Something a bit different...

The decision to write this post was certainly not an easy one by any means, because it’s incredibly difficult to bare your soul to people, both to people you know and to the internet en masse. And trust me, I know how difficult it is – I’ve pretty much experienced every reaction under the sun when telling people I’m agoraphobic and suffer with bad anxiety: from genuine concern and honest curiosity, to blank looks and even outright contempt. One ‘friend’ of mine even had the audacity to suggest I was putting the whole thing on for ‘attention’ – that was probably the worst reaction of them all.

Given how long my battle with anxiety has been going on for – ever since I was 11, and I’m now 22 – I’ve been forced to tell a host of different people about my conditions, simply because I’ve had to. An awful lot of my secondary school life was preoccupied by answering inquisitions as to why I wasn’t in assembly, or why I was never to be seen in an examination taking place in the Sports Hall. One thing that was particularly difficult to deal with whilst I was in school, was the stigma attached to admitting you suffer with a mental health issue. Regardless of the statistic that one in every four people will at some point suffer from a mental health issue in their lives, being the only person sat in the middle of the sixth form common room having a panic attack, is never going to be an easy thing to deal with. It’s always going to suck.   

   

But as difficult as telling people about my conditions might have been or prove to be, I feel it’s also a very important step to take. I now approach my illness with the mantra: ‘it is what it is’. Anxiety and Agoraphobia aren't things I’ve chosen to suffer from. I didn’t go into my drama lesson at age 12 thinking: ‘I know what would make this more fun – clammy hands, and an overwhelming sense of terror and acute desperation!’ And all things considered, there’s really nothing to apologise for. Yes, I still find myself doing it to an extent – I say sorry to people for having to dictate where we can sit in a restaurant, or in a cinema, in order to minimise the possibility of my having to leave in an adrenaline fueled mess – but I don’t apologise for the fact that I suffer from anxiety anymore, because it simply can’t be helped, and oddly enough, I feel that it’s actually had a positive effect on me in some strange roundabout way.

Whilst I used to be a staunch pessimist when I was younger, loving to find anything and everything to complain about, I now find myself focusing on the more positive aspects of a situation. Yes, anxiety has caused me many sleepless nights and missed opportunities, but it’s also inspired me to want to help others going through similar difficulties, and to encourage them that it does get better. Honestly, it does.

At my very worst I was forced to return home from university and spend an awful lot of time in bed, feeling more physically unwell than I ever hope to feel again. I lost over half a stone of weight in 3 days. I was depressed, emotionally and physically exhausted: essentially I was a shell of the person I once was. Fast forward a mere year to me graduating from university, with a 2:1 and a smile on my face. (To an extent: it was about 28 degrees Celsius on the day and I was forced to sit on the second row of chairs in a rather large hall – every Agoraphobic’s worst nightmare.) I certainly can’t sit here and proclaim that the journey was an easy one, it wasn’t. In fact, every single day is still a battle, and to an extent it probably always will be, but the fact of the matter remains that I am essentially living proof that if you want something badly enough, you can achieve it.

Anxiety is a bitch. But I personally don’t see any point in sitting around and wallowing about the fact I have to live with it. There will always be opportunities to choose to take the ‘easy way out’, as it were. The arguable ‘easy thing’ for me to have done at my most unwell, would have been to simply hold up my hands and say: ‘Actually this is too hard, I don’t want to do it anymore’, and to have simply dropped out of University. I don’t think anyone would have blamed me for it; people would have understood. And for a long time it looked as if it might be the only realistic possibility. But there’s something genuinely refreshing about hitting rock bottom: the only way is up. Things can only get better. Of course it’s never easy, but nothing that’s worthwhile is easy either, that’s just the way it is.

So to anyone out there who’s currently experiencing a terrible, horrendous time due to some mental illness or another, I promise you things will improve, but often the first step to recovery is the act of telling someone. No one can help you if they don’t know there’s anything wrong, and whilst it’s a truly terrifying prospect - trust me, I know it is - telling people was the best thing I could have ever done and ever have done. Because it set in motion the wheels of change: I told my GP and was referred for a course of CBT, something without which I can quite assuredly state I would never have been able to return to university and to graduate.

Life is all about experiences, and unfortunately not all of them are good. But whilst we can’t choose what happens to us, we can at least choose how we respond. Similarly to the ‘fight or flight response’ that accompanies that rush of adrenaline during a panic attack; we can either face our fears, or turn and run away. But by simply running away you run the risk of never recovering, and in a world filled with endless opportunities and possibilities, that would really be a shame.     

P.S Please feel free to contact me on the email address on the right hand side of the page if you need any help or advice regarding anxiety and the like. If baring my soul can help even one person, it will have been worth it. x