Part of the battle is recognising what it is

For a pretty smart person, I can be so dense sometimes.

Over the years I have had a number of clients advise that they are struggling with anxiety and depression. I understood depression as I have had that on and off over the years.

I thought I understood anxiety, but really I had no idea.

Hindsight being 20/20 and all, it turns out that I have been struggling with anxiety for nearly 20 years and I had no idea.

It started when I was to travel to Melbourne to visit family. It was just a little feeling in my gut that I pushed aside and got on with my trip. After a few times of doing this, and the feeling getting stronger each time, I asked a friend who was a counsellor for advice. After asking a few clarifying questions she cut to the chase and suggested I find something to do on the trip that I really wanted to do, to make the trip something to look forward to rather than dread.

This worked for many, many years. However pushing though when something doesn’t want to isn’t the best solution, as eventually the parts of me that have agency will feel disregarded and disrespected.

This came to a head when my mother became ill before she passed away. I wasn’t able to visit her before she passed and then wasn’t able to get on the plane to go to the funeral.

It wasn’t until some time later when reading someone’s description of how they feel during an anxiety attack that I realised this is what was happening to me.

Oh, that isn’t a nice thing to experience.

I don’t experience a full-blown attack. Mine are somewhat stealthy, and it turns out that I’ve developed a good self-soothing technique. Unfortunately this technique means I don’t realise that it is happening and what is at the heart of the problem, so if it isn’t addressed it makes my life difficult.

I essentially I’ve had two types of attacks. The ones I had associated with travelling to Melbourne and the ones that have increasingly become worse and relate to my job. The work related ones have seen me drop out for a few days over the past couple of years. This last attack has lasted for over a month. In the past week I’ve started to see the pattern behind this and how work is a trigger.

The thought occurred to me recently that instead of thinking my experience is minor and really feel silly to say, ‘I suffer from anxiety’, for the first time I took a moment to feel concern for those who have anxiety way worse than me. Boy, they must be so strong to battle with that all the time.

This was a turning point for me. Before I’d minimise my feelings because my feelings were not important. There is a whole lot more on this topic, which I may come back to some other time.

My anxiety is really a strong feeling of ‘I don’t want to’. I can feel dizzy, nauseous, jittery, muddled thinking, heart racing, hearing the pulse in my head, and a general not able to do anything. One time I couldn’t even work out what to wear. It is the way my body told me ‘sorry, you’re not fit to go outside and see other people.’

Last night I was lying in bed, thinking about what I had to do today and the increasing anxiety felt like I was gently rocking/rolling from side to side (I wasn’t) and an increasing sense of nausea. Kind of like you may if you have had too much to drink and the room spins. I had to climb out of bed to break the pattern, and I stopped thinking about what I had to do today so I could get to sleep.

I found this passage from the article “3 Ways To Explain Your Anxiety To Someone Who Doesn’t Get It” to be so true:

My anxiety isn’t rational — it’s not just an amplified expression of what I’m worried about. It’s a misfiring of my brain’s fight-or-flight mechanisms, and while I can deploy a ton of coping methods when it flares up, I’m not in charge of what sets it off. I can’t always see it coming — I often don’t know I’m having a bad anxiety episode until I’m already deeply freaking out.

This excerpt mentions the stress responses of flight or fight, but doesn’t mention freeze, as explained in Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma by Peter A. Levine. I have been doing a lot of freezing lately.

I’m not an expert on anxiety. But I have started to do Focusing sessions with my teacher and mentors to work on this – how it is today and what is behind it. Just working through the reason it has manifested in my job will not help resolve it. I want to find a way to be with something in me that just wants to crawl back into bed and put the covers over my head. I want to stop being frozen and embrace what I’m capable of creating in my life.

To this end I have decided to take the next couple of months off work – that will be tough financially, but so necessary to create the space to heal.