Today’s Mood Ingredients: Worried, Stressed, Exhausted, ANXIOUS.

This is probably my most personal post yet & I’m hoping I actually hit “publish” before deleting the whole thing. I don’t know about you, but over the past decade or so, I’ve been hearing much more about “anxiety” than I ever have before, or maybe I’ve just gotten older and have had way more experience with it than I’d like. Most of us use the word “anxious” as a substitute for “nervous,” & although they have many overlaps, trust me when I say they’re completely different things. I was nervous before launching my own company, I am anxious all the time.

I’ve always been a relatively confident and logical human being. Yes, it’s possible that I’m more emotional than most & feel things very intensely, but I could always rationalize and understand situations without suddenly feeling like my world was crumbling. Over time however, I’ve realized that I started developing a real anxiety issue. I can attribute this to situations from my childhood & failed relationships & starting medical school and quitting medical school, and a plethora of other events that could cause anyone minor anxiety, but for me, it has ballooned into an unmanageable situation causing dysfunction and deflation. Add those events to the life of an already introverted, hyper self-aware, super-emotional, over-imaginative pessimist & there is only disaster.

Lately, I’ve started worrying about things that have only the most miniscule chance in hell of happening, but I worry about them constantly. My parents’ health woes took a huge toll on me & now I stalk them like a little creepy shadow daughter. The idea is that if I am always there with the people I worry about, then I can control the situation and in turn, the scary thing I fear will not occur. This is not logical because I have not yet been cloned (& I don’t think anyone who knows me would even allow that for the sake of their own sanity) & I obviously cannot be everywhere at once. This fact alone causes me great anguish because lack of control over something I feel deeply about is something that drives me completely nutty (currently, I’m only partially nutty). The lack of control over my negative thoughts (please see header image above..that’s literally me in cartoon form) sends me into an anxiety spiral that I usually need my inhaler to get out of. What’s also fun is that an anxiety attack can mimic symptoms of a heart attack & I usually end up sweating & short of breath, with chest pain & tingling limbs; a fantastic thing to watch in a notorious hypochondriac (someone should really take me on the road as a traveling one-woman emotional circus, might as well cash in on myself).

The problem with anxiety is that it’s sometimes overlooked & treated as though it’s a minor issue that an individual who suffers from it can get past by just changing their thoughts. “Just think positive! Control it! Count to 10!” Hello friends, if changing thoughts & inner processes were that simple, who out there wouldn’t be a perpetually happy, content, self-assured person!? I don’t even know that the worst-case scenario thought is coming before it’s already onto catastrophic proportions-case scenario! It’s an agonizing & literally physically and mentally exhausting condition when it gets too far (a la moi) & even more so when the individual refuses to ask for help and believes that they can sift through their irrational concerns on their own because that’s what they’ve always done (again, a la moi), because then there is an internal battle of why won’t this go away like it always has & will this get worse if I don’t explain it to someone else out there? I could go on & on about the stigma of such disorders that is out there, but honestly, you can just Google that and get more articulate & thorough information out there than I could provide for you. I’m not the biggest fan of therapy or drugs (I know that’s rich coming from an ex-medical student with a psychology major/sociology minor, but..sorry?), but it’s not because of any stigma. I’m an advocate of all of the above..for everyone else. I’m not a talker, I’m a thinker & the idea of having to go through my life story & delve into my past with someone who knows nothing about me is less comforting than it is terrifying. And the idea of them giving me a houseful of Xanax is even worse. But recently, even I have had to admit to the fact that something has to be done for me, & more importantly, it has to be done by me. The 7 years of insomnia, the daily “what ifs,” the negative terror-thought cycle, the improbable scenarios, the sudden dread at nightfall, and the immense need to control situations and people would be beautiful traits written for a character in reel life, but they don’t belong in my real life (but in case anyone in the industry is reading this, I can totally play myself if you decide to bring that character to life; Oscars, here I come!). 😛

What I can say is that I know that I’m not alone. I’m upset about that because I wish no one had to suffer through the constant crippling & paralysis that severe anxiety has on one’s day/goals/social life/entire life, but I’ve finally understood & come to terms with the fact that it can be managed. What we all can do & should do is be people who support one another, empathize with one another, & understand each other to the best of our abilities (this is true whether you suffer from it or not, btw).

In the words of Bastille, “But if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like nothing changed at all? And if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like you’ve been here before? How am I gonna be an optimist about this?” The new & hopeful words of my inner self are just beginning to form an answer..I am gonna be an optimist about this. I have a fabulous life to live.

P.S. If you suffer from anxiety, there are apparently a million resources out there, check ’em out here.

Today’s Interlude(s): “Don’t Let Me Get Me,” Pink & “Happy,” Pharrell Williams (kind of a before & after thing)