“Anxiety never killed anybody” my doctor told me; “you’ve
just got to push through it and when you come out the other end you’ll see that
it isn’t so bad”. I am not a generally anxious person; my anxiety only arises
in certain situations. I have recently gained a grasp on where my anxiety stems
from which I’d like to share.
It all dates back to when I was younger; I’d struggle to
leave the house to go to school but couldn’t for the life of me figure out why.
I ended up making all kinds of excuses so that I could stay at home. I found it
very confusing: “How come everyone else deals with this problem (I assumed they
all did) so easily?” In the end I logically concluded that I was just weaker
than them.
It wasn’t until six years later that I was diagnosed with
clinical psychosis, so for that period my family and I were almost completely
in the dark. Now, six years after my diagnosis I have a new handle on the
anxiety.
It all has to do with ‘shutting down’. When put into a
situation that I find overwhelming, I can almost hear my mind saying, “screw
this I’m out of here!” as it packs up, leaving only the surface thinking – I literally
become an empty shell; unable to look inside.
For ages I found this experience to be very disturbing; I’d
find myself out in public but I wouldn’t know how to be there, which made me
feel very exposed and as a consequence the anxiety inevitability prevailed.
It was only in understanding what was happening when I
shut down that I became able to develop a comfort with it. It no longer
distresses me because I can say to myself that it’s ok, this is just how your
body deals with an overwhelming situation.
I learned to shut down on a subconscious level in order
to shut out the paranoid ideas and intrusive thinking that was so distressing
to me. I have become so good at suppressing them that I no longer honestly know
whether those thoughts are still waiting in the wings, trying constantly to
break through.
For now, I must continue to push my boundaries and learn
how to be again.
At the moment I still find my inability to do certain
things (because I have shut down) to be very frustrating. I scare myself on
these occasions because of the violence – which is directed entirely towards
myself – that wells up inside me.
