Understanding What It’s Like to live with an Anxiety Disorder.
There are a lot of people these days finally coming out with the news that they have an Anxiety Disorder. From OCD to Social Anxiety to all of it, it’s finally coming out. The number one thing I should tell you guys is anxiety is not something to be ashamed of. There are so many people at certain points in their lives that realize that they too have some sort of anxiety disorder. There are different types of disorders that effect everyone in different ways. Here is my experience and around when I realized I had anxiety. In this post I will also include tips on how to handle loving or living with someone with anxiety, because I know we aren’t very easy but we deserve love.
My experience with anxiety was terrible, honestly. Throughout my childhood I noticed I had tons of nervous ticks that most didn’t. When I would get stressed I would bite my nails almost completely off, but this wasn’t my problem. Whenever I would be around someone or try to talk to them, I would notice that my hands would get extremely sweaty and my face would start getting hot and my heart would feel as if it was about to beat out of my chest and I would sit there and prick at my nails until they would almost bleed. Eventually, I started watching others talk to people and they seemed so calm. They didn’t seem nervous and it made me feel terrible because I couldn’t talk to others the same way. Soon, I started locking myself in my room around age eleven to thirteen. Honestly, hardly anyone seen me anymore besides when I would have to go to school. That type of kid that sits in the back of the room and only says one to three words to someone who talks to them, I was one of those kids. It felt terrible because I wanted friends and I wanted a life where I could have big sleepovers with my friends and go to the playground and talk to someone about any and everything. Instead, I ended up being the kid that stayed alone. One time I even got to the point to where I couldn’t talk to my parents around middle school because I just was in that phase where I had realized what I had and that something was severely wrong with me. Anxiety affected me in so many terrible ways that I couldn’t even talk to anyone about it because it was so bad. So yes I have social anxiety. Another form of anxiety I have is OCD. If you don’t know what this is its obsessive compulsive disorder. This one really gets to me a lot because it affects me in more ways than one. OCD doesn’t only affect your cleaning and how organized you are, that is only the good part about OCD. The other things that OCD affects if your personality, your brain and your thoughts, and even your friendships and love life. The way it does this to me is I constantly overthink. Just like if someone moves something on a shelf that I just put there, it puts stress on my brain all day long until I move it back to exactly the spot it was. That thought will be on my mind all day long. Sort of like if you have a crush and you obsess over the thought of them, you think of them all day long every day, this is how an OCD person feels but about other things that really shouldn’t matter but to us it does. It absolutely can drive us insane until it’s fixed. It can affect relationships and friendships because you’ll lay there and overthink every little thing and obsess over bad things from the past, and put yourself in depression. Eventually, you’re going to text that friend or boyfriend/girlfriend and say something you really don’t mean but your OCD has gotten you to that point and it can really hurt your relationships with others. Depression is something I’ve fought with for years because I overthink things so much. Overthinking past things, things that might happen, and eventually just letting the pessimistic side of me take over and try to tell me that these great things won’t happen. Then I end up obsessing over those things my pessimistic side tells me because I just keep overthinking from my OCD. It’s like a never ending routine that just kept happening. We still haven’t been to the doctor for my disorders because I don’t feel as if medicine will help. The things I’ve heard about the medications for anxiety disorders and depression end up changing a person and changing who they are. The last thing I want is to not be myself or have my own personality. So I decided to do this on my own and try to test out my own ways to feel better and fight it. Eventually I sort of grew out of it a little more every day. When I found my boyfriend I talked with him about it that helped me tons. Journaling helped me tons to get it all off of my chest when it was all overwhelming me. Starting to work out made me feel more confident and stronger. Starting blogging made me feel more successful. Eventually I kept putting all of these pieces together and it made it easier for me in the end. Now I’m 19 years old and of course it still affects me. For help besides actual medicine I take a supplement from Walgreens it’s called Natrol 5-htp. The pharmacist recommended it for me because it’s not a full on medicine it’s more of a supplement and it helps me so much honestly with my social anxiety. Usually I take it before an event where I know I’ll need it like family reunions or somewhere I know I’m going to be around people I’m super nervous around and when it kicks in it calms me and I can actually talk to people and breathe without freaking completely out on the inside. Also, working out if I have time before I go somewhere like that it helps me tons because working out makes me feel more confident which of course will help with social anxiety. Whatever pieces you can put together that help you the most, are whatever is going to help you fight your anxiety. Anxiety is not something that just goes away though, we have to fight with it and find our ways around it to see what helps us and what doesn’t at all. We have to figure it out ourselves because it’s our own minds and we have to figure out what works best for us and our disorders. My OCD still makes me have melt downs sometimes but I try to stay cool and calm with it. Social anxiety though isn’t something that’s very easy to fight so that’s why I ended up having to use a supplement because nothing I tried would help me with it. The thing about loving someone with an anxiety disorder is you have to realize that the person doesn’t control what’s happening or what they are thinking, our disorder is tricking our minds into thinking things that we normally wouldn’t. We’re going to overthink things and accuse you of things that you probably never even thought of doing! When we do this, don’t scream at us and don’t call us mean things because that will only make things worse and make us feel worse. We are already battling these terrible disorders in our minds. What a person with anxiety needs is for you to hold them, let them cry on your shoulder, let them scream it out, whatever that persons reaction is let them do it but let them know your there for them. All a person with anxiety needs is to know they have somewhere there for them because anxiety makes us all feel as if we have no one when in reality we have all of the people that we could ever need. So if you love someone dearly with anxiety just be there for them. Hold them during a breakdown and remind them how much you love them. Nothing can make a person feel better during an anxiety attack than feeling loved and being reminded that we have someone there for us. If you have anxiety, don’t let it take you over. Honestly, YOU have the power to fight this and you can beat it. You are so much better than these disorders and you can show them that you have the power over them. You’ve got this.
