Anxiety

Anxiety is so much more than the word can properly express. At least it has an "x" in it. An "x" seems appropriately hard, strange, alien. Because when you're wracked with anxiety, your body feels pretty alien. Your fingers get kind of tingly and your face feels a little numb. It should go without saying that your stomach is trying to tie itself into knots that would impress a sailor. Your skin feels hot but your body feels cold. Your head feels like it's a size too small to hold in your brain.

Breath is hard to come by. You breathe, you suck air into your lungs, but you can't seem to get enough. Your breaths tend to be too shallow, too quick. So you try some deep, cleansing breaths and that helps, a bit, for a moment. And then your heart is beating too loud and too hard and too fast and your breath is shallow and quick again. You feel sharp pains in your bowels and realize anxiety is affecting you just...everywhere.

Normally, anxiety causes my thoughts to race, flitting from idea to idea, barely pausing before whizzing off to the next. On Latuda my thoughts were like something seen through muddy water. Hazy, distant, hard to reach. Rather than flit my mind floundered along, trying to reach an idea and then giving up halfway to swim along towards a closer idea.

Right now, my mind is struggling to come up with words. As anxiety trickles into my throat, constricting it, straining it, my mind is sleepy and dull. Why do we need to come up with words to describe how we feel? We feel it - isn't that enough? Why torture ourselves further with the incessant need for words. Shut up, brain, this is supposed to be helping.

Anxiety over nothing is so much worse than anxiety caused by a reason. When there's a reason you understand it. You can prod and poke at it, like tonguing a sore tooth. It makes the anxiety flare, but it lets you know there's a reason and that, with the proper steps taken, the pain will go away. But anxiety for no cause? There's just this constant haze of angst and a sort of itchy feeling like you're supposed to remember something, do something, be somewhere.

Bipolar disorder also causes delusions of grandeur. Ideas that we're more important than we are, or should be. This tends to feed into the anxiety whenever it shows its ugly head. The idea that I was so smart and had so much promise and I was supposed to be more, oh so much more than I am. The cringing memory of all those classes in college failed because I couldn't make myself keep going. I must have failed a half dozen classes that way, maybe more. Finally, I decided to settle for an associates degree instead of a baccalaureate because I couldn’t take it anymore. I wince every time I think of the lost money on all those failed classes, the lost opportunity to be more.

Don't say I could go back to school because I can't. I'm terrified of school. School ended for me when my anatomy class gave me the worst breakdown I've had to date. I had been doing so well in that class, I was one of the top 5 students out of two 400 student classes. And it was a hard class, renowned at my school and even within the state for being one of the hardest classes. A "C" was a good grade and I had a high "A". But I started getting more and more anxious about my studying. I would have to read and reread paragraphs because I couldn't focus on the words; I was distracted by the worry that I wasn’t doing enough and I would fail the class.

It got to the point where I was staring at my textbook and having flashes of heat overtake my body while my skin felt cold and clammy. I was almost visibly shaking as I tried to force myself to study and I couldn't - I couldn't read a word. My eyes blurred and my mind couldn't focus. The thought of going back to that classroom filled me with so much dread that I screamed. And then I started crying. And I screamed and I cried for about 2 hours, if I remