocks your body with its power. Your chest gets tighter, as if you’re being squeezed and even though you’re generally fit and healthy, you think your heart is failing. It’s not failing, it’s flailing in panic, in a fight or flight reflex as it thinks it’s under attack. Ironically, it's the one doing the attacking. The constriction gets too much and you take off all that is tight: jewellery, belts, underwear. You have forgotten the world around you and start living inside your head, no one can get through to you. You hear people trying to help, if you’re lucky and you’re not alone, or unlucky, whichever way you want to have it. You feel their touch, their concern, their threats, but nothing makes any impact. They’ve faded into the background. You can’t bear to be alone but you don't want to be touched. No one can help. You can even provoke worse symptoms such as diarrhoea and vomiting, purely psychosomatic and mind over matter.

Generally, they don’t last. You have to ride it out. Though in my experience they can and did, last for days. Afterwards, you will be hungover, the most exhausted you have ever felt in your life, emotionally and physically. This is due to the adrenalin comedown. You can deal with that. What you can’t deal with is the shame. You will feel weak. You will wonder why this has happened to you. You will feel abnormal. You will become concerned that there is something wrong with you because other people are dealing with things better. Think: no one ever does anything better, just differently. There is something wrong with you, but it’s not anything that you’ve done wrong, or anything wrong with your character.

What you need to do is flip it, twist it and spin it for your own purposes. Stop living in the past as it makes you depressed. Stop living in the future as it makes you anxious. Live for the present, be in the moment (Lao Tzu). Before the anxiety truly takes hold, recognise the early symptoms, mine was the pins and needles, and simply breathe: in through your nose, hold and then out through your mouth. Focus on it. Feel the air filling you up. Take energy from it. Take note of the world around you, distract yourself, something, anything that takes your mind off how you’re feeling. If it’s a situation, be kind to yourself and leave. Then take stock. Avoidance isn’t a good idea in the long-term; you can’t avoid things forever and the symptoms will be ten times worse if you do avoid it. Anxiety doesn’t like being ignored, it only makes it mad and it encourages it. It’s a bully, so it wants a reaction, no matter how small. If it gets one, it spurs it on. Distraction may work in the short term, but it is only a band aid over a gash; it won’t hold, you need to stitch yourself back together.

What’s left will be a scar, a reminder, something you will never forget. But it’s also a mark of a survivor, a reminder that you’re not weak, that you’re actually stronger than you knew. It’s also a reminder to be kinder to yourself; you learn from it. Mental illness is not a sign of weakness, it’s a sign that you’ve been strong for far too long. It will change you. It may be a cliché, but it’s only a cliché because it’s true; what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. Other people are a great solace, but you can’t rely on them. Even those who love you unconditionally will lose their patience. You need to get back in tune with your body, that’s why taking a shower or a bath, or doing exercise is the best way of getting over it. Become more self-aware in a good way. Tell someone. You may think it’s obvious you’re having a panic attack, but unless you’re sweating profusely, going to the toilet every five minutes or physically ill, trust me, no one has noticed apart from those who know you best and they don’t care. Those who mind don’t matter and those that matter don’t mind (Bernard Baruch/Dr. Seuss). Mental illness, anxiety, can be genetic, you can be predisposed towards it, or it can be in response to something. You can get back in control, but like an alcoholic, once you’ve suffered with mental health problems, it’ll always be there, waiting for you to trip up, no matter how far you think you’ve come and how long you’ve been free of it. Don't get complacent like I did.

My history
My first panic attack and therefore first recognisable symptom of anxiety was when I was 16 and watching Apollo 13. I was a fearful child, but they were usual fears: dogs, wasps, the dark, nothing out of the ordinary. This was different. I started to hyperventilate when the astronauts’ oxygen supply was running out; I thought I couldn’t breathe. I’ve always had an overactive imagination, but this was the first time it had caused noticeable physical symptoms, other than nightmares of course. I got so bad that my Dad threatened to take me to hospital, which shocked me so much I stopped. It started with pins and needles in my nose, then my fingers started to tingle and I felt as if my wrists were restrained, as if I was wearing handcuffs. My muscles tensed up, including my stomach, so my tummy started to churn and I felt nauseous. As the hyperventilation increased, my head started to swim and I felt incredibly dizzy, so I got off the sofa where I was sitting and hunched on the floor. I couldn’t bear to be restricted, so I took off my bra, from under my clothes, and my jewellery. My Dad tried to straighten my limbs out, but they started to spasm as they were so tense. He rubbed them in an attempt to get them back to normal. I couldn’t stand up. Afterwards I had to rush to the toilet, but not to throw up. None of us knew that this would be just the start. My family has always been supportive and mostly non-judgemental, which is difficult as mental illness can be seen as attention-seeking behaviour and by its very nature is self-centred and sometimes selfish. But they don’t understand, not really. By the way, never ask anyone suffering from mental illness, "are you okay?" Instead ask, "what can I do to help?" They may not have an answer for you, but instead of making them feel worse about themselves, making it harder for them as they are simply trying to hold themselves together, they know you're there if they need you. When trying to help, don't tell them to stop thinking, that's totally not helpful. Don't say it's irrational because believe me, they already know. My family tries their best. That's all anyone can do really, just be there.

The moment

The most public panic attack I had was while watching The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, when the black riders were sniffing out the hobbits under the tree, I thought I was going to die. Not in the now hyperbolic sense which teenagers state on social media, but I literally felt as if I would stop living. I had to leave the cinema and once I was out, I was fine, but I couldn’t bring myself to go back in there. My friend said I was claustrophobic as an easy answer to explain my behaviour. The plus side was it made me read the books before seeing the next film in the series and I was fine watching The Two Towers, even though it was a much darker, more intense and violent film.

The worst panic attack I had was when I was home alone. By now, my anxiety had become so bad I was having several panic attacks a day, caused by the littlest things, even a TV advert or a random comment could set one off. I was having trouble eating, fighting through what I called the ‘upchuck reflex’ to get anything down. In a funny yet desperately unfunny incident, one of my friends had to force feed me a chocolate chip muffin to get me to eat; I was shaking so bad and feeling so cold, even though it was Summer, she had to do something. It was affecting my friendships, and due to the mental fallout, it would ruin at least two of them, it stopped me from embarking on my first relationship and would continue to do so with the poor guy for years to come, or anyone for that matter. I’ve thrown up on a date before, in front of them. The anticipation of another date was so bad, I had to leave it early. So my latest foray into romance was a big improvement!

Charlie Brown

When I woke up that day, the day of the worst panic attack, it was too early and yet my family had already left the house and from then on, it was panic central. I was supposed to be going to work. I tried to watch Notting Hill, which was my go-to film at the time and one of my supposedly fool proof distraction techniques. It didn’t work. I phoned a friend, but she couldn’t help with just her disembodied voice. I phoned the out of hours NHS number, the lady tried to help. I continually phoned my parents and they finally cut me off as they were trying to drive my brother to university and I was going to cause an accident. I somehow got up and ready, somehow late despite waking up way too early. I was moving slowly as my legs had seized up, I was so tired and wasn’t breathing properly. I made my slow way to the bus stop as I couldn’t walk properly and phoned work as early as I could, saying I’d be late, probably making up an excuse. I got to work in the end, but had to get off one bus and wait for the next where luckily I met someone I knew who was very talkative, diverting enough to be distracting and didn’t need much input from me. I did a day’s work, even working alone for a time, absolutely fine.

In the time since then, I have had darker episodes, once contemplating suicide standing next to a busy road, thinking how easy it would be just to step out. In hindsight, I probably wouldn’t have died unless a big truck or at least a bus was going past just at the right moment. I also relied too much on alcohol to get over social anxiety and to drown the feelings. That didn't end well and it was lucky I never got into drugs or smoking. I gave it up after my third hangover and barely touch alcohol now. Over the years, I have still suffered with anxiety, but there were varying degrees of it, where it ruled my life or quietly simmered in the background, biding its time. I deferred university a year, ostensibly to earn money, but actually to regain my confidence and get on top of the anxiety. I got a decent degree, though presentations made the anxiety rear its ugly head again, worsening my grade for the piece as my breathing affected my delivery. I held down several jobs, found my vocation in life, learned to drive, passing the test 5^th time as my anxiety was too much; I only passed because I thought I failed from the off like I did the 4^th time and relaxed.

I got to know this bedroom very well, in all lights

By far my worst time with anxiety was Bruges. I had just finished my second degree distance learning, studying when I wasn’t at my full-time job, working damn hard to get my dissertation in on time, handing it in a few months later than I wanted and then we went on holiday. It was my nephew’s birthday and we’d decided to visit them in Germany and then go on to Bruges for a mini break. I should have seen it coming as I was on edge on the run up to the holiday, I wasn’t eating or sleeping well and I was covered in bruises from where I had been pinching myself. I wanted to believe it was just the stress from finishing my studies, but it wasn’t. I went from being spectacularly busy to doing basically nothing. The symptoms got worse; I couldn’t really sleep at all, waking my brother up who was sharing a room with me to help me through it and the panic attacks that eventually came, or reading trying to distract myself, but finally that stopped working altogether which made me panic even more as I’d never been unable to read before. I wasn’t eating properly and finally when we got to Bruges, I stopped eating altogether; at the height of it all, you couldn’t see the skin on my legs it was so covered in bruises from the pinching. We did see a bit of Bruges, a few of the sights, but it was hell for all of us as everyone was tired and I wouldn’t be left alone so they had to drag me around everywhere and someone had to be with me at all times. At one point, my Dad went and got me some medication in the middle of the night, but despite having nothing in my stomach, barely even water, I just threw the pill straight back up again. I pawed at my Mum and hurt her. She bruises easily, but the hideous bruise I made on her arm haunts me still. They were long long nights, I always feel better when the sun comes up. I started to improve on the journey home, which was very uncomfortable as we had driven; the journey through the channel tunnel was one of the worst experiences even with the relief we were finally going home. My thoughts were running wild, full of fears of the things that could delay us or even prevent us getting home altogether. Luckily there was little traffic and everything went well.

Those few days felt like an eternity and I was either having a panic attack all day every day or constant panic attacks one after another. The doctors say the body can’t sustain it, but mine somehow did. They always say panic attacks will subside, but mine never did until I got home. When I got back, I was so tired and malnourished, I moved back in with my parents and they took me straight to the doctor, who signed me off work for 10 days, told me I needed to start eating again or else he’d have to intervene, but he wasn’t duly concerned yet; I didn’t really lose that much weight which was the bizarre thing. He’s the one who first prescribed me diazepam. Through the TLC from my parents, gentle coaxing with my favourite foods and some of the deepest sleep I’ve ever known, I was well enough to go back to work. My boss was very understanding, which I’m extremely grateful for and allowed me time off to go to counselling; it just meant leaving a little early once a week. There was no stigma attached, only the emphasis that I laid on it.

Grey's Anatomy

After trying all sorts of different therapies: hypnotherapy (couldn’t relax enough), meditation (the room would spin when I closed my eyes and I couldn’t find a good position (see below), neurofeedback (answered some questions), standard counselling (answered more questions), mindfulness (which I continue to try and practice), I still suffer with mental illness, especially anxiety. There were several triggers, some expected, some unexpected and they all ganged up on me, arriving in my life all at once. Some of them were actually supposedly positive things, some were a mixture of both positive and negative and some were decidedly negative. They all acted together. However there was one factor I did not know about, that could have been building up for years before, or started when the anxiety hit, I will never know. I've written about this before in a previous blog post, but I'll summarise it here. Around the same time as the anxiety began, along with the panic attacks and eating disorder, I started to have attacks of vertigo. Not the fear of heights, vertigo is a symptom of acrophobia, the fear of heights: it’s when the room/world starts spinning. At first I thought it was simple dizziness, but the room doesn’t spin when you’re dizzy, that’s vertigo. Then I simply put it down to the anxiety. But it progressed from once in a blue moon to appearing more regularly, getting more violent and lasting longer, anywhere from 12-48 hours. It incapacitated me. I had to go through several diagnoses before I got the right one, pushing for a specialist: labyrinthitis (the attacks didn’t last long enough), migraines, menieres (no hearing loss) and finally they said I have vestibular damage. After tests, it was found I only had 23% left of my right balance organ, so I’d been permanently off kilter for almost half my lifetime. This disorder can make my anxiety worse, or the anxiety can make it worse, especially with the breathing. However knowing hasn’t cured my anxiety, it helps, but my body has learned the behaviour: now ironically any symptom of anxiety can trigger anxiety or even a panic attack, from nausea or an unsettled stomach to increased heart rate. For instance, I had to leave Centre Court of Wimbledon because I was so excited to be there, my heart rate reached such a level my body thought I was having an anxiety attack and almost lead me to actually having one!

From the brilliant film Ever After

The last time before this anxiety attack, I managed to stave off a full scale panic attack. It was after a bout of illness, which again could have been psychosomatic, caused by anxiety because I experienced an anxiety attack then. I was about to go on the biggest holiday of my life, literally the biggest as it was for the longest time and the furthest away. I've described it in a blog post. This obviously caused a great deal of anticipation, my biggest problem, stress and anxiety. I had got into thinking it was a bad idea, that I couldn’t do it and fears of ruining the holiday like I did in Bruges reared their ugly heads. I had cyclical thoughts and talked them through with my brother. I quite wisely went to the doctor, explained the situation and he gave me some diazepam. On the day we were leaving, I had to take one pill to even get to the car. I had to drive as well, only a short way, but still. Then I had to take one on the first plane and finally when we got there to even get through the night, I didn’t really sleep that first night. I kept them with me at all times during the holiday, but never needed another pill, my proudest achievement. Ashamed at the weakness I’d showed, I threw myself into the holiday and my brother said I was his highlight of the whole holiday, even above seeing his first seahorse.

The holiday taught me that I'm stronger than I realise. But it also taught me that I will never be free of the anxiety. I know I will have to live with anxiety forever, but I know how to help myself and being indoors, not exercising, not looking after myself, just watching TV and lying in bed, no matter how tempting, is only going to make matters worse. Be kind to yourself, but also challenge yourself. That's the key to living with any mental illness. I just hope I can take my own advice.