What It Feels Like When Your Anxiety and Depression Go to War

I have struggled with anxiety and depression since I was very young, around 10 years old. I was in and out of therapy all through college and graduate school to try to help. There were some incredibly dark periods where I felt the need to harm myself, where I lost my faith and doubted everything I ever knew. Luckily, I have a great support system of friends and family who love me enough to pull me back into the lighter side.

But it’s hard.

I’m 27 years old now, and my anxiety is worse than it’s ever been. Which exacerbates my depression and my obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Having anxiety can be difficult. Having depression can be difficult. Having OCD can be difficult. Having all three is excruciating and something that is truly trying to explain to people. My depression makes me exhausted, both mentally and physically. I am in constant pain. My back, my knees, intense migraines. I want to sleep all the time. One the other side, my anxiety amps me up. It makes it impossible to sleep.

So it’s 1 a.m., and I have to be awake in five hours. My eyelids droop closed, and a thought goes through my head. If you close your eyes, you won’t wake up! My eyes pop open, and it is another hour before sleep starts to descend over me. This time sleep wins, but the anxiety turns my thoughts into deeply disturbing nightmares about family dying or something at work happening that is irreversible. I wake up crying, and there is no way to back to sleep. I am mentally unprepared for the 14-hour day I have to work.

My anxiety likes me to be productive. I do a lot of freelance work, and I am writing my own novel, which is amazingly fun, and I’m in a graduate program. My anxiety fuels my desire to get things done as it spurns thoughts that if I don’t get work done, I will be a complete failure to everyone in my life, including myself. My depression doesn’t let me get anything done. It sucks all my motivation out of me like a little kid trying to drink every drop of the one soda they are allowed. I glance at my novel sitting on my desk, think about working on it, and then decide it will take too much energy to do it and enter my realm of nothingness.

There are times when they work together. My anxiety tells me that getting out of bed that day will be too hard and not worth it, and my depression chimes in saying my bed is where I need to be and is the safest place for me. On days like that, I cry, battling with my rational and irrational sides. I know missing work will be bad, but it sounds so good. The thought of getting on the bus sends me into a massive panic attack. I hyperventilate. Cry. My arms and legs freeze, and I feel like death is coming for me. As it passes, I get dressed and hope the day will be better.

This is a daily battle. My mind is at war with itself, and sometimes I feel as if nothing I do can stop it. The thought of trying to stop it is exhausting in itself.

Every day I wake up and start with a prayer. A prayer for peace. I have started journaling again to sort out these feelings and hopefully take control of them. I wrote this piece for myself but also for anyone else who experiences this. I know what you are going through. We can beat it. It will take time and a lot of effort that the anxiety and depression will tell you will not work and won’t be worth using. There will be worse days, but there will be better ones too. This community here can help. So can a mental health professional. The good news is… you are not alone. My anxiety and depression will not beat me down any longer. It won’t get in the way of my dreams, and it won’t stop me from being everything I am meant to be.

I will win this war.

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Thinkstock photo by eggeeggjiew