Dear Anxiety, you’re a pain in the Ass!

Imagine being pinned down to the floor with 50lbs weights on your chest. As you gasp for air you realize you can’t move…and what’s worst the floor beneath you begins to crack, threatening to drop you on the ground below - not only are you having trouble breathing but you also have a fear of falling. You break out in a sweat and your hands are trembling, all the while you’re not completely sure why any of it is happening. This is what it’s like to have a Panic Attack brought on by anxiety. For anyone who has experienced a panic attack the symptoms can somewhat mirror that of a heart attack, except for the fact it’s a lot less deadly. “You feel like you’re going to die, but you won’t. This is your brain playing games with you. You decide what happens next. I’ve learned how to deep-breathe my way out of an attack” (quote by, author: Judson Brewer, MD, PhD, Unwinding Anxiety).

Because it’s easy to be negative!

Negativity has plagued my mind for many years because it’s easier to think negative about a situation before considering a positive outcome. We all heard the old saying, “Don’t expect much from people, so when they do let you down, it won’t come as a surprise.” These words have deeply provoked my way of thinking ever since I could remember. Constant negative thinking is linked to causing stress - which can trigger an anxiety attack. I’m not an expert on all things concerning anxiety disorders, but for someone who occasionally gets their ‘ass kicked’ by anxiety, I’ve experienced enough to know a lot about the subject without having to heavily depend on the research results of Google. Maintaining positive thinking is beneficial to a person’s mental health, which is quite frequently linked to the physical. Negative minded people get a bad rap for their pessimism, although negativity is often used as a defense mechanism to protect oneself from reality.

Impacting the social aspect

Anxiety has impacted life in such a way that every decision I make must pass the grueling process of starting out as just a thought, to rethink my thoughts, to over-analyze my thinking procedures. “You have trouble making decisions and often doubt the choices you do make” (by author: Nick Trenton, Stop Overthinking). This passage breathes truth to life. I could live for 100 years, and even then, I’ll always doubt the choices I make. Anxiety determines choices, for example, the level of anxiety often dictates the type of people I choose to avoid. Throw me amidst of a party where others have different political views, social dispositions, and lifestyles that aren’t aligned with my core values, and I’ll shut down so fast that attendees at the party would look at me as if I was a different person entirely. This is not done on purpose, instead it’s the brain protecting itself from those who are viewed as potentially harmful to an uneasy state of mind - if you suffer from anxiety, you know more than anything that your emotions become unpredictable, and when this happens it’s best to isolate yourself from others. In the grand scheme of things people aren’t understanding at all, even if some have the capacity to show empathy, they’re more likely to pretend they don’t, just so they can ignore (the signs) of your potential meltdown. People are not equipped to handle those who have mental and or social disorders.

It gets better… “hmmm, okay”

In honestly, I would like to believe it gets better, that with anxiety disorder all you need is a good pep talk from a therapist, a mouth full of medication and a kiss goodnight. But I’m a realist. I see things for what they are, not for what I wish they could be or should be. I believe that when you develop a disorder it just doesn’t disappear in due time, but instead it becomes more manageable over time. I always assumed that as I got older, eventually it gets better “But, I was wrong.” I find truth in the fact that as most of us get older we become more intolerable of others - and with an anxiety disorder this can be problematic (especially in a chaotic mixed environment). So, is it safe to say that with aging come the difficulties of handling stress? I don’t know for sure, but aging itself is stressful enough. It doesn’t take much to dial the ‘anxiety meter’ up to 10, considering life is a hassle every day! From dealing with an obnoxious boss, to being belittled by a client or customer, to getting cut off in traffic, to the annoying neighbor next door, to the loss of income, to the relentlessness of creditors…life contributes to the overwhelming complexities of anxiety.