Are they looking at me? Yes, but why? Is my hair alright? Is it the way I’m sitting? Am I in the wrong class? No, it’s written in the calendar, room 105, I’m in the right class but then why is everyone staring at me? They are still looking. Now they are laughing. They are definitely talking about me. I knew, coming here was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come. What do I do now? I feel so helpless, how do I get out of this?
This is what feels like to have anxiety on a daily basis. Imagining the worst in every situation, even when everything is normal around you. Anxiety is a thief, which steals the goodness from every situation. It robs you of the privilege of having a normal life. Even normal everyday situations such as buying grocery, asking for directions, replying to a message can seem like an overwhelming experience, dictating each and every decision you make. Forget about making big decisions such as ‘What job to take up’? even making small decisions such as ‘Where to eat’? seem like an overwhelming experience. Even trying to sleep is a tiring experience every night.
You go to bed, lie down and a thought pops up. You say to yourself, ‘It’s okay, just one thought, I can take care of this.’ Then another pops up and you’re like, ‘Not a problem, just one more’, then one more pops up, then another and then, they just keep filling up your head and before you know, in a matter of a few minutes there’s a million things running through your head. Your mind has gone in to an overdrive. You find yourself tossing and turning on the bed, trying to silence the voices in your head, going through each conversation you had in the day, trying to make sense to yourself, worrying about not living life to the fullest, wondering if you’ll ever be enough not for others but for yourself? And before you know, hours have passed by and you’re still wide awake. Ultimately you get so tired from all the thinking that you can’t think anymore and finally fall asleep.
Living with anxiety feels like living with this unwanted visitor who came and never left. It’s always by your side but only you can feel it’s presence. Silently lurking in the corner of your mind waiting for that opportunity to remind you how you’re not good enough. The what ifs, the insecurities, the doubts, the want to control everything are what your world revolves around all the time. You’re never at peace with yourself, there’s always something you’re thinking about. The innate desire of wanting things to turn out perfectly is so much that you give up even before starting. But there are also times when you feel it’s finally gone, only to find out later it’s still there by your side. These moments are so few and fleeting that you wish you could hold on to them forever.
Add to this the occasional or frequent (varying from person to person) panic attacks and everyday seems like a battle with no end in sight.
Panic attacks are worse because they come unannounced and each time you get one, it’s a horrifying experience. It could last for a few minutes or for hours. And since there are no symptoms or signs of a panic attack, you find yourself in a helpless situation every time it hits you.
You could be driving or out with your friends, enjoying, laughing, having fun, when suddenly you find yourself gasping for breath. At first, you try to ignore it, knowing what it is but within a few seconds you find the whole air sucked out of you, making you pay attention to it. Not wanting to divert attention to yourself, as it will intensify the attack, you look for a quiet place to be alone. Once you’re alone, you find yourself sweating, trying to take deep breaths to get as much oxygen into your lungs as possible, with your heart beating out of your chest. With a billion things running through your mind, you try to reason with yourself by saying things such as, ‘It has happened before, don’t panic, you can get through this’, ‘You’re not going to die, it’s just a panic attack’. But it doesn’t matter if this is your 1st or 10th attack, each time it feels new, thus making you feel helpless each time it occurs. You may try to distract yourself by calling up a loved one or listening to your favourite song but at that point of time nothing works and you have to simply go through that experience, each time it happens. And just as it came unannounced it goes away on its own. Suddenly, you find your heart beat getting back to normal, you feel the oxygen in your lungs, your thoughts start to clear out and you start feeling normal again. What makes the experience even more worse is, most of the times you don’t know what triggered it? Sometimes you look back and find a trigger and other times there simply isn’t one.
Amlan Kamal, a Sports Management student at Deakin University recalls his experience. ‘I don’t know what triggered it. I was smoking, when suddenly I got this sharp pain in the chest and couldn’t breathe at all. This wasn’t my first time, so, I knew this was a panic attack and not a heart attack and like always I thought it would subside in 10-15 minutes. But this time it lasted for 30 minutes, my longest till date. I wanted to cry but simply couldn’t, so, I sat down on a bench, waiting for it to pass away’.
Once the panic attack goes away, you want to someone to talk to or be there with you but you can’t talk to anyone about it because no one understands what you just went through.
Neha Mohanty, a 2nd year sociology student from India tells us how she can’t talk to people around her, even to her closest friends about it. She says, ‘I tried talking to my best-friend about it but got the same reaction which everyone else has towards anxiety’, which is, ‘I needed to relax and go out more often and stop thinking so much. So, I stopped talking to her about it after that, instead I talk to the counselor at my college’. It’s surprising how people closest to you don’t understand what you’re going through but a random stranger does.
This is a common problem, which a lot of people with anxiety face, not having anyone to talk to. And even when you try to talk to someone about it, they just don’t understand what you’re going through. There’s also this social stigma attached with mental illnesses like anxiety making this even more difficult to talk about.
As Uday Dayal a copywriter at FCB Ulka, Delhi points out. He says, ‘There’s the worry of what he/she might think? They are going to think I’m crazy if I tell them the things I worry about daily, which no one even cares about. Things such as when a co-worker shares his lunch with me, thoughts of, ‘Should I take a bite or more’?, ‘Do I have to share my lunch with him tomorrow’?, ‘What if he doesn’t like my food’?, start filling up my mind. I can’t silence the voices in my head’.
There are millions of people around the world like Uday suffering from anxiety. As Beyondblue’s (a non-profit organization in Australia working towards issues related to mental disorders) website https://www.beyondblue.org.au/ describes, around 2 million people suffer from anxiety in Australia. It’s a common disease and one in four people will experience anxiety at some point in their life. Despite this, the lack of knowledge, the social stigma attached to it and the misconceptions which people have towards anxiety are some of the reasons, so many people suffer in silence. What is required is making people aware of what anxiety really is and what can be done to cope with it. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, it’s not something you have to fight alone. There are plenty of options ranging from therapy, meditation to medication, which have proven to be effective but it depends from person to person. For some therapy might work and for some medication or a combination of all the three above. So, it’s important to try out a few options to know what actually works for you. There’s help out there, you just need to take the first step. It’s a battle you have to fight alone, but others can help you get through it.
At the end of the day it’s your mind and you’re the only one who can steer it in the right direction.
