Lets Talk About Anxiety.

Being an anxious person sucks. You worry about the smallest things and work yourself up into such a fit that by the time whatever it was you were worried about is over, you're exhausted. I want to talk about anxiety because its yet another 'disorder' that I feel has been swept under the proverbial rug.

 Its the elephant in the room. The 'If we don't talk about it, it doesn't exist' approach. And its bullshit. Anxiety is something you feel all over, its not just a state of mind that you can snap out of, its a sensation and an unpleasant one at that. It prevents you from enjoying the little things because you're too busy worrying about the little things.

I've found that because I worry about everything anyway, its difficult to separate the truly worrying things and the things that don't matter so much. And this can fuck you up royally. You can watch whole parts of your life fall away (school, friends, family etc.) while you sit worrying about how you're going to find the time to write this summer.

And its not just the short term things that people with anxiety worry about either, like everyone we worry about the future.

Because at some point I'll graduate into the 'real world' where I'll have to convince people I've never met and who have never met me that I'm capable and responsible enough to hold a place in their establishment and oh my god what if I get a job in a supermarket and I'm forced to talk to people and I actually have to tell them things and oh shit I almost forgot that I don't even know how to drive yet and I can't learn to drive what if I crash into someone!? What if someone crashes into me!? 

...Yeah that's me on a good day too. My point is anxiety is something that we all go through, whether its over what seems like the biggest problem or the smallest and most insignificant (depends on the perspective).

I personally am a walking ball of anxiety. My anxiety comes from a crushingly low sense of self esteem and self worth but there are so many reasons as to why people have anxiety. Sometimes people suffer with it during rough times in their life and for other people its just something they have to deal with always.

 And here's a tip for the lucky folks who don't break out in a cold sweat at the thought of buying an item using the till with the checkout person and having to make and maintain eye contact. WE KNOW IT'S IRRATIONAL, THAT'S WHY ITS ANXIETY! Mental illness and other social disorders are not rational and when they take a hold of you, you're not rational either. I'm always self aware enough to realise that my fears of failure and socialisation or my fears of failure during socialising are irrational.

 There is a big difference between knowing and being able to control it with that knowledge. Its not enough, it rarely is. And telling someone who suffers from anxiety of any kind that they are behaving irrationally is like giving a bicycle to a duck and expecting it to be able to ride it (weird analogy I know).

Like with most things now, there are so many different types of anxiety and many different reasons why it occurs AND many different methods for coping with it. Everything from therapy to herbal remedies to antidepressants.

The ironic thing about anxiety? We live in a society that faces in on itself. Most of the time we are so concerned about what other people think about us and how we look, we don't even have the time to judge other people. But like I said, to a person with anxiety, it matters not. We know nobody cares about our freudian slip but that's not going to prevent us from obsessing over it anyway.

To people who know and love someone with anxiety, all you can do is have patience and understanding (harder than it sounds I know) but it a little bit of understanding and the reassurance that we're not entirely out of our minds, goes a hell of a long way.

And to my fellow anxious folk, take a deep breath, nobody heard the embarrassingly loud ad that just scared you half to death :P

Be Kind to people and have a little patience (hint hint)

Love The Girl In Blue
xoxo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMmX9G8JP38