Anxiety: A Relatable Story

Let me start with a disclaimer: I am not a doctor or any sort of medical professional. However, what I am is a long-time sufferer with more experience than I’d like. I am not going to say “I have anxiety.” Because we all do in some shape or form. It’s a necessity for survival. It’s what drives our fight or flight mechanism. This would be like saying “I have blood.” Once you realise it’s always there, anxiety is about levels and managing those levels. I suffer because I quite often cannot manage those levels. I know there are countless others like me. I’m writing this because very often when I am in the midst of an anxiety storm I find myself seeking out other people like me (surely someone can understand what this feels like?!) And I do find these people. Very often at the end of an internet search, a random blog or a semi-drunken conversation with an old friend. Feeling alone is common when your anxiety levels are out of balance. Being alone doesn’t have to be. I hope you find some comfort in what I have to say. I wish you well.

My (Brief) Story

I’ll try to keep this short if I can. I’m in my mid thirties now and have been out of balance my whole life so I am conscious I don’t want to vomit my emotions onto the page. However, some of it is necessary. It will help some of you relate I’m sure. You can pour sawdust over the rest.

I didn’t always know how out of balance my levels were but I have come to learn it. The levels were always high. Too high. When I was twenty-one those levels were cranked up to eleven and the anxiety started to take over.

I went to university and studied Philosophy. And no, my sudden onset of panic was not the result of an existential crisis brought on by my new educational path. We had a number of lectures each week on subjects ranging from Human Nature to Critical Thinking to Philosophy & Politics. I hadn’t a fucking clue what was going on that first year. The lecturers were talking but none of the material was landing. What was more disheartening was looking around the room and seeing every other bastard nodding in agreement. “Who the fuck are they kidding?” I thought. “No one could understand this.” But they did. And they asked questions and engaged in long philosophical discussions with each other and the lecturers. They all seemed to love it. They seemed to be getting high off of it. Shit.

I wish I could talk to my younger self back then and say “Don’t worry. You’re young. If none of this stuff makes sense or you can’t be arsed learning it, go do something else.” But I can’t. And I certainly didn’t think that at the time. I panicked and I started comparing myself to everyone else. I sat in lecture halls and forced myself to listen. Did that work? What do you think? As I sat in those lecture halls I gradually became aware that my hands were constantly sweating. A lot. I had no clue as to why this happened but I had to keep wiping them dry on my trousers. I also noticed that I felt nauseous. But this was a different nauseous. I didn’t feel sick to my stomach. The best way I could describe it was I felt like I couldn’t control my stomach. Like at any moment I would be physically sick and I’d embarrass myself in front of everyone. I started skipping breakfast before morning lectures – if there is no food in my stomach I can’t be sick, right? I made sure to turn up late to lectures so I could perch myself right at the end of the row near the door once everyone else was seated. Easy access to leg it outside if I needed to.

Eventually and rather predictably this became unsustainable. Not eating meant the acid in my stomach had nothing to work on and my stomach just burned. I stopped going to lectures altogether. I lived with my three mates in a shit-hole student flat near the university so it was easy to blend in with all the other wasters living around me. I started picking up extra shifts instead in a shop I worked in part-time. But the same issues arose. I would constantly run off the shop floor to the bathroom thinking I was going to be sick. But I never was. I forced myself back onto the shop floor and the uncontrollable feeling would wash over me again. I asked for an extended period of time off which was granted. I went back to my parents house. “I’ll be safe here” I thought. I felt like I had retreated back to the womb. Back to safety. One day, sitting around the dinner table with my family I realised I couldn’t eat. I put my knife and fork down. The gnawing uncontrollable feeling in my stomach was back. It had followed me home to my parent’s house. What the fuck do I do now? I’ve nowhere else to go.

Getting Help but Needing More Help

My first step was going to the doctor. After all, this was a physical thing. My sweaty hands and my stomach issues. I told the doctor I found the physical symptoms really disruptive and they were making me depressed. They stopped me doing anything. He said: “I don’t think you’re depressed. I think you’re anxious.” I was confused at first. “I’m not nervous” I thought. “I’m fed up and sad that my body doesn’t want to listen to me anymore.” I didn’t tell him this. He was the expert, not me. He prescribed me Citalopram – a common drug to treat anxiety. I went away fairly happy. This tablet will stop the sweating. It will stop my stomach flip-flopping. I’m back in control. I’ll be able to finish studying and work again. I can enjoy my life again.

