It is surprising how often the word “anxiety” is thrown around in popular culture and social media in today’s world. It seems everyone suffers from it or knows someone who suffers from it. Whether this is an indication of our culture today in the way of how we perceive life, or how we overreact to things, I am not qualified to say. I may only speak from personal experience and pray to God it is perceived as true and honest in a world where everything is questioned and everyone is biologically and chemically “messed up”.
I have been researching anxiety since realizing what an enormous role it played in my life, and have come to realize no two living beings experience anxiety the same way. I have also learned that anxiety is a normal part of everyday living, and it is how we respond to anxiety-inducing stimuli that decide if we truly have an “anxiety disorder”. There are also various types of anxiety which I do not have the time nor space to get into, but will highly recommend the book “Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety” by Joseph LeDoux, for those of you who are interested in learning more about the complicated diagnoses and phenomenon that is anxiety. As I said before, I am not qualified to speak on anxiety, let alone diagnose anyone or even myself on the type of anxiety disorder they suffer from. I may only speak honestly from my own experience.
As a young child, I never experienced anxiety. I had no trouble in new situations, made friends very easily, and was excited to meet new people and try new things. Going out in public was a fun activity, and running around doing silly little things by myself or with friends never made me feel watched or criticized. I am not exactly sure when the switch occurred, but I believe I am getting close to tracking down its origin. For now, we will just say it happened in early middle school, a year or two after my family packed up our bags in Iowa, where I had grown up and lived for the first 10.5 years of my life, and relocated to sunny Arizona. I am not sure if it was initially triggered by the move to first an apartment complex, and a few months later to a more permanent home, or if it was from the relentless bullying and adolescent female cattiness I experienced for the first time in my life around age 12, but I do know that somewhere between age 12 and 14, I began to develop an unhealthy amount of anxiety,
I had a small group of friends for a while, which made me believe I was still the outgoing extrovert I had always been, but I was on the outskirts of that group and stayed there despite various efforts to become a more cared about and permanent member. Eventually, I was pushed out completely and after a few weeks of no friends at all, befriended someone who had gone through a shockingly similar experience with the same person/people. Even then, I didn’t see that I was slowly closing in on myself and rotting away inside.
We hung out all the time but never really befriended anyone else. She was my best and only friend and I hers. I thought it was simply because I was too goofy or weird or awesome for other people to understand, but I now realize I was just too afraid to let anyone else in, out of fear that they may hurt me like others had in the past.
That’s how it all started, pretty simply enough. A fear of being abandoned and left alone. A fairly common fear in today’s world, but since I left it untreated and failed -or maybe refused- to see it, it festered into something much worse and even more detrimental.
High school was tough for me, as the one and the only true friend I had gone to a different school than me. I managed to make a few friends, but nothing too deep or personal, really just convenience friendships at first. I had a few friends from middle school that followed me into high school, but they were comfortable friendships, and they were not exactly inviting me over to hang out on the weekends. I managed to find a few nice girls to befriend and hang out with and attend concerts with, and I thought I had finally found my niche. I connected with a girl more than I had connected with anyone in a while, and ironically enough, she was a bit of an introvert. Although then I just thought it was a situation of “opposites attract”, and not a sign that maybe I too had morphed into an introvert.
My sophomore year was a blur of senseless bullying and name calling from people I did not even know, a dark depression, continuation from an eating disorder from grade school, and a desire to just be alone. I ended up transferring to my best friends high school for my junior and senior year because of all of it, and hardly anyone even cared to see me leave. There were a handful of people upset I was leaving, but then again, in my own defense, none of them made an effort to see me before I left, or to keep up contact once I was gone. In their defense, however, neither did I.
To speed up the story for your benefit and also for my own, I will paraphrase and quickly jump through junior and senior year.
Junior year was at a new school with my best friend in a way better Theatre program that I could be proud of. I had my first boyfriend and first kiss, then I had my heartbroken when he distanced himself and cheated on me, and to this day I cannot think of why. I got into another relationship a few months later (after an angry couple of weeks I recovered from the first relationship and felt ready for a new one. My mistake), which lasted a little more than 4 months before falling apart. It was long distance, and after I went out and surprised him and met him for the first time, the relationship began to fall apart. I denied it, as we were both already discussing marriage, but a couple months later we broke up. A month after that he accused me of lying to him about my morals and about who I was, pretty much ripping out what was left of my heart, as at that point I was still in love with him.
Senior year was pretty decent in the beginning. Got the lead in a school play, made wonderful friends that lasted out of high school, and I really truly felt that I was in a great place, but I could not explain why. At the end of my senior year, I went through another difficult and rebellious phase that I choose not to talk about or think about since I truly do not believe that was me, and it was just hurt and pain from stuffing my anxiety and depressing down and not allowing myself to see it for what it was.
That summer I went to a foster care kids camp, made another wonderful friend, met my boyfriend who I have been dating ever since, and found a new thing I loved doing.
Fast forward even more because this is long enough as it is and I have not even begun talking about what I wanted to.
Here I am now, in counseling for anxiety, and doing everything I can to save myself from this ugly monster that I have allowed to take such deep root inside of me. I was unable to see it for myself, but being in a close relationship with someone has the tendency to make things like this come out. I realized just how bad this anxiety was. I had had panic attacks in the past, and I did call it “anxiety”, but never thought that it was anything to worry about. People panic sometimes! Anxiety is normal! No need to look any further.
It got to the point that going out in public by myself would put me in a panic. I would be extremely anxious in any social situation, even if I knew people there. I did not want to try anything new or do anything out of fear, plain and simple, fear. I was wasting away from fear, but still wanting to go and do all these fun things, but allowing this fear to take over and not do any of it. It was as if my old self, the extroverted self, was trying to claw its way out but this inky black anxiety was stuffing it down as deep as possible and telling me “you can’t do that. Just think of what could happen”.
I tried simply telling myself “don’t be anxious. You’re being ridiculous” and that didn’t work.
I went into counseling, not really knowing why but feeling as if I needed to, and it all came out.
I am now working through it, I have been equipped with psychological tools to combat this anxiety, and I am doing better.
I went to the young adults' ministry at my church with a friend which was a huge feat for me. That was a totally new social situation, and it was nerve-wracking, but I did it. And guess what the message was on that night? Well, really a number of things, but what stuck out to me the most, what I feel was talked about for the bulk of the message, was ANXIETY. The next Sunday, at my church, the message was totally on FEAR and ANXIETY and WORRY. God was showing me Biblical tools to combat my anxiety. I felt such a calm come over me, and I felt so loved and cared for. My God is truly amazing and does not abandon me. He knows what I need, and He knows exactly when I need it. I had the tools to combat my anxiety from a psychological standpoint, I knew how to think through it to overcome it, but I didn’t have a spiritual tool. He knew I would never be able to fight this battle with Satan -and yes, I am now positive my anxiety is ruled by Satan to pull me away from God and make me self-focused instead of Kindom-driven- without His tools, and He gave them to me exactly when my mind was in the right place to receive them. I am usually fairly anxious at my church since there are a lot of people around me that I do not know and am only familiar with, and it is a social situation, and we sit far closer to the stage than I am comfortable with, but that week, I was feeling so normal and ready. God prepared me for that message, and He prepared our pastor to deliver it exactly the way I needed to hear it. There is no way that I would be able to fight this fight with psychological tools alone, and I do not want to turn to medicine unless it is an actual chemical imbalance in my brain, and I am now positive that it is not, it is simply a messed up way of thinking, a messed up set of priorities, and horribly self-centered thinking.
This past week has been amazing. I have not felt overwhelming anxiety, but only the normal, everyday anxiety that everyone experiences. I went in for a job interview and felt anxious, but realized it was just normal nerves and that my thinking was not consumed by “what ifs”. I went to my church’s young adult ministry alone and did not feel anxious, but only a bit awkward since I did not know anyone there and therefore had to sit alone. I have all the tools I could possibly need. I have a new way of thinking that is proven to work by psychology, and by my amazing God. I am sure I can combat this, but not without help from my counselor, and my King.
Anxiety was pulling apart the edges of my relationship, my family, my friendships, and myself. I did not see it at first, but once I realized what was happening it was impossible to overlook, and seemed hopeless to fix. But I am here now, saying it is better. It is not perfect by any means, and I am not cured at all, but I am working through it, and can say with confidence that I will get better. I will live with anxiety for the rest of my life, but it will not rule me forever. I know I will have moments or maybe even weeks or months where it takes over, but I know now that I can come back from it, that I can live my life free of anxiety, and almost be back to the outgoing extroverted little girl who looked at a park full of kids and said “look at all the friends I haven’t met yet!” instead of the girl who sees that same park and listens when her anxiety says, “nope, you can’t do that”.
I have anxiety, but I won’t let that stop me from being a wonderful, functioning human being.
Jaina
