What a ‘Typical’ Day Is Like With Generalized Anxiety Disorder

You feel your bones crushing. You feel like the ceiling is falling in on you. The symbols and words and advertisements displayed all over the walls of your bus on the morning commute, jumble up and look semi-blurry. When you step off and start to walk toward your next destination — that’s when the tunnel vision kicks in. You walk in a straight line because that’s all your eyes can see. Sometimes, it’s so bad you feel like your peripheral vision is escaping you, as if you’ll hit a tree branch or another person, even though they are nowhere in sight. It’s your mind playing tricks on you again.

You continue throughout your day, but shapes and normal things seem so out of place. You feel as if your heart may never slow down. You constantly  feel as if people are looking at, judging or gawking at you.

And there’s that ping in your neck again. The one you have felt in stressful situations for as long as you can remember. Even as a child. It comes and goes, but when it’s there, you feel as if for 15 deadly seconds someone is plunging a huge knife into the veins of your neck. It feels like death. This neck throbbing is so painful and noticeable that you have to stop what you are doing in that moment to just breathe.

You welcome again the constant sweatiness accompanied by your shaky hands. Sometimes getting so bad you have to put down your pencil and breathe for a moment. Not to mention, pounding headaches are your closest companion.

You will continue to be angry at almost anything. Moments of intense irritability will come and go. Sometimes, you are so upset you just get up and leave the class you’re in.

You walk quickly to a calm place, so you don’t feel the urge to have an outburst.

And it doesn’t stop there.

You bite your nails and skin until they bleed and sting. You check and recheck small things in your home life and in your work. You have moments where you must  be alone.

And then, to pair all of this with something like major depressive disorder. Well, sometimes you feel like your head may explode. You welcome the all-too-familiar panic attack. Heart thumping. Heavy breathing. Crying. Rocking. Shaking. The list goes on and on.

And you’ll stumble home. You try to get the strength to get in the shower, where even that seems like a burden. And you’ll sit and let the hot water soak your face like the heavy rain that clouded the past few days. And when you climb out, you’ll glance toward the foggy mirror and see your sad, red face. Black eye makeup smudged and fingers numb from the long, steaming shower.

And when at long last, you climb into bed after yet another up and down sort of day, you still prepare yourself for a sleepless night ahead. Thoughts swirl and run through your head. A constant worry, the fact you forgot to do something. Unimportant things. Pointless thoughts. You play soft music on your speaker because you think maybe the slow lyrics will take your mind off the endless thoughts. And if you’re lucky and you finally fall into sleep, it’s not without the dreams.

In them, you’ll have worries over minor and everyday aspects of life. Not being chased by a monster or falling off a cliff or any other nightmare. No, instead your brain conjuring up multiple worries of things you know you have no need to worry about. And it is just you moving quickly through the dream in your mind, as if it were a giant made-up checklist and you get antsy worrying you won’t finish everything on it before the time runs out.

This is not a rare occurrence, either. Each night, it’s something new. And when your eyes do finally open at 4 a.m., 5 a.m., 6 a.m., you awake and within minutes are distracted and start to think about the next thing. So, you take a breath. Muster up every amount of energy and effort in your body to get out of bed. You try to breathe. You look to the many different lists marked on your phone or written in your notebook and on your computer. You try to calm yourself down. You force your brain to search for anything to take your mind away from the chaos.

And you try to just breathe. And keep breathing.

Anxiety is yet another one of those things in life that is very often undermined and misunderstood. So, as I always say, stay informed, stay aware and work to help anyone you know living with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) or other anxiety disorders, to help take their mind off things, or ease it. The difference with your help and understanding, as well as that extra push for them, is and will be noticed.

And with them as a beneficiary and you as an advocate, together, it will help you both move mountains.

You can follow my journey on Bella . Blog .