I suffer from some pretty severe anxiety issues. I say severe not necessarily in terms of intensity of said anxiety, I wouldn’t even know how to gauge that, but rather in terms of how much it impacts (or I let it impact) my life (I am even stopping after every couple of words and just staring at the screen, because the thought of putting this out there for people to see is just…yeah…but I know this is something I need to do). On some level it is always just looming overhead, and it really has a tendency to make its presence known more fully in the least opportune and least desirable moments, which of course then in turn only causes it to grow and before long I am just trapped in a nifty little downward spiral.
I get told the same thing over and over: I need to recognize my inherent value, my self-worth. Anxiety is a response to the future, a fear of the potential, so they say to recognize that the things we have anxiety over aren’t going to change who we are; we remain fundamentally the same person and that is something to be proud of. Now my problem is that I just feel like that’s a load of crap. The things I have anxiety over (including anxiety itself) can change us, they can define us, but I see where they are going. It’s an attempt to undermine the value we give into our fears, to make them less daunting, and to put the value back into ourselves. But as hard as I try, I can’t seem to do that. My actions and my anxieties have consequences, maybe not as dire as they are in my head, but they do, and I don’t know how to take that power away from them. I don’t know why this is, if it’s because of how pathetic I see myself as sometimes (which is largely influenced by my sense of my anxiety), if it is because I am too fixated on this and overcoming it, if there is something truly wrong with the actual physical make up of my brain, or for some other reason that I am not taking the time to list out here or hasn’t occurred to me.
And part of me just wants to get it over with, end all of this shit, tell the truth, but no one would understand. I want to just get out and go, just be alone, call them up and tell them the whole truth, tell them everything. But I can’t, because the truth changes people and the way they look at you. And I can’t do that to them even though what's going on only effects my life. I won’t. I doubt they’d believe me anyway.
Listen here Nick, my name is Karn. Im pretty sure I don't know you, nor do you know me. But according to facebook we have some 122 friends in common and we both attended Drew University, at some point anyway. So your status update popped up in my news feed and I clicked it. Little did I know I had been permitted access to your personal journal.
ReplyDeleteSo here is my response to your bravery*, yes bravery. Anxiety is a very, very, common disorder. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world deal with it everyday, and thousands of doctors will treat it differently (because individual is inherently diff.) Admitting to having anxiety issues is the first step of many. This semi-public forum is a fantastic way of doing it as well.
My point: I know A LOT of my friends, (for lack of a better word)-suffer, from this as well, I know some of them write down a lot of their feelings as a coping method. Im going to definitely suggest writing blogs to them. The last thing i want to leave you with is that, you're right, about everything you said. And I wish you the best of fucking luck possible, you seem like a great guy, don't let your mind tell you otherwise.