It’s been a rough start to the year for me, as I’ve been dealing with day after day of high anxiety. I like to think about my anxiety and depression on a 1-10 spectrum. When I’m at a 5, my anxiety is stable and my depression is dormant. When I drift below a 5, my depression is no longer dormant. When I was going through a depressive episode in the fall, I was operating at a 2. When I drift above a 5, I’m experiencing a state of high anxiety. On a regular basis, I think I operate as a 6. I always have just a little bit of anxiety, but it’s never enough to affect my day-to-day life.
Lately, though, I’ve been operating at more of an 8 or 9. And for one night a week ago, I was at a solid 10. (For me, a 10 is when I cannot stop my spiraling thoughts and I cannot think about anything else. I can’t sleep, I can’t read, I can’t watch TV. All I can do is curl up in a fetal position and whisper mantras to myself.)
When my anxiety gets bad like this, I’m usually dealing with anticipatory anxiety—thinking that something bad has happened that’s out of my control. And most of the time, I’m worried that something terrible has happened to my mom.
The night I was experiencing a “10” on my anxiety scale was a night when I couldn’t get ahold of my mom. I called her at 9:30pm and she didn’t answer. Then I called her twice more, around 10:30 and 11:30, no answer. How do you react when you can’t get ahold of someone? Most people can just go about their night. For me, I start imagining every worst-case scenario. While the logical explanation for why my mom didn’t answer my phone calls was that she went to bed early, I couldn’t stop fearing that something bad had happened.
And when I get into that downward spiral of anxiety, it’s almost impossible to break myself out of the cycle. It’s almost as if I think that if I imagine the worst-case scenario, it means the bad things won’t happen. I spent the entire night just trying to sleep but finding myself spiraling every time I closed my eyes. Because why wouldn’t the worst-case scenario happen? It does happen! Every day, people get the call or the knock on the door that rips their world apart. Who am I to be so lucky for it not to have happened to me yet?
And this, my friends, is why I don’t like watching or reading or listening to true crime. I know some people love it, but it just reminds me that terrible things happen on a daily basis and lives are upended regularly. I still remember a night when my mom and I were leaving the hospital after spending time with my grandfather who had just had surgery. We were getting into her car when someone parked hastily next to us, and then ran into the hospital crying. I don’t know what happened in this stranger’s life, but my heart broke for what she was going through, the grief she was going to have to endure. The grief we all have to endure at some point in our lives.
I think that’s the crux of my anxiety surrounding my mom. I know I will one day have to endure that grief. I know one day I will not be able to call or text her whenever I want. The thought of not having her in my life feels so scary. She’s the only person in this world who loves me unconditionally, who would move heaven and earth for me. And yes, I have family and friends who also love me dearly but there’s just something different, safer, about a mom’s love. Life just feels a little less scary and overwhelming because I know I have her in my corner and can lean on her when times get tough.
In the end, my mom called me on Saturday morning after 12 hours of me panicking. She was fine; she just went to bed early. It was the logical explanation all along.
Coming down from such a state of high anxiety is a process. I don’t return to a stable state immediately, especially if I’ve reached a “10” on the anxiety scale. It takes many days for my body to recover. I feel oversensitized, overstimulated. My body feels like it’s thrumming with energy. It’s almost as if I’m having aftershocks, where I still get these anxiety spikes from time to time as I remember what I just went through.
Eventually, though, my body returns to its stable state. It can take a few days or a few weeks, but it gets there. I stop living in my anxiety and rather live with it.
To be honest, I don’t have many of those high-anxiety days. My anxiety has never been something that affects my life in such a significant way. Even before I started taking anti-anxiety medication, I was a high-functioning anxious person who could live her life, get her work done, and meet her goals without too much hassle. There was just always a feeling of walking on eggshells, standing on the edge of a mountain, waiting for the next shoe to drop. With Lexapro, I don’t feel that underlying sense of dread on a daily basis. It’s just something that pops up from time to time, and there’s usually a reason attached to it (my mom not calling me back, for example). But still, it’s an illogical response to a simple situation, which is anxiety in a nutshell.
On Monday, I had my first therapy appointment in nearly two years. It was more than time to go back to therapy, but therapy isn’t exactly cheap, especially being on a high-deductible insurance plan as I am. But my work is now offering more affordable therapy (they told us it was free; it is not, but that’s a story for another day) and I was desperately in need of a professional to talk to. After spending a year and a half in therapy, I left feeling mentally well, stable, and equipped with the tools to help me through my anxiety and depressive episodes. And those tools worked for a long, long time. I even made it through the early months of COVID without falling into anxiety spirals or depression. (A feat, to be sure.) But lately, I’ve felt as if I’ve forgotten everything I learned in therapy and I’ve been letting my anxiety get the best of me. So, back to therapy I go.
And truly, truly, truly, it feels like a sigh of relief to be back in therapy. It feels so comforting to hear my therapist say, “This is completely normal for someone with anxiety. You’re not alone.” Even though I know I am not alone in my anxiety, that many, many other people suffer just like I do, it’s easy to feel very alone, very crazy, when I’m curled up in a ball on my bed in the middle of the night, my mind racing through scenarios where my mom is dead. It’s easy to feel like a nutjob when just my mom not answering my call can make me fall apart in this way. But when my therapist tells me this is very common for people with generalized anxiety disorder and there are plenty of strategies to combat the anxiety—and especially knowing I’ve been through therapy and found useful tools to help me—it was as if I was able to take my first big sigh of relief in months. I am not alone. I can fight this. And I will get better.
This is a long post. Originally, I planned to write a “coffee date” post today where I wrote a little about the anxiety struggles I’ve been dealing with (along with other life updates), but once I started writing about them, I quickly realized this needed to be its own post. I needed to get this off my chest, to talk about where I’m at with my anxiety right now. I talk about mental health, about my struggles with anxiety and depression, because it’s important. It’s important to know that even those who appear to be high functioning and mentally well may be suffering behind the scenes. It’s important to know that mental health is never static; it comes and goes in waves, and we must be diligent about reaching out and trying to get ahead of the wave when possible. (It’s not always possible.) It’s important for me to speak about my anxiety, to bring it into the light, as that is how I lessen its power over me. It’s important to continue to demystify mental health, therapy, and medication. It’s important to talk about the nitty-gritty of living with mental illness, the highs and the lows. For a long time, my mental illness was stable. Until suddenly, it was not. And that’s the way it goes for us.
Ultimately, I just wanted to bring you guys into my world, into the mind of someone with an anxiety disorder. It’s a fucking exhausting place to be, and it’s something I will be battling my entire life. But we’re all dealt a lot in life, and this is mine. I’ve made peace with it, and all I can do is continue to open up about my struggles to destigmatize mental illness and help others feel less alone.