Learning to Love and Hate - Anxiety Triggers

So I wanted to do another post that was more specific to my personal experience with anxiety and anxiety symptoms and triggers. So that's what I'm doing. This is that post.

"Anxiety Girl!
able to jump to the worst conclusion
in a single bound!"

When I was a kid, my dad traveled a lot for work. Especially in the winter, it seemed like he was gone more often than not. No big deal, and I don't hold resentment or anything towards him for that. It is what it is, and it was the way that things were. He was gone often, but it was for a good reason, and lots of the time we actually got to go with him - his work trips became our family vacations. However, when my dad was gone, I could tell that my mom was stressed, and rightfully so - she was doing double duty. I'm very empathetic, so other peoples' emotions and energies rub off on me quite easily; when she was stressed, I was stressed. If she was worried, I was worried. My brother and I both had a habit of getting sick when my dad was travelling - for me, at least, I know a lot of that had to do with worry.

Now that I'm older, I find that my partner travels a decent amount for work already. Same things tend to happen - I get sick with worry. In the day or two leading up to when he leaves, my anxiety starts running ideas through my head. All the ways his trip could go poorly. Car crashes, freak weather, tornadoes, bear attack, crash the quad, fallen tree, lost in the woods, you've seen 127 Hours, you know what could happen....The day he leaves is probably the worst. It's hard to focus on anything, I'm constantly asking him if he's definitely going, what his plans are, what time he's leaving, when he's coming home, his route, everything. I feel as though if I have all the details, I have more control over the outcome. Even if something does go wrong, I know what his plan was and I can have a better grasp on what to do.

"I had to LEARN to SILENCE
the VOICE IN MY HEAD
that was ALWAYS telling me
something was going to go
SERIOUSLY
WRONG..."

It's not just when other people are travelling, either. It's me, too. Travelling is one of my favourite things in the world - and I tend to hate a lot of it. How the hell does that make sense? Getting there is the worst. Planes, cars, boats, all of it just sends my anxiety reeling for reasons to ruin my time. Messed up schedules, delayed flights and trains, missed connections - easy triggers for a panic attack for me. I had a panic attack in front of the Hungarian Parliament Building once because we missed a tour time, even though there were definite workable alternatives. Take off and landing on planes spike my heart rate through the freaking roof. I have to check maps a million times before we leave for anywhere every day because god forbid we get lost in a city that we don't know or don't speak the language. I memorize train station names. I talk the route out with my travel partners again and again. I have tour reservations (tours that I have researched in excruciating detail before we reserved them) in my phone and printed copies in the pack. I've checked the meeting time and meeting point a gazillion times. Our 'free time' is even scheduled - where we're going to go, how we are going to get there. I think you get the point - planning is my way of controlling the situation, however, if something doesn't go according to my plan, it can completely ruin my day by sending me into a panic attack in public. There's nothing like having strangers stare at you while you hyperventilate and cry and rip at your hair and try and soothe yourself back down.

"Hey Brain, is there anything we can do to help with your anxiety" - Heart
"I don't know" - Brain
"What if I contort myself like THIS?" - Stomach
"UM" - Brain
"And I'll move things along REALLY fast or REALLY slow, depending on your preference" - Intestines
"Well I don't..." -Brain
"And I"ll pump as FAST AS MY LITTLE ME CAN PUMP" - Heart
"How does that even..." - Brain
"And just ONE of us with twitch from time to time" - Eyes
"You all look ridiculous"- Brain
"Does that mean it's working?" - Stomach
                                                                                                                      Comic by The Awkward Yeti

So the more time I spend thinking about this, I think it boils down to this - I have anxiety about the specifics and unpredictability of travelling, whether it's for myself or for others. While unpredictability is something that I tend not to handle well on a good day, I think it's amplified when it relates to travel because of the unfamiliar surroundings and unknown potential situations. There are a million ways that things can go wrong (trust me, I've thought through most of them), but I try to deal with it because I understand that it's completely worth it - travelling is something that I have been privileged enough to be able to do, and I try not to let this anxiety limit me, I guess. And I get that, when it comes to other people travelling (especially for work), I have no say in it and am going to have to learn to cope. Otherwise I'm being really selfish in making people cancel plans because I can't handle it.

"I've got 99 problems and 86 of them are completely made up scenarios
in my head that I'm stressing about for absolutely no logical reason."

The Daily Struggles of Your Average Anxiety-Girl

I want to open this up with some very informative, scientific, real factual data in the form of pie charts.

   

Bingo, I lied, they're not scientific. BUT they're super useful for what I'm about to talk about. We have this stigma about mental health in our society. We - as a society, as a culture, as a people - like to blanket things - by this, I mean that we like to assume that "anxiety" always means one thing, "depression" always means the same thing, and anyone who has either is experiencing the same thing as your second cousin's boyfriend's litter sister who also has anxiety. 

Here's the thing. Mental health issues are wonderfully non-selective. They don't care who you are. They don't care what you've been through. They don't care what your past is. They don't care what you look like. They don't care if you've dealt with it before or not. They don't care if you have easy access to resources. Yes, there are certain experiences that an individual goes through that may foster the development of mental health issues, and YES there are some patterns when it comes to mental health disorders and mental illness, but my point is this: NEVER ASSUME that one person's experience is universal, or that, because of differences, someone's experience is invalid.

What does someone with anxiety/mental health struggles look like?

Like you. Like me. Like your best friend, like your coworker, like your spouse, like the guy you just passed on the street, like your favourite celebrity, like your child. Like literally everyone you've ever met or seen or heard of ever.

How does someone with anxiety/mental health struggles act?

Outgoing, chatty, ecstatic, sad, reserved, giddy, neutral, whatever, literally any combination of moods and characteristics ever. 

"But wait! If EVERYONE EVER might be struggling with anxiety/depression/other mental health disorders, and there's no clear way to tell based on their attitudes or actions, how am I supposed to be able to know?"

So here's the thing.

You can't.

When it comes down to it, blanketing these ideas of mental health can be harmful. They contribute to the stigma surrounding mental health, and they also might serve to stop people from seeking help. If we continue to perpetuate one overarching, all-encompassing idea of what 'anxiety' looks like, or how a 'mentally ill' person acts, then it invalidates the experiences of those who don't fit that model. It leaves people wondering what the hell is wrong with them because they don't fit this 'mold'. It leaves them thinking that they maybe don't need help, because what they're going through doesn't match the 'signs and symptoms' list that our culture has carved out.

Watch your words and your actions, support your friends and family, do your research. Do your part in breaking down this horribly inflexible, harmful, and straight-up-wrong idea of mental health and mental illness. Contribute to making people feel valid. Work to feel valid in your own experiences. Encourage others to do so. Get help if you need it. Don't judge those who already have, or who are struggling to take that step.

"We cling to music, to poems, to quotes, to
writing, to art because we desperately do not
want to be alone, We want to know we aren't
going crazy and someone else out there knows
exactly how you're feeling. We want someone
to explain the things we can't." - Unknown

What Anxiety Gives Back

This week's blog post is a response to the guest post written by my mother last week about her experiences having a husband and daughter who both deal with anxiety. If you missed that one, you can link to it on the right-hand-side of this page. 

I've got to admit, I cried and cried and cried upon reading my mom's post. And then, when I read it again, I cried and cried and cried some more. It's really hard to hear how much my anxiety really affects the people close to me. Don't get me wrong, I am fully aware of the fact that it's not easy on them, but sometimes it's really easy to get caught up in myself and my own struggles that I become ignorant of the people that I love.

Anxiety Portrait 1 - Kathrin Honesta

My mom is my hero. I know that most people say that about their moms, and they're totally right to - mothers, in all the forms that they come, are amazing. I genuinely mean that when I speak about my mother. The amount of strength and determination that she has is phenomenal, and she damn near never falters; yet she's always an honest, compassionate, loving, take-no-crap-but-still-be-gentle friend to anyone that needs her (including me). I watched her work so hard to raise my brother and me through our childhoods while my dad was learning how to cope with his anxiety, and couldn't always help as much as he wanted to. I felt her heart ache when I started to struggle at university, but she still stayed encouraging, supportive, and determined for me - which was something that I couldn't be for myself at the time. And, when I started to open up more about the details of my anxiety, I saw her jump up to take action - helping me to find a counsellor, a doctor that I don't hate, encouraging me to go and be social and do the things that I can't always do - even though I knew it was hard on her, too. I fought back - and I fought hard. I still do, it's so hard for me to admit that I need help, so I argue, because I like to think that I'm the only one that knows what is best for me. I know she cried a lot. I know I cried a lot, too.

Being a family member of one person struggling with mental illness is hard. Being a wife and being a mother to people with anxiety must be exhausting. I can't even imagine the weight that anxiety has on those who have a choice - the choice to fight against it for the ones that you love, or to walk away because it's not your illness, it's not your brain that makes the monsters. To choose to have the daily battles and the life-long fight against mental illness forced upon you just by virtue of loving people is, in my mind, an incredible tell of someone's character; it takes a warrior to deal with it, to fight someone else's fight; to pick up the sword when your partner can't carry it anymore. To be able to even temporarily fight your child's battles when they have no strength left is not an easy feat. It takes a superhero. My mom is Wonder Woman.

Artist Unknown

The point of what I'm trying to get at is this: life doesn't stop when anxiety steps in. For me, for my dad, my mom, my partner, life keeps moving forward even though anxiety tries to force it to stand still, or even move backwards. There's not always the opportunity to just take the time you need to figure out how to cope, how to deal, what methods work, what meds work - life doesn't always (or ever) let you have unlimited time to heal. It keeps going, and that can be damn near impossible sometimes. For me, I can usually tell when the people I love are struggling, but it's not always within my ability to help - I'm so caught up trying to keep myself together that I genuinely feel like I have nothing to give to anyone else - so my struggles add to the struggles of others. My mom has never stopped trying. She fights for my dad, she fights for me - and she fights for herself. She struggles, yeah, but she never quits. She never stops being exactly what I need her to be (even if that means that we fight each other sometimes).

My mom is my hero. I hope that we can continue to grow and learn together so that we can learn how to better help each other. Anxiety isn't an easy thing to deal with, but it sure as hell helps when you know you have Wonder Woman at your back.

"For the highs and the lows,
and the moments between,
mountains and valleys,
and rivers and streams,
for where you are now
and where you will go,
for "I've always known"
and "I told you so,"
for "nothing is happening,"
and "all has gone wrong,"
it is here in this journey
you will learn to be strong
you will get where you're going,
landing where you belong."
                                                                         - Morgan Harper Nichols

What Anxiety Takes Away ~GUEST POST ~

~ This week's blog post is another guest post, this time written by my wonderful mother. Next week's post will be a response to this one, but for right now I will let you read her words. ~

I must admit, the concept of anxiety is a completely foreign one to me.  I mean I get anxious sometimes; doing new things, going to new places, it can be scary sure but I don’t think I am going to die. 

"When Peter Parker tingles in the face of danger, it's called his 'spidey-sense.'
But when I do it, it's called 'generalized anxiety disorder.'" - Brian Gordon

I have experienced some depression in my lifetime.  There have been some very dark times and the doctor even put me on meds at one point. I was a stay at home mom with 2 little kids, we were in a new city, my husband worked a lot and there was no family close by for support.  I needed a little help.  When I told my parents, I had been diagnosed with depression and was on meds their response was that I needed to find a way to pull myself out of it.  Lucky for me that happened in a fairly short time frame.  I was off the meds within 6 months.  It was tough but I got through it. So, the idea of mental illness was not a foreign one.

The year my husband turned 40, he was diagnosed with anxiety.  He eventually was put on some very strong meds.  The year was 2001.  The Twin Towers had just fallen, my uncle had just passed away and we attended that and 2 other funerals in a month, I just started a part time job after years of being a stay at home mom, we had agreed to have a hockey billet stay in our home and, shortly there after, my mother-in-law had an accident with a brain injury.  My life had been turned upside down.  Trying to juggle 2 kids and an extra person in the house and a new job was enough but on top of it the meds made it so my husband would come home and go right to sleep.  So, I was single parenting on top of everything else.  Needless to say, I resented the whole “anxiety” thing.  I needed him to be strong for us and to be the husband I was used to him being, to “just pull yourself out of it”.  It was a difficult year and a half until he found some tools that helped him.  It continues to be a struggle for both of us.

When my daughter went away to university I wasn’t sad because I knew I had raised a strong, independent, talented woman who was going to take the world by storm.  I still believe she is all those things.

However, she started to struggle right away.  I pushed her to keep going.  “You can do this” I would say.  “Maybe you should try to talk to someone” I would say.  She made it through her 4-year program but when it came to light that she too suffered from anxiety and panic attacks I didn’t want to believe it.  No, no, no, how could this happen to my strong, independent daughter? She lived far enough away that I didn’t have to believe it.  Nothing ever happened when I was there visiting or when she came home.  Maybe it wasn’t that bad? I never saw it. It was easy for me to just put it in a dark corner and not deal with it. 

"Who people think can have anxiety: shy introverts.
Who can actually have anxiety: introverts, extroverts, shy people, social people, ANYONE, OK? ANYONE CAN."

I had grown to hate “anxiety”. My husband and now my daughter.  Who and what else is this damned disease going to take from me?

Samantha wrote a piece earlier this year for Bell Let’s Talk Day and posted it to Facebook.  It was a serious wake up call for me.  I knew she had anxiety and panic attacks, but what I didn’t know was the details of how that manifests for her.  She shared these details in this post.  I understand why she did not share them with me, she didn’t want to disappoint me.  I didn’t feel bad about that.  It was that I felt completely at a loss to help her.  From that post, I came to realize that I needed to take it out of the dark corner and deal with it, for her and my husband and for me.  I needed to be supporting her in this fight.

I approached a friend who worked in mental health to get some guidance.  She told me (twice) there was nothing I could do to help her except to support her.  That is not what you want to hear as a mother.  You want to be able to fix your kids’ hurts and this disease doesn’t have a fix.  That was tough for me.

I learned the hard way.  Depression, anxiety and panic attacks should not be relegated to the dark corner.  I had to let go of my hate and resentment. It is still hard for me.  I have shed a lot of tears as I have learned about what my daughter goes through.  I am sorry I did not support my husband more when he was suffering.  Unfortunately, I had to do what I needed to do to survive at the time and that was wish it away.  It doesn’t go away even if you ignore it. 

"sometimes it feels like everything is going to pieces
sometimes I feel like I'm going to pieces
even though I feel bad, I want to make other people feel better
everyone deserves the change to feel good." - Beth Evans

I am fortunate that both my husband and my daughter have found ways/tools to help them cope.  I sometimes must remind them to go back to those things and that is about all I can do; walk beside them, support them, listen when they want to talk.

It has taken me years to get here. I hope that anyone readings this blog that may find themselves in a similar situation is able to learn that lesson faster than I did.

"Courage does not always
roar, sometimes courage is the
quiet voice at the end of the
day saying,
'I will try again tomorrow.'"
                                                                                            - Mary Anne Radmacher