I am NOT my anxiety
Last week I received a 30 page report following a psychological assessment which determined that I meet the diagnostic criteria for an adjustment disorder with mixed anxiety and depressed mood.
I scored severe on the scale for anxiety and moderately severe for depression in the assessment questionnaires.
The report contained every single reference to my mental health from the last 12 years…
The adjustment disorder is new.
The anxiety, not so much.
My mental health has been an ongoing battle and something I’ve worked hard to support myself with for a long, long time.
With respect to my pledge for transparency, this is yet another part of my story that I’d like to share.
When I said I wanted to speak about the things that are usually unspoken, I really did mean everything.
I was bullied through my whole childhood.
I remember one girl in primary school leaving me alone at one side of the playground while she convinced every single other person from our class to stand at the other side with her.
I got bullied for wearing glasses.
I got bullied for the type of pen I used.
I got bullied for not having designer clothes.
I got bullied for not having the RIGHT designer clothes.
I got bullied for having big boobs.
I got called a dyke for the entire duration of secondary school even though I STILL haven’t kissed a girl (even though I definitely want to) and it stopped me from exploring my sexuality and from even being friends with girls…
(An entirely different post to come on THIS one I think!)
I changed everything about myself in an attempt to fit in.
I cut my arms with the point of a compass.
I scratched holes into my stomach.
I punched myself in the face.
I would not let anyone near me.
I would not accept comfort.
I could not cry.
Then it all exploded out of me and it wouldn’t stop…
Like a lemonade bottle that had been fizzed up for too long or a beach ball that has been pushed down in the swimming pool.
Eventually something has to give.
2012 was the year that I graduated university with a first class honours degree and a place on a Masters programme in a beautiful city far away from home.
It was the year that I had been accepted onto a summer school programme in Italy teaching English to local children.
I didn’t even last 24 hours.
I had never really been anywhere by myself.
I could barely go to the toilet on my own at that point. I didn’t even like to order my own food. I had never been out by myself to a cafe or a restaurant or the cinema.
Yet I thought it was a good idea (GREAT idea in fact!) to fly into Nice in France, get a train across to Ventimiglia in Italy, another train to Sanremo followed by a bus into the back end of beyond in the Italian countryside where I couldn’t speak the language, knew absolutely nobody and couldn’t even figure out how to work the shower…
It was there that I experienced what I now know to be my first panic attack.
I got driven back to France to fly home before my journey had even begun and that experience is the reason that I have (still) never travelled abroad completely solo, missed out on my opportunity to take advantage of the working holiday visas and have only recently travelled solo in this country after years and years of rebuilding my shattered self esteem.
I spent the rest of the summer preparing to move away for my second stint at university - as a postgraduate student this time.
I lasted three days.
Cue more panic attacks (which I still didn’t understand at the time), thinking I was dying (because of the panic attacks), an unplanned visit to the university psychologist and a prompt relocation back to my parents house where I was forced to reassess my life options and sign on to the dole.
There is SO much I could write about this subject but honestly it would take me several more years and I fear that, in the meantime, I’d bore you to tears.
The bottom line is that my mental health has always been a little bit (A LOT) rocky but this new diagnosis still gave me food for thought.
I strongly dislike the concept of a diagnosis because I think sometimes we have a tendency to rely on them as part of our identity. They become us. We become them.
I am NOT my anxiety.
I have anxiety.
Anxiety is happening to me.
However, part of me is also relieved.
Relieved to know that the emotional rollercoaster of this last year has not just been a figment of my imagination or a sign that I’m going slowly insane…
Relieved that the hours I spent unable to leave my bed and simply stared at the blank bedroom wall were not a sign of who I have become but a very clear sign that I have been unwell…
Relieved because I have been finally listened to about how I am really feeling and it has been acknowledged that I need some support in order to get better…
I can’t do it alone.
I shouldn’t have to.
Yet we try.
We are taught to get on with it.
We are taught that we shouldn’t cry.
We are taught that other people’s problems are worse than our own and that we have nothing to be upset about.
I cry like fuck.
I cry because I CAN now.
I cry because I actually enjoy crying.
I cry because it is so much fucking healthier to just LET THAT SHIT OUT than to keep it relentlessly bottled up inside of you.
Life sucks sometimes.
Even when you KNOW it shouldn’t.
Even when you practice gratitude every day.
Even when you know other people are looking at your life thinking how lucky you are to be living it…
It can STILL suck!
I am mostly very happy with my life
AND
I am still sad sometimes
I am mostly calm and at peace
AND
I am still anxious a lot of the time
We don’t have to be one or the other.
We can be both.
We can be neither.
We can feel nothing.
We can feel EVERYTHING.
I am not defined by my anxiety.
I am simply my WHOLE self.
All of me.
I am not trying to hide any of the parts of myself that I maybe would have in the past.
Not anymore.
You shouldn’t either.
You are enough, exactly as you are.
So am I.
