the existence of anxiety
No one talked about anxiety openly until I hit my twenties. It was “taboo.” A nonverbal message commenced throughout society: “You aren’t a functioning human, you aren’t ‘attractive,’ and you don’t have the capacity to fit in, if you have any mental health problems.” People knew to hide any sight of anxiety or any symptoms that might make people wonder if they had any mental health concerns.
I have dealt with anxiety for most of my life, almost as long as I could remember. I had to hide it for a long time for the reasons above. That was not easy to do, especially throughout my high school years.
It started as a queasy feeling in my stomach. It would ache and ache, I never knew what to do with it. I was a child, and I felt I couldn’t tell my mom. It was a strange feeling for a child to have had. That queasy feeling evolved into shortness of breath. In a severe case, a “freezing” of both mental and physical mechanisms. Now a lifetime full of anxiety, it can be felt throughout my entire psyche at times. It’s definitely not constant, but it does happen a decent amount. Sometimes when I’m not fully aware. The thing about anxiety is - you can’t always tell where it stems from - but sometimes you can. Sometimes it’s specific. It’s mental and physical. The daunting cloud throbbing and racing inside your head while feeling some utter strangeness inside your body. One of the worst feelings ever is admitting an embarrassing reason for your anxiety to someone else.
Anxiety is a real doozy. It can really ruin your fun day, your daily plans, your pleasant mood, or intended good times with friends or family. You never entirely know how or when it’s going to affect you. You can predict it, but you can only truly try your best to predict its onset. It’s never a guarantee - and that’s okay. Sometimes guarantees are overrated anyway. Sometimes it’s nice not to have to predict something and just trust the flow of life.
However, when anxiety hits, you want prediction. You want more knowns than unknowns. It eases the level of it. It eases the mental spirals and the seemingly endless worry and the physical side effects (those are the worst part of it all). No matter how much you try to stay away from thoughts that bring it about, sometimes it’s hard not to give in.
It’s hard to hold yourself up as an anxious person. I’ve gotten used to it, in some ways much more than others. Also, I’m learning that I’ve often “dealt with things” alone for the most part. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Lately I’ve been writing and taking meds to manage it. That seems to be okay with me at the moment. It’s okay to be an anxious person. My own anxiety and all its complexities are only truly familiar to me, and only me.
If someone openly tells you they deal with anxiety, or that they are currently anxious about something, it’s a sign of trust. It’s also a sign that our society is finally becoming more aware that it’s a human trait. Anxiety is a human thing. All of us have some sort of anxiety, but it can affect people in many different ways. In smaller ways, larger ways, specific ways, chronic ways, “in-the-background” ways, high-functioning ways, even in ways unnoticeable to yourself, or in other possible ways I’m not naming at this moment.
My point is, mental health is complex. None of it is tangible, and there’s likely someone in your life trying to make sense of it all - for themselves or for someone else.