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The Side of Anxiety People Don’t Always Know or Understand

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Yesterday evening, I was doing the dishes, with a nice upbeat playlist playing. I was feeling pretty pleased I’d completed my workload for university before Christmas break starts. It was then I felt the heart palpitations, I felt the shaking of my hands as I was drying a plate, and my legs felt really weak. It was then I felt this dread of anxiety come over me. For absolutely no known reason.

This is my reality of living with anxiety.

Sometimes, I know what sets off my anxiety. I know crowded places can make me really anxious, I know using public transport can make me really anxious. I have learned what can trigger my anxiety, and I’m learning how to cope.

But sometimes, it hits me when I least expect it. It hits me when I think that I’m having a good day. It hits me when I’m washing the dishes.

This is the side of anxiety some people don’t know or understand. It’s the side of anxiety that hurts me the most, because it can be so hard to understand yourself. I’ve had anxiety for five years, and I still don’t feel as though I understand it all. I still avoid certain situations; I still find myself frozen with fear.

I needed to go into a building in university today because my tutor meeting time was on my tutor’s door, but for some reason I found myself dreading to go in there. There was nothing to worry about, all I had to do was look on the door of my tutor’s office. Yet this caused me huge anxiety. I still did it, and in the process bumped into my friend and we then went to the library together to study. Nothing bad happened. I knew nothing bad would happen, the worst thing that could have happened is I bumped into my tutor and had to say hello — and my tutor is lovely, so there’s no reason to dread this at all.

I don’t understand why I was sat in my two-hour lecture this morning with heart
palpitations and anxiety so bad I could hardly concentrate. I only managed to make notes for some of the slides as part of the lecture was a complete blur to me as I was concentrating on keeping my cool.

I’m currently in the library writing this post, waiting for my meeting, feeling absolutely sick to my stomach with anxiety.

The feeling of anxiety is so hard to describe, so hard for somebody who hasn’t felt it to understand. But I’ll do my best to try and describe it:

It’s like this heavy weight on my chest. It almost hurts; it feels as though I can’t breathe properly and it’s dragging me down. It weights down on me more and more, and I don’t know why, and I can’t seem to stop it either. It gets into my head, makes me start to second-guess things. I start to think of worst-case scenarios for situations that don’t need one. My heart beats so fast that sometimes, I swear, it skips a beat; it feels as though it may take off if it goes any faster. I shake; my legs feel like jelly, and I feel as though I can’t grip anything with my hands. It can make me feel nauseous, lightheaded, and completely lose my appetite.

Now this isn’t all the time. Usually my anxiety isn’t this high, and it’s got to the point where I’m used to my “normal” level of anxiety. This is what it feels like when I have an anxiety attack, and this feeling can last for a few hours or a few days after the attack. But this. For me, this is what it’s like to have anxiety.

It’s not just little worries every now and again. It’s not made up. It’s not me just overreacting. It’s something I can’t help. It’s something that affects me not just mentally but physically. It’s exhausting. Truly exhausting, and very real.

This is the reality of anxiety for me.

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Image via Thinkstock Images

Originally published: December 23, 2016
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