Blog#2 Anxiety
Hello Everyone! So Sorry for the delay. Thank you for your patience. Several months back I formed an idea for a series of blog postings that consist of real life stories told from the minds of individuals struggling with various forms of emotional and mental illness. I have had several of you step up bravely and show your willingness to tell your story in hopes that someone else may be able to relate and find some form of relief or healing for their own similar struggle. This entry will be the first of hopefully many stories told through the eyes of those just like you–just like us, who are engaged in a private battle that at times consumes all of their available energy. When fighting these battles, it can at times feel like a win just to make it back through the day, climb in bed, and do it all over again the following day. I hope that these stories will shed light on the experiences many of us privately encounter.
This story addresses one of the most common struggles faced in the modern era: Anxiety. There are not many of us who are unfamiliar with the term. Many of us would say that it is something we experience daily. Though many of us have shared experiences, we often keep them to ourselves due to fear of judgement or ridicule. Despite the common experience, many of you may be wondering, “What is anxiety exactly?” Most of us know it when we feel it, (boy do we!) but might struggle to put it into words. Before we dive into the story, let’s discuss some basic characteristics involved and how we professionals identify it when it gets to the level of a disorder. Anxiety is defined as a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome. It comes in varying intensities and is often accompanied by other bodily symptoms such as muscle tension, upset stomach, rapid heart rate and breathing, difficulty concentrating, etc. The anxiety can be directed toward something specific or a general feeling of overall uneasiness and fear. Anxiety can also be a symptom of another mental health disorder such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a personality disorder, etc. Anxiety can be an accompanying modifier to a base diagnosis, or as a stand-alone diagnosis.
The first thing I want to make crystal clear is that most everyone with normal brain chemistry will experience anxiety at some point in their life. That does mean that a person qualifies for a disorder. Those of us in the field learned this distinction early on when coming out of an abnormal psychology class thinking we had every disorder in the book. A mental condition becomes a disorder when significantly disturbs or “disorders” a person’s daily functioning for a specific period of time depending on the condition.
According the DSM V, (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, 5th edition) symptoms must be present consistently for six months in order for a diagnosis of Generalized Anxiety Disorder to be present. This is the most known form of the disorder, but there are many variations of anxiety that take on different forms for different reason. Again, just because anxiety symptoms are present does not mean you have an anxiety disorder. If you are concerned that you might have a disorder, seek a mental health professional. The purpose of this blog is not to focus on the exhaustive diagnostic criteria, but to help you understand the clinical definition and how that translates to in a real life experience.
Now that we have established what the mental health profession defines as anxiety, we begin the personal account. We will call this person, Johnny. Johnny has been a client for some time and agreed to discuss his experience over the past six months to help conceptualize how intense the experience of anxiety can be. For those interested, his diagnosis is Anxiety Disorder, Unspecified F41.9 (rule out PTSD) Here is his story:
I'm no expert, but I know I face anxiety every day. It's something that many people face. Some acknowledge it and speak about it. Others don't. In hopes that someone will read this and feel a bit less alone in this struggle, I will attempt to share in detail my experiences with anxiety—how I got through it and how I continue to deal with it.
I can think of roughly three or four instances of what I would call anxiety attacks. It took me a moment to dig each of them out of my brain because I unconsciously choose not to think about them as much as I can. As an introvert, I deal with some level of social anxiety and other anxieties daily, but these few instances were the most memorable for me.
The first instance happened while I was spending the night over at a friend's house in high school. It was me and a few other guys who I hadn't really been good friends with for very long. We had been galivanting around the streets that night. We threw Magnolia cones at each other. I fell off a skateboard and bruised my shoulder. Someone ran the stop sign and nearly hit us in front of the house, and a police officer shortly followed to ask us which way they went.
Long story short, there were a lot of new and scary things that happened that night. I thought nothing of it until I settled down for bed (or couch) that night. It felt like the world was caving in on me. I was facing certain doom. I didn't, or couldn't, ask myself where that doom was coming from. I just knew it was coming.
Maybe a glass of water would help. But I don't want to get up to ask where the glasses are. And that wouldn't help me anyway. I was going to die anyway.
It seemed like hours churned by, and sometime around 4 or 5 in the morning, I willed myself to call my mom. I told the guys I had an early dentist appointment, and she (thankfully) came to pick me up. When I got back home, I still felt like I had somehow escaped death, but at least I had two groggy parents to talk to about it. I can't imagine what that kind of situation is like for people in different family situations.
The next instance I recall resulted from a seemingly much simpler situation, but it was arguably even scarier for me in the moment. I had just gotten home from family day at my college. I had been drinking out of a disposable water bottle for most of the day, and when I got down to the last swig sitting at home on the couch, I discovered a pinhole in the lid. My immediate thought was that someone had put something in my drink. I had just consumed all of it.
That feeling of extreme unknown, extreme powerlessness sent me to all I can describe as a bad place. I assumed, once again, I was about to die, and this time I had an even better reason to which I could attach that fear. For several minutes at a time I just sat there, just trying to figure out if I were about to die or not. I decided to take a shower. Maybe it would take my mind off it—make me relax. That shower probably lasted 45 seconds. The shower only gave me a more isolated place for my brain to spiral. At this point, I can't even recall what happened after I got out of the shower. The only thing I can tell you for certain is that I did not die. I also tend to check my water bottle lids. That is probably an irrational fear, but it's better than another anxiety attack.
The most recent incident that I would call an anxiety attack was a bit different from the first two, and I'm still somewhat reconciling what occurred. I had been outside shooting a basketball one day. When I came inside, my vision was a bit blurred, but I assumed it was from looking into the sun while outside. Then, as we were eating dinner, I started to feel like I was a consciousness outside my own body. I began having trouble constructing sentences, and I started having tingling sensations in one of my arms and on one side of my mouth. At that point, I thought I was having a stroke.
The trip to the hospital was where many of the anxious thoughts began developing. I started panicking and thinking about how bad it was that we didn't live closer to a decent hospital. I was wondering if I would be able to make it there, and I was wondering if I was even a good enough judge to determine whether I would be good enough to make it there.
After several hours in the hospital and a number of tests, the doctors could not find anything wrong with me, and the best conclusion they could come up with was simply that I was dehydrated. It explained most if not all of the symptoms. Even with that being said, my medical anxieties from the event carried over for several weeks. Every day felt like I was barely clinging to life and I had to know where the nearest hospital was or who would help me if something like that were to happen again.
After this last instance, I finally decided it was time to seek out some form of therapy. I felt like my anxiety was too out of control, and I needed some guidance outside of my own family's advice to deal with it.
Through therapy, I have learned several different methods to deal with anxiety when it arises. I've learned about pressure points that activate your parasympathetic nervous system to counter the fight-or-flight response my body goes through when anxiety is at its peak. I've learned that oftentimes, when there is anxiety present, my brain tries to attach to different thoughts and reasoning. The reasoning doesn't necessarily cause anxiety. It just adds fuel to an already smoldering fire.
Since I've learned these tricks, my experience is still not perfect, but I feel that when an attack arises, I'm much better equipped to get myself through it.
First of all, I would like to thank “Johnny” for being brave and willing to share intimate details of his story. It is very difficult to openly disclose experiences with issues of mental health due to prior stigma. I am happy with the direction in which mental health awareness is taking us, but we have a long way to go.
I hope that “Johnny’s” story was relatable to someone reading this and that we can all start to realize that we are not alone. We all battle something and all it takes is a few brave individuals to come forward and share their story. If you would like to share your story confidentially, please contact me at claritycounseling.wga@gmail.com. The more experiences we can openly share, the more we can bring comfort and awareness to others suffering.
I hope there will be less of a gap between now and the next story, but please continue to follow us for new content. Thank you,“Johnny” for your vulnerability and braveness and that you all for taking the time to give time and respect to his story. Stay tuned.
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