Dealing with anxiety means living in a world in which you can’t feel safe. It’s like taking a stroll through a minefield. You close your eyes as you make the first step, but you have no idea whether your next move will blow you apart or spare your life.
Now imagine that the same minefield exists only for you. Others can’t perceive it, nor trigger it. They keep walking on safe grounds and fail to understand your fear of moving forward. Because they are unable to recognize the threat.
They don’t have the slightest clue about how you feel because they can’t comprehend your “irrational” fear of making the next step. They just don’t get you.
You try to describe the feeling inside of you, and the things that constantly surround you, but they don’t see it. And they probably never will.
Because after a while, they start to see you as a joke. Everything you feel, everything you claim to have seen, in their eyes, it’s just a sham. They dare to call you crazy and label you as an unstable, deranged lunatic.
Your anxiety becomes a lame excuse.
Because every time you are supposed to go out for a nice and cozy dinner with your friends, you end up struggling with your demons to get out of bed. You feel this fearful sensation inside your stomach and you think you’re about to throw up.
And the worst part is that there’s no particular reason for it. It wasn’t about an argument you had with your mom. It wasn’t about something your horoscope said. You were just, incapable of moving.
And, how… how do you explain this to a person?
How do you explain that your anxiety is the only excuse for your behavior? Most importantly, how do you explain this condition to a person who’ve never felt it?
To them, your anxiety isn’t something real. It’s always something that is “in your head”. It is always something that “you made up” or the usual – “a temporary, bad mood”.
Just another invalid excuse. Because every time you tell people you’re on medication, all you hear is their fear coming out of their mouths. Every time you try to mention your struggle, they see you as a mentally unstable person, incapable of doing things on their own.
Every single time you tell someone you’ve been diagnosed, they either see you as a deranged psychopath or a faker. In their eyes, you are a liar. A pretender. There’s actually nothing wrong with you, according to them.
“You must be delusional… You are fine”
And after a while, you begin to believe the same. Every time your heart starts pounding hard and your palms start to sweat, you force yourself to suck it up. “Maybe it’s real. Maybe it’s all in my head”. You force yourself to convince your mind.
On the other hand, some people claim it’s a sickness, much like cancer. If some people perceive it as a severe illness, then it must be. And for a moment there, you manage to calm your irrational thoughts.
But, then again, you ask yourself “How am I supposed to survive this illness if I’m not even convinced it exists?”
“How am I supposed to accept and love my mind, when I constantly doubt its ability to make a difference between reality and fiction?”
You should just embrace it. That’s what you should do.
No matter how crazy it looks to people, or how irrational it makes you in front of people, you know it is there. You feel it’s there. And sometimes the sensation is so terrifying, it feels like fire burning inside your heart.
You have every right to behave the way you feel. Nobody should ever shame you, make fun of you or label you as ‘crazy’. Because nobody will ever understand what it really feels like. The only people who would recognize your pain are the ones who experienced it themselves.
Remember: You’ve already come so far. You just have to keep moving.
Because you are a fighter. You won’t allow them to put you down. And you’ll no longer keep quiet!
You suffer from an anxiety disorder. And even though it sounds like a made-up story to some people, ANXIETY is very real, and it hurts like hell!
Nah, anxiety is often used as a lame (shockingly often self-diagnosed) excuse. A full-blown depression is something else, but nothing compares to severe, progressive, not curable physical illnesses which often lead to disabilities.
Anxiety is a piece of cake compared to those. And yeah, there are a lot of anxiety fakers, even diagnosed ones. Why do I know it? Because they told me! In rehab!
It’s weird for us physically impaired people that there’s little talk about us, but anxiety, God damn is EVERYWHERE!