ANXIETY IS NOT A LABEL

I feel like as the years go by, there's a lot more people having or self-diagnosing with anxiety. Perhaps is the media surrounding us, all sorts of pollution, the living in an online world and less in the real world? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it is all in my head.

It is easy to look at someone and judge them based on their appearance. Though I may look like I have it all put together, my insides tell me otherwise when I cross you on the street.

It took me a while to actually figuring out the reason why I truly hate being in crowded places, going out alone, eating in public, interacting with other people or being watched from across the room. I've always had issues and troubles bothering me in my head, ever since I can remember, but anxiety is a completely different thing. It is something very hard to hide. It can strike at anytime, anywhere out of nothing and with no apparent reason.

I can't remember when I had my first anxiety attack, but I do know that it became some sort of a part of my life for quite a while now. Anxiety and panic attacks are usually mistakenly understood as the same thing, but believe me, they have nothing to compare in my opinion. I've had some pretty nasty panic attacks in the past and it is way, way different, so let's just put that aside for now.

So how does it feel to have an anxiety attack? To me, it feels like I am about to pass out. I can be fine in one minute and the next my heart is pumping a million times per second, my skin loses its color, my vision gets all blurry, I hear everything as if I am underwater and I just want to run away to the deepest hole in the ground until it passes. It feels like being scared of feeling scared in public. Like all my control is slipping through my fingers. It's as if time stops for what it seems like an eternity until I come to my senses again. All of that at once. But the worst part is the anticipation. Is when I know that something is about to strike and I won't be able to control it, for the most part.

I've come to realize, with all these experiences, that anxiety really isn't a drama. It sucks, of course. It is a struggle, no doubt. But the more I look at it as a big monster, the stronger is the power it gets. I think that one of the biggest struggles that people with anxiety have is the fear to be judged. But people are way too much inside their own heads to even pay attention to you, so.

So I started facing myself in that sense. I force myself to go outside, mostly to quiet places, but I still face people on the streets for that matter. Listening to music or just playing it around in my head helps a lot to disperse any anxious thoughts. I do my best not to over think on things like making a phone call. It has to be done, no one else is going to do this stuff for me and truth to be told, the worst that can happen is a mistake and I learned a lot from my mistakes throughout these years. I've also let all my complexes aside and, especially if I know that I'll be in a situation that may trigger an anxiety attack, I just tell someone who's with me so that in case I have one, people don't freak out and instead know that it will just pass in a couple of minutes and everything will be just fine.

The first couple of times I had an anxiety attack I was petrified. Especially when it's in public places, it used to scare the shit out of me.
There's no great way to deal with it. Some days I let it be and wait for it to pass, other days I do my best to take my mind out to some place that will bring me back to reality as quick as possible.

The last time I had one I was on an airplane. Believe me, I am not scared of flying at all, but when I realized that I had no real air to breathe and no escape out, my mind just did the favor to freak out on my behalf. Again, no apparent reason for it to happen, it just did. Everything was calm, I had David and Eva with me. I asked David to hold Eva, closed my eyes, shook a piece of paper to have some wind blowing on my face, tried to relax whilst keep thinking of how much I needed to be there for them. It did help a lot and, again, in just a couple of minutes, I was back to my normal self.

Searching online for this subject I could only find these type of hyper-dramatic videos with a super sad song in the background explaining how bad of a thing anxiety is but giving no apparent solution for it. I'm not here to give you any solutions either because I am no expert at this, I only know what I feel. But I hope that sharing some of my thoughts on this matter, based on my experiences, may help some of you to better understand it and take the stigma out of it.
As always, if you have any questions, concerns or just want to have a chat with me feel free to leave a comment or contact me directly.