Anxiety and the Noise
Updated: Jun 4, 2024
Many people suffer from various forms of anxiety, whether diagnosed or not.
I definitely had a less than mild form growing up, showed up a bit more in my twenties. And when I turned 30... BAM! Panic attacks!
What is this? I'm not breathing properly, I can't speak! Help! HEEELLLPPPPP!!!!
How do I convey to another person that my body feels like it is short-circuiting?
My anxiety attacks were circumstantial.
Let's back track:
As a teen, of course I thought I’d be married at 23 have kids at 25 and have a full successful career at 28 with my dream house and car. Let's all laugh together!
But that's what society connotes. How were we bold enough to plan what age we were getting married before we had our first boyfriend?
While having ambitions are great, there is no foolproof plan for life.
As women, we are programmed to prioritise marriage and having a family over having a career, over our mental health and over loving ourselves first.
THIS is the flaw in the system.
So let's skip to the twenties when everyone asks you when you are getting married. They ask this if you are engaged, they ask this if you are in a serious relationship, they ask this if you are in a casual relationship, they ask this when you have no relationship and they ask this when you are single AF!
I’ve always been headstrong, and at a wedding just weeks before my birthday, I was mindlessly asked: Besides you, how many of your single friends still need to get married?
My response: Well, none of them if they don’t want to
Can we just gasp at the audacity!
When my (very serious) relationship blew up, in my (very) early twenties,
I allowed myself as much time as needed to rediscover who was I outside of that and to explore far and wide with all this newfound freedom. So when all those questions came my way, it was so easy to brush off / joke about. And carry on living a young and wild and free lifestyle.
Until… ** cue dramatic soundtrack **
I turned THIRTY !
There was a switch that went off in my mind when I realised that my 21st birthday was 9 years prior, and that in 9 years time I’ll be turning 40! How on earth?!
Suddenly all the noise that I had been brushing off became louder, and I soaked it all in. And then I started self-inflicting the worst form psychological harm: COMPARISON.
Read that again: Comparison is the thief of joy.
I compared my life to everyone else’s whether I knew them or not, whether they were fictional or not, as though we were meant to be on the exact same page by thirty whether they were thirty or not.
But let's be clear, it wasn’t just about turning 30 it was a domino effect of many things that I was struggling to survive leading up to it...
In a small space of time I was dealing with an immense existential crisis,
career doubt, childhood trauma and trying to surmount overwhelming grief but still plastering on a smile so no-one would feel uncomfortable. I was in such a bad space mentally and emotionally then to top it all off you have people coming up to you reminding you of your age and asking When are you settling down? Don’t you want kids? And piling all this additional pressure to an already fragile individual making you feel LESS THAN and eventually you implode.
This is sadly the mentality that so many of us have to deal with on a daily basis. And if you find yourself casually wanting to ask people about marriage, fertility, finances or any other possible sensitive topic, don't. If they are not bringing it up it's got nothing to do with you. Be better. At the end of the day you have no clue what the next person is struggling to survive, and you have no idea which of the seeds that you're mindlessly planting will end up growing into monsters.
"The monsters were never under my bed, because the monsters were inside my head" - Nikita Gill
Weeks before the attacks began, I worked one of thee most stressful jobs I had ever done, to the point where I was waking up in the middle of the night, stressed about work, and then falling asleep only to dream about work and then jolting awake again to check my emails. Even when I was meant to rest I was stressed.
This job had me doubting my entire career.
[Side note: In retrospect, even if that job was intense and stressful maybe it was heightened because of all the personal distress I was simultaneously experiencing.]
I spiraled wondering if I had made a ‘wrong decision’ in my life, maybe I chose the wrong career, maybe I should’ve invested in property, a house or a relationship by now.
This whole new thought had a ripple effect and triggered my entire body, suddenly I could not control my tear ducts (and mind you, I could always control my tear ducts) my chest started paining, my breathing got shallow and my throat began to close. I was having a full blown anxiety attack. Yes, that sounds scary because it is.
This happened sporadically for weeks and months.
At one point, I was texting with my friend, Leena. I started having a panic attack and even though I couldn’t speak I could text her saying I’m starting to have a panic attack! She immediately tried to call me, but I kept rejecting the call and texted back I can’t speak! But she persisted and told me to answer and just listen. So I did.
My poor friend had a one-way conversation with herself for almost an hour before I had calmed down enough to respond. I’m usually so in check, how can my body betray me like this? Eventually we were talking normally and she even got me laughing again.
This was just one occurrence, all the other times I had to pull myself out of the water when I felt like I was drowning.
Love how i felt every thing you said.