Anxiety

Imagine that you're on your own in the house, quietly reading one evening. Then you hear a loud shattering noise. What's the first thing that comes into your mind?

If you're me the first thing is often the worse possibility. I'd imagine that someone's broken in and they're going to find me and kill me. Rationally I know that it's crazy, but I can't help but feel the surge of emotion and fear from my initial irrational response. I panic about under-cooking food, so time cooking things to the minute from the times on the packet. I worry that whenever my parents get in a car they're going to die in a horrible accident. I have to hold onto the rail when I go down the stairs in my house because I feel that if I don't then I'll fall and break my neck. Those are my most common anxieties.

A few years ago, I was diagnosed as having a condition referred to as "generalised anxiety disorder" (GAD). I was very fortunate to have a GP who took me seriously and didn't just fob me off as a stressed out final year undergraduate. At that time I was in a bad state, I felt sick from the permanent lump in my throat pretty much from when I woke up to when I went to sleep and the feeling of impending doom hanging over me terrified me. It was a particularly bad bout of anxiety, but I've felt this undercurrent of fear and lack of control for years.

This might sound like just stress, but taken to extremes. What distinguishes GAD from stress is that you suffer this more days than not for long periods of time. It's a condition which can be very hard to explain to anyone and even now I do feel like I've failed as a human when I admit that I'm struggling on some days.

I am a lot better than I used to be thanks to a combination of the support of friends, the university counselling service and some work in trying to realign negative thoughts into more helpful ones. I do still have days when I struggle to face the world, I can feel the lump in my throat making me feel like I can't breathe. It's different to a panic attack, more of a low level feeling of dread that I try to ignore. Sometimes when I feel like this I don't want people to look at me, because if they see me they'll see through me and know that I'm struggling. They'll know that I've failed.

I've written this post because it helps me to feel better if I write my thoughts down, it makes them feel more manageable. If anyone is reading this and recognises themselves in this, tell someone you trust how you feel, because it is so true that sharing a problem helps you start to solve it.