So did my life improve? I have to admit, it did a little. I did finish my degree and I began to really enjoy it towards the end. I also went back to work and seemingly was over the worst of it. Was I cured though? Fuck no. As I said earlier, anxiety is part of all of us. You can’t cure it like you can a cold. It doesn’t go away after a few pills. That was my lingering problem. I honestly believed that by taking Citalopram I was taking the Lemsip equivalent for anxiety. A few of these pills will knock the angst right out of me. As I got older, I began to notice the anxiety levels creeping back up again. I kept telling myself the pills would work. I just needed more. I went to the doctor and got my dose increased. One doctor even prescribed me beta-blockers too. Just for those moments when the panic gets too much. “Happy days” I thought. “I’m well stocked. Come at me anxiety, I’ve got enough ammo to defend myself. You don’t stand a chance.” What a load of bollocks.

One Louder

Fast forward a few years and I am sitting on the sofa enjoying a film with my pregnant wife. Bliss. This is the life. The most important things in life are right here. I’ve got a clear path ahead. First of all, I’m finishing this film. Then I’ll become a Dad. I can’t wait to have a baby. They are so cute and I can’t wait to have my own and to watch it grow and mould into a tiny human. I’ll be there every step of the way. Wait, every step? Yes, I can’t hand it back! Hmm, ok but my wife will be there too? Yes, but she will likely need significant recovery time so it’s on me for the first while. Ok, I’m sure the baby will understand. They don’t cry that much do they? And it is likely to only be because they are hungry or need changed? Actually, what if it is something else? Do I go to the hospital straight away or wait? What if I wait too long? What if the doctors think I’m a crazy parent who makes a big fuss out of nothing? What do I do then? Hello?

Those thoughts above seemed to happen all at once and in a split second. I didn’t really know it at the time but I felt it. I noticed that I couldn’t concentrate on the film we were watching. I was looking at the screen. There were people moving and apparently making noise. But I had no clue what they were saying. I then noticed my breathing. It had become a bit shorter than I was used to. Strange. So I started to take a couple of deep breaths to get it under control. Come on for fucks sake, regulate. It’s breathing after all, no effort required. But I was putting some solid effort in here. All this effort was making my chest tight. I got up to get a drink of water (there’s Oxygen in water after all isn’t there.) My legs felt wobbly and weak. I made it to the kitchen and poured water from the tap into a glass. I tried to drink it but my throat had closed over. I really tried to drink it but felt myself choking. I crumpled into a nearby chair. The tightness in my chest was getting worse and was freaking me out. I called out to my wife. “I think I’m having a heart attack or something.” She panicked not knowing what to do. Again, these are all physical symptoms. So what did I do? I rang the out of hours doctor. As soon as I described the symptoms he said: “Hang up. Ring 999 right away.” I did as he said. The operator on the phone said: “Don’t drink any more water as you might be sick. Take an aspirin if you have one. Please wait on the ambulance. It’s on it’s way.” I was fully panicking now. A cold fear had entered my veins and was moving all around my body. My wife was in tears thinking I was going to die. The ambulance arrived and the two paramedics brought me outside and into the back of the ambulance. They hooked me up to a few machines. I had an ECG done and all my vitals were taken. Everything was fine. They brought me to the hospital anyway just to be safe. After talking to the doctors there it became evident I had had a panic attack. My first one ever. What a relief, you might say. I didn’t. The biggest feeling I had was embarrassment. I couldn’t believe I had called an ambulance out to my house because I was a little nervous. That was how I honestly felt at the time. Since then, I have become better at recognising signs of a panic attack. I have been able to stop them worsening which I will explain shortly.

No More Levels

After the panic attack I still felt embarrassed any time I thought of it. I already had a story worked out in my head that I would tell people if they asked about the ambulance they saw outside my house. I’d tell them I had some sort of bad asthma attack. After all, I would sometimes get seasonal allergies so it would be easy to play on that a little. No one ever asked. But I still felt the shame and embarrassment. I couldn’t shake it. I wanted to run away from it and leave it behind. By this stage I was working in a bank. This was during the COVID-19 pandemic so I was working from home full-time. It was around October 2020 and the weather was shit in Ireland. Raining and grey all day every day. The novelty of working from home had long since worn off. I was fed up with it. I wanted to go outside somewhere it was sunny. I even started longing for the office again. I was thinking all this and cursing my current situation when I suddenly realised I had been on a work call for the last twenty minutes and had no fucking clue what the call was about or who was talking. I tried to concentrate on who was talking. “What did he say?” I thought. “Was that a question for me? Shit, I should listen a bit better here. Don’t want to get caught out.” I tried for the remainder of the call to engage mentally on what was going on. I was so scared I would be asked a question because I had no context as to what was going on. This was not a long call. But by the end I felt burnt out. I closed my laptop down and went into the bedroom and lay on the bed. I stared at the ceiling and felt a really familiar pang in my stomach. My wife came in and asked me what was wrong. That was it. I burst into tears. Up until that moment in my life I was not a very emotional person. I never cried. I hadn’t cried at my grandparent’s funerals and I was very close to them. But now…fuck. I cried like a baby. I cried like it was the only thing I knew how to do.

The precedent for the next few months had been set. Tears. And lots of them. Let me be clear, this was the absolute worst feeling I have ever felt. Every single morning I woke up and straight away I had two feelings shoot right to the forefront of my mind: fear and sadness. Once in my mind they worked their way through my whole body. I felt absolutely frightened. Of what, I had no idea. All I knew was something was out there and it scared the shit out of me. I didn’t want to leave my bed because at least here I was safe. If the fear subsided momentarily a tsunami of sadness would wash over me. This was when the tears would really crank up. My wife would be hugging me tightly and calming me down. Once calmed down I would start to talk again. But the sadness would come back. Almost like talking fed it. I would burst into tears and sob uncontrollably again. My parents and brothers would call to the house to check on me. I’d cry in front of them too. I’d keep telling them I don’t know why I am crying but I can’t stop.

This time I knew that I didn’t have a physical problem. Sure, it showed up sometimes as physical – I couldn’t really eat and my head was banging from crying so hard. This was something else. Inside my head. In my brain. I rang the doctor again but I really wasn’t holding out much hope. I am not sure I can increase my dose of Citalopram any higher. But this time something was different. It was a new doctor. “Do you know how Citalopram works?” he asked. “Um, well I guess it blocks some sort signal in my brain that controls anxiety?” I answered rather blankly. The doctor, I imagined, was shaking his head on the other side of the phone. “Not quite” he said. “Forgive the analogy, but imagine a giant grassy pitch. And it’s been raining heavily on this pitch all day. A gravel path cuts through the pitch and you need to get to the other side. So you start walking across the path. Now, as you get towards the middle of the path you notice that the rain has pooled heavily here. This part of the path is flooded with rain and muddy water. The gravel is nowhere to be seen under the muck. You don’t want to ruin your new shoes so you look to the side of the path and notice some grass that does not look as muddy or slippery as the rest. You walk across this grass and follow it for a while. Eventually you notice you can re-join the path and make it to the other side.” I was following the analogy but not really sure where he was going with it. “Look,” he said, “that pitch is like your mind. And the path is like a little neural pathway your mind is used to taking when dealing with anxiety. You know no other path so you keep going down that familiar one. When you become stuck you panic and feel like you have nowhere else to go. But you do. You can take another path, you can create a new neural pathway around this way of thinking. You have to create this new path though. Citalopram won’t do this. What it will do is prolong your time on the new path so that you become familiar with this alternative pathway. In other words, if you can get yourself somewhere mentally where you feel a bit more comfortable, dare I say it happier, then Citalopram will keep you there. But you need to get yourself there first. Then let the Citalopram do it’s job.” The penny was beginning to drop. I was sitting on my arse for years popping pills and wondering why nothing was changing and I was feeling worse. Now I realised it wasn’t as simple as that. I needed to do something first then the pills would kick in. They would keep me afloat. I just needed to find a rope to cling onto first.

A Bit of Knowledge Goes A Long Way

The doctor had told me the medical term for his analogy: Neuroplasticity. He said he didn’t want to throw that word at me straight away because it might confuse me. I was fascinated though. I went home and started googling and watching videos all about neuroplasticity. The general consensus seemed to be the same: the brain (or mind) can be moulded much like plastic can be. It can take different shapes. It can learn new ideas. Whenever we learn a new skill we create a new neural pathway in our mind. As we practice that skill the pathway becomes solidified and it can become “second nature” as we get used to it. You need to practice it though to keep the pathway open. Take something like speaking for example. As we learn to speak as a child those pathways are created. We speak every day and it becomes second nature. You don’t just forget how to speak (unless there is a case of trauma or injury.) The pathways are open and visited often by our minds.

What about a new skill? Imagine you decide you want to learn the piano. You sit down and stare at the black and white keys. You’ve no idea what they are. But you get some pointers from a professional teacher. They demonstrate that each key is a different note. Put those notes together and you have a chord. Play them individually and it is a scale. Combine all this and you can create a piece of music. “Great,” you say, “but how can I remember all this?” And your teacher will smugly tell you to practice. You do practice and some of it starts to make sense. You go back the following week and demonstrate your own knowledge. You have learned the name of some notes and can point them out. That neural pathway has now been created. A “piano pathway” if you will. Each time you sit down at the piano your mind crosses that path. As you begin to learn more complex chords and scales new more complex pathways are created. The more you practice the more these pathways are cemented in your mind. Soon, however, life takes over and you are too busy to practice. Weeks and months go by and your piano is gathering dust. One day your mate is over. “Play me something on the piano” he demands. You sit down and go to play something. Suddenly you realise you’ve no idea where to start. “Shit,” you say, “enough of this. Let’s go to the pub.” You see, without practice and regular visits down the piano pathway that particular neural path has weakened. Your mind is forgetting it and other pathways are being created in it’s place. If you had practiced long enough and hard enough then some of the pathways may have been solidified enough for you to serenade your mate with a bastardised version of Three Blind Mice. If you started practicing regularly again those pathways would reopen and become familiar again.

In parallel to my research I also began going to CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.) This was something my wife suggested. I was desperate so I went. This was another eye opener. My therapist was great. I know some people have bad experiences with therapy or are against it. But I can honestly say it is one of the best decisions I ever made. My therapist asked a fuck load of questions at the start. He said he needed to get to know me better and how my mind worked. He also said the learning for him will continue as the weeks go by. The more he understands me, the more he can help. In a nutshell, CBT highlights the link between our thoughts and our behaviours. A lot of it seemed basic at first but it was quite shocking how I had been ignoring the basics. For example, I was definitely freaking out about becoming a Dad. Subconsciously at first (the unknown fear and sadness aforementioned.) I had been asking a lot of “What If” questions: What if I can’t be a parent? What if something happens my baby or my wife? What if I fuck it all up and ruin the kid’s life? My therapist pointed out that my relationship with uncertainty was totally off. I was not comfortable with it at all. So what did I do? I scrambled around for answers to questions that hadn’t been asked. I tried to be prepared for everything. Every single fucking eventuality. And each eventuality was worse than the last until it ended up at some combination of doom, failure or death. When I didn’t get the answers I wanted (oh and I never did) I would look harder. So my mind was always on. This constant search was feeding the anxiety further. This was the “vicious circle” many people talk about. For example, if you feel very anxious you want nothing more than to not feel like this. So you try and find an answer to it, or worse, run away from it. When you do either of these you are only putting the feeling off temporarily. Whenever you don’t find the answer or you can’t outrun it anymore, it attacks again but this time it feels worse. You don’t like this enhanced feeling of anxiety so off you go again with your research or your emotion dodging marathon. This goes on ad infinitum. You’re fucked now. Unless you break the cycle. How do you break the cycle? Throw a spanner in the works. Do something totally different that will throw anxiety off your scent. Something it is not expecting. Create a new neural pathway.

Moving On

I apologise if my story above seemed a bit long-winded. I do think it is important to set the scene before I launch into anything else. I don’t want you thinking I’m just some random bloke off the street who is talking nonsense about some YouTube video he watched. I’ve really suffered. I still suffer. And I probably always will suffer to some degree. But the more I educate myself on anxiety, on me, on my relationship with anxiety, the more I learn to live with it and control the levels better. I want you to do the same if possible. Remember, you need anxiety. It has always been around. Cavemen needed to be on high-alert against predators or competing tribes. Every outsider was treated with extreme caution. If you were not on high-alert another tribe could take you out. Or you could end up as some tiger’s dinner. What would you do if a dog ran at you snarling and gnashing it’s teeth? Pet it? No, you’d run. Your anxiety would make sure of it. If you didn’t have your anxiety then I guess you’d be running up a hell of a bill for tetanus shots.

Acceptance

If you are an anxious person I don’t want you to fight it anymore. Trust me, fighting it is jumping head first into the vicious circle. If you fight it you are just prolonging your suffering. Think of a spring. You are squashing that spring with your finger. But eventually it is going to become too painful and you’ll let go. The spring will spring back with some force. Well, your anxiety will do the same. Acceptance is not easy at all. But it gets easier. Acceptance is not just saying “I have anxiety.” It is living with it and not fighting it. That means letting it have it’s way. Anxiety is a greedy bastard and it wants nothing more than for you to feed it avoidance and distractions. That greedy fuck will chow down on those until the cows come home. And with each bite it gets bigger, stronger and more controlling.

I know you want to tell the anxiety to fuck off but firstly, let it in. That fucking sucks I know. But if you are feeling anxious sit with it and let your body get used to it. Live that moment with the anxiety. If you feel your stomach churning or your vision blurring just let that happen. Your mind needs to know this is anxiety. It also needs to know the outcome. If you keep running away it will never understand how this anxiety story ends. Let the anxiety settle (however long that takes) and your mind will realise “Ok, this is how anxiety feels from start to finish.” It now knows there is an ending to feeling anxious. That new pathway has opened up in your mind. If you keep it open (through practice) you’ll not need to run. Your mind will get so used to those anxiety feelings that the initial shock of them with will wear off. Your mind will realise this is normal and will not feel the need to distract you. I was in the south of Spain recently and decided to go swimming in the Mediterranean sea. Now this was in February. The temperature outside was about 20 degrees Celsius. As a bald Irishman this was absolutely perfect. There were a handful of Spanish people on the beach who thought me and my mates were fucking lunatics for wanting to swim. But we went in anyway. It was fucking freezing at first. I waded in waist height. I dipped my hands in. Then my arms. Too cold. I thought about turning around and walking out of the water. But eventually I lowered myself in. The water went over my shoulders. “Fuck me!” I cried. My mates laughed and plunged their heads under the water. It took me a while but eventually I managed to sink my head under the water. We stayed in for nearly an hour. The longer I stayed in the water the more I didn’t want to get out. My body had adjusted to the temperature and I was loving every second of it. Me and my mates eventually got out, went to bar and talked about how great the water was. I guess what I am saying here is stick with it. You obviously can’t go head first and start attacking your anxiety. You’ll need to live with it at first and get used to it. Acceptance is key. Without that you’ll just go round in circles. You’ll be like how I almost was, wading into the water and turning back towards the beach, never quite making a decision. How can anyone live like that? You’ll get nothing done. You’ll sacrifice your whole life to indecisiveness and uncertainty. Take some time to familiarise yourself with it. It gets easier.

Next Steps

I hope you found some familiarity with my story above. I found so much comfort in knowing I was not alone in suffering. I don’t mean that I want others to suffer. I mean that it is comforting to know you are not crazy. There are plenty of people going through the same problems. I believe knowledge sharing is a big asset. Someone may know something you don’t. And you may know something they don’t. If we can all pool our experiences together who knows how many people we can help. Good luck.