Coping With Anxiety

I have lived most of my life with a generalized and social anxiety disorder because of a traumatic experience in my childhood.

Growing up I had panic attacks almost daily, and the good days were the ones I spent too tired to be anxious. Obviously as I grew, I learned to live with the irrational fear that everyone was looking at me and talking about me, and that I would fail at everything I tried.

There are more obvious solutions that we see many people talk about like; taking deep breaths, spending time outside, doing something you love, and spending time with friends and family.

Yet there are many ways that anxiety influences our body’s health and wellbeing. Many of the problems that I personally have are not really talked about. Despite the many people that do have this disorder.

These are the ways in which being in a constant state of fight or flight has caused me health issues that are not so common:

• It affects my blood pressure and causes me to have poor circulation overall.

• Creates an imbalance in my hormones that throws off my menstrual cycle and gives me acne.

• Disturbs my digestive system giving me frequent stomach aches.

• Causes my muscles to be tense most of the time which causes me more fatigue and the inability to sit still without shaking slightly.

• Unexplained soreness throughout my body.

• An out of body experience known as, derealization, triggered when my mind cannot handle the stress anymore.

• Complications with my vestibular function (which controls my balance) causing me to have poor equilibrium.

With all that being said, there is a few things that I have found help to alleviate these:

• Taking supplemental hormones through birth control and various teas.

• Eating more protein and fiber to minimize the discomfort I could have.

• Making time to exercise and stretch out thoroughly to improve my circulation and relax my muscles.

• Even though there is no real solution to the random pain, using heating packs and soaking in Epsom salt relieves the pain faster.

• Dealing with derealization is a little trickier because the only thing there is to do is wait until it passes, so I have to be patient with myself.

• My equilibrium is currently one of the biggest issues in my life, physically I help myself by leaning on everything and anything to catch myself from falling, but really what helps is understanding that tripping and falling over doesn’t make me less than

Everything I achieved, I've done for the most part alone because for a lot of my life, I was made to feel as though I was wrong for having these experiences.

“Don’t be so selfish, it’s just a trip to the store. Who cares how many people are there?”

“Don’t get in your head about it, it's just a school project.”

“How could you be sore when you haven’t done anything?”

I spend most of my time deciding if it’s worth explaining and validating my own feelings to family members and peers who don’t also have anxiety. Even though in the last few years there have been more efforts to shine a light on mental health and all kinds of psychological disorders, there are still plenty of people out there that view all of these as a sign of personal failure.

I’ve been made to feel these problems are something for me to ignore and deal with internally instead of crying about it to anyone within earshot. It's something I should be ashamed of because it’s “not normal” to feel the way I do. When in fact the opposite is true, and everyone experiences feelings of anxiety. Of course, not everyone has a disorder for it, but its unfortunately not uncommon.

I have gone over what I feel are more uncommon bodily issues that can arise with anxiety, but there is the obvious and hard to ignore psychological aspects of these dilemmas.

When I’m having unexplained pain in various parts of my body, areas of my face are covered in acne, I fall over standing still, and I zone out instead of focusing...

It's hard not to assume it's all my fault.

Explaining what you feel to someone else is hard, but it's even harder when you yourself don’t understand it. Logically I know no one’s staring at me when I go out in public, and I know that I can and will succeed at whatever I want to do.

But I still can’t help the creeping feeling inside my chest that pushes down on me at the most inconvenient times. Sometimes I don’t even know I’m anxious until my stomach hurts or my hands start to shake.

Spending time with loved ones and taking deep breaths is super important, but it means nothing if you aren’t also forgiving of yourself. I have to remind myself while I’m in the middle of a panic attack that my body is trying to protect me, and all I can do is convince it that there is nothing wrong.

I have to be kind to myself and remember that I am not the enemy, so there is no reason to be cruel if I mess up on an exam or I miss read a social situation. I must give myself time to adjust if something startles me and needing that time even when others don’t doesn’t make me less than.

If I were still living as though I have to fight my anxiety, then I would still have no way to stop my panic attacks, and I would still breakdown every time I have to speak in front of a class. What’s worse is I would still be horribly embarrassed every time I lost my balance because I would be convinced it only happened since I somehow allowed it to.

Slowing down and sitting with my emotions to find the reasons something makes me anxious is a necessary daily routine, so I can learn to better navigate the situation. I need to check in on myself and give myself some grace with breaks and snacks even if I feel that I should keep working as long as others are.

Having any complications with our health requires our patience and kindness above all others. Ultimately the best way we can aid in our health and wellness is to be understanding of our own shortcomings. My understanding of mine is all that’s keeping me afloat at times.