Hey.
So far on my blog I haven't really made it a secret that I have anxiety, I feel like it's time I blog about my anxiety story so far. I just want to start off with a little disclaimer, I am no psychologist and you should see a professional to diagnose whether you have an anxiety disorder, I'm not writing this to get pity points because I have a mental illness, I am writing this for the little me. The little me who thought that she was all alone because she really actually isn't and it's okay to have a mental illness.
First, lets get into what anxiety actually is.
Anxiety is a mental illness, and it comes in six main types which are Social Anxiety Disorder aka Social Phobia, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Panic Disorder. From there they can branch out into the phobias eg. Arachnophobia fear of spiders, etc. They also go into things like Trichitillomania.
Social Anxiety is more common in teenagers, and is often caused by bullying or traumatic social experiences. SA is a constant feeling of being alert when around other people, maybe being so anxious before going to a shopping mall because of the people there, and what they are going to think about you. SA can be incredibly hard on those going through high school with having to do speeches in front of the class or being called upon to answer a question can be extremely stressful to the point the person will skip school to avoid the interaction.
More on Social Anxiety here and here.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (or GAD) is a constant or mostly constant feeling of anxiousness. People with GAD find everyday tasks hard to complete, can't concentrate well and can't seem to relax, being easily startled. Avoidance isn't a part of their disorder necessarily as it is with Social Anxiety, but they find it extremely challenging. GAD includes a lot of physical symptoms like fatigue and frequent head aches,etc.
More on GAD and the physical symptoms here.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) OCD is widely known as a need for everything to be perfectly organized and neat. This idea comes from the category of washers, people who are petrified of germs, there are however many more categories than that and if they are unable to complete the washing, people will feel awfully anxious until they perform their compulsive action.
OCD is an Obsessive disorder, which means the person with OCD will obsess over a thought over and over, the Compulsive part means they can't really control their obsessions, they have to do something or they will feel an overwhelming state of anxiousness and feel like they're out of control. For example, someone with OCD may have a routine of washing their hands twenty times in a row then doing something and needing to then wash their hands twenty more times. People with OCD find comfort in their ritual and it is incredibly hard to break it due to the obsessive thoughts. OCD makes everyday life a struggle, and for someone with OCD its hard to shake it.
More on OCD here.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) PTSD is known for being associated with the war, soldiers who go through the mental strain of war come back shaken and anxious. PTSD is not solely targetted at soldiers however, any petrifyingly traumatic experience that has really affected an individual can be classed as PTSD. People without PTSD after a traumatic experience will gradually become back to normal, whereas people with PTSD can't seem to get better, they are stuck in this awful state and can feel like they're reliving their trauma everyday.
More on PTSD here.
Panic Disorder is the one I personally have just recently had a lot of experience with. Panic Disorder is when someone will build and build on top of an anxious thought to the point of having a Panic Attack. I like to think of it like a snake, so a regular scare is instant and the snake quickly lashes out at you whereas with Panic Disorder the snake is slowly slithering towards you seemingly getting bigger and more menacing before it finally strikes and you have a Panic Attack. When I have a Panic Attack my heart starts beating fast, I have a tunneled vision, my legs go wobbly, I shake all over and I hyperventilate and struggle to breathe. People will have different reactions to Panic Attacks, and it is different for every person. For a week afterwards I am nauseous and exhausted, it's hard to do things and I often just cry a lot. Panic Attacks can only last for five minutes, but you can have another after the first one. My last Panic Attack was October, and I had three in the space of an hour in a bathroom, which was great.
More on Panic Disorder here .
Now that we have covered the types of anxiety, let's get into my experiences so far.
I have always had anxiety, but I never knew that what I was feeling was anxiety. As a child I didn't like sleeping in my own room, so I slept in my brothers room for about a year and I woke up once in the night from birth all the way to when I was about 8 years old. I'm also a Highly Sensitive Person, which made me I guess a little more susceptible to Anxiety.
I think my worst childhood anxiety was when I was in year 3 and 4 at primary school. I didn't have a good group of friends, and my 'friends' would have awful arguments every single lunch time, which I would usually end up crying or one of the others would. So I would always worry and worry about these fights, and almost every lunch time I would go to the sick bay (or Infirmary) and complain of a stomach ache and my mother would come and take me home. I think that began my school skipping days, as I began to fake sick every athletics day. Since year 5 I haven't been to a single athletics day, and it's not really faking sick it's due to my social anxiety.
As a child to a pre-teen my social anxiety was awful. I couldn't go to athletics day because I was so deathly afraid of making a fool out of my self and having that negative spotlight on me. So, in year 5 my 'friends' from earlier and I were put in different classes and they began to run away and hide from me and just genuinely be awful. Year 6 came and went and soon I had to go to Intermediate.
Let's start this off with, I hated Intermediate. I was back with the 'friends' from earlier and
they continued to run away from me and bully me, I was then cyber bullied by another girl in my class and every day at school was a struggle. There was no way I could go to school each day, so I would put up a fuss and plead and beg not to go. One day I tried to lock myself in the back room of our house, and I screamed and begged for my father not to force me to go, so he didn't. We went to his work for the day and the next day my mother organized the school to either move me into a different class or we would move schools.
The girl who cyberbullied me never apologized, and was only given a 40 minute detention.
The group of girls got nothing, and sadly I still for a long time put myself through trying to be friends with them.
I moved class, and that was probably the best decision I have ever made. I was put into a class with a teacher who I've known since I was four and in that class I met my best friend, Madi. Year 8 was a lot of fun, and I had a pretty good little group of friends. During this time my social anxiety was awful, I was unable to go to the shopping mall for fear I'd see my bully and I felt pretty bad about myself.
Then I started high school. Year 9 was a breath of fresh air for most of it. My class was amazing, and Madi was in it. Madi and I got even closer and I am so greatful for year nine! But yes, once again I carried my tradition of missing athletics, but I did do cross country that year, which was mostly down to Madi.
Then year 10 happened.. Madi left to go to a dance school in Australia and I am so incredibly proud of her, but I did miss her. I hung around with a few girls in my class and I think a little into year ten, a girl in our big group of friends and I had a disagreement. And as most things do in high school, it got overexaggerated and tons of people got involved and soon social media got involved via ask.fm, and everything was not good. I felt like everyone had turned on me and people who I thought were friends were actually horrible and nasty.
My anxiety flared. I was skipping school so much I think I only attended less than half of each term. I physically could not go through the gruel of school with friendship pressures on top of that. The hardest part was that they were in my class, and having to go through that every single day was too much for me. My grades were not doing well, and I felt like I was being sucked into a dark hole. Just the thought of facing everyone was enough to bring on a panic attack.
I was on youtube, and one day I found a video of Zoellas. Called Dealing with Panic attacks and Anxiety. I began to google and research and find out everything I could. I felt a little like something had clicked into place. And the fact that someone as normal as successful as Zoe was going through it too.. I didn't feel so alone. I began seeing a therapist, and things started to get rough at home.
My mother didn't understand anything of what I was going through, and she almost acted embarrassed of me, and it really hurt. She kept asking why I wasn't talking to her and blamed herself. It was rough to deal with, and I was pretty much not going to go to school at all. I spent a lot of my days in my room watching youtube, not stimulating my brain or doing anything with my life. In the meantime, I didn't know what to say to my friends, or if I wanted to tell them my big secret for fear they would think I was a weirdo.
But I did tell them in the end.. and most couldn't have been more supportive. Abi really helped me by just wanting to know more, and not being really scared to ask me. It felt good to have someone care and want to know.
We approached the idea of home school, and then found a correspondence school. I wish I could write that I immediately settled down and worked my butt off, but I didn't.
I hardly did any work, nor did I have any real desire to. I was on the brink of Depression, and I think that may have been the saddest I have ever been. Sometime in October I decided I needed a change of scenery, so I left for three weeks to go to my Grandparents in Auckland.
When I came back home, the entire atmosphere had changed. My mother was more approachable, and life just felt better. There was no tension in the air that had flared my anxiety, I felt lighter. Ironically this was after my biggest panic attack that I mentioned briefly before, but I really did feel better at home. December sparked up my friendships again and I went through a patch of not speaking to two of my friends and I started to talk to them again, and I realized just how much I missed them.
January was good, and now I'm on February. Back to current time, I feel amazing.
I feel like myself again and I'm so proud of everything that I have been through, and I'm still young. There's so much more of life I've got to live and things to do and I am so ready.
My social anxiety is pretty much gone, and I'm in a great patch with my panic disorder. Im feeling really good and optimistic.
So, my story is not complete this is only a small chapter of it. I just want you to know that whether you have anxiety or another mental illness that it's OKAY. It's okay. You are not a freak who needs to be in a strait jacket, this is something that needs to be talked about.
Open the conversation and don't be afraid to seek help. Therapists are not going to make fun of you, they are not looneys (well my therapist isn't) and actually, you're not a weirdo to see a therapist. You are a good person, and I think you're pretty darn great. xx
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