As you can see by the title, this blog post is obviously going to be super upbeat! Well I'll try and make it as light-hearted as I can. I can honestly say that I have suffered from both anxiety and depression, particularly anxiety, since I was about 14. Now it seems like everyone these days, particularly girls because they're more open to admit it, suffers from either or both of these conditions, so a lot of people understand what it is like to have or know someone who has them. However, some people have no idea why these pansies are complaining all the time, so I thought I'd draw on my experience of the conditions.
*Disclaimer: I
have been clinically diagnosed with anxiety, but not depression although I know from experience that I have symptoms of it. I do
not take medication towards either of these and have deliberately sought no
counselling*
Anxiety and depression often go hand in hand (perhaps not as joyfully as the image that evokes), so after having anxiety for pretty much all of my teenage years, I found that I was suffering from depression from about the age of 19. This coincided with me starting university and I still suffer from bouts of it almost 2 years later. In the beginning, I didn't recognise it as depression, I just thought of myself as lazy and homesick, but it definitely stemmed from there. I had moved to a new town and everyone seemed to be having fun and making friends, except me. I was sharing a house with people I didn't know (and ended up hating) who held loud house parties without inviting me. I wasn't coping.
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| Every day of my life?! |
This led to me having extremely low self-esteem and made me want to stay inside. This later progressed into me not wanting to even leave my bed some days. I would sleep all day and be awake all night. I'm not even sure what I did when I was awake, but I just tried to make the days pass as quickly as possible. I put minimal effort into what I did, because what's the point? The only thing that could bring me out of it was when I met up with friends or when I came home to see my family and was in familiar surroundings. This has eased now that I am studying a subject I have an interest in and have something to work towards. Unfortunately, it is very easy for me to hate myself and I need to be talked out of thinking the worst of a situation.
Anxiety is far, far easier for me to talk about because I have so many more years of experience with it. From its origins with panic attacks to the everyday freak-outs I get now, I think it's safe to say I have had every symptom under the sun. I started getting panic attacks when I was about 13 or 14, consisting of shivering, nausea, sweating, dizziness, tunnel vision and often led to throwing up. This stopped me from doing a lot of the usual things a young teenager can do; it often made me housebound. I gave up air cadets and often flaked out of meeting up with friends at the weekends because of, or in fear of a panic attack. This became a vicious cycle; if I knew I was going to do something, I would expect a panic attack, which of course brought one on.
My parents became worried about me, and took me to the doctors to see if anything could be done. Now I don't know which moron trained this doctor, but the first doctor's only advice was "just breathe". I mean, really? Breathing is the one thing keeping me alive, so I guess it's good general advice? He didn't even give me breathing techniques, "just breathe". So of course, we tried another doctor. By the way, I was sure at this point that I didn't want counselling as I thought it wouldn't be the right environment for me, it would probably bring on more panic attacks if anything.
The next doctor was far more helpful; she had printed out a load of different calming techniques, suggested herbal smells and lotions that were meant to be calming and prescribed me IBS tablets for the symptoms. While this worked for about 3 weeks, I soon associated the herbal smells with panic attacks, which started to induce the panic attacks, and I still think to this day that the IBS tablets damaged my digestive system. The breathing techniques work now and again. I think everything I was given could have worked, just not for me.
A weird technique someone suggested to me was to write down all my worries during the day and designate a time of day to worry about all of them. I don't think this makes much sense, as when you're panicking, it's usually about really trivial things and you usually aren't deliberately panicking about them. Also, if you could stop panicking, why would you then panic later on in the day? I can't imagine going "Oh, it's seven o'clock, time to worry about that time I waved at someone and then realised they weren't who I thought they were, and are actually a complete stranger." Maybe it works for some people?
In the end, I have accepted that I will never get over my anxiety, however I have worked out a few ways to combat it on my own. If I feel an activity is going to make me nervous, I wear two particular rings on different hands, and can anxiously twist them if I feel panicked. This stops me from picking my fingers to death. A good breathing technique I made up myself, but am sure is out there somewhere, is to breathe from the base of your stomach and as you exhale, imagine the twisting knotted feeling in the base of your stomach is being pushed out through the air you breathe out. Another is to try to numb your mind to the panic alarms going off in your head; try not to think about anything (easier said than done sometimes).
Finally, sometimes you need to just accept that you are panicking and just let yourself do so. Have a couple of minutes to yourself to let it all out and then when you are ready (you may never feel completely ready, but let's just say, when you can physically stand up and open the door) leave with a smile on your face. Alcohol is also great at easing panic, but that's not me recommending you medicate yourself with it! Just on a night out it's great to open you up to speaking to people you don't know and makes the conversation easier.
I don't really get major panic attacks like I used to anymore. I think that stopped when I started doing things out of my comfort zone, like I entered my school production and had to sing in front of a bunch of strangers. Also, having a sense of control is good; I don't really like other people driving me places, I much prefer to drive. Knowing you can leave somewhere at any time is also good. Being around people who know about your anxiety is also good: one time at work I had to go and take 5 minutes just to lock myself in the toilet and have a panic attack, but I let a manager know I had anxiety and needed a breather, and it was fine. The disorder isn't as stigmatised as people make it out to be, it's a perfectly accepted thing.
I'm going to end this here because just talking about panic attacks is bringing on one, and also this has gone on far too long! There will probably be a few follow up posts to this one anyway.
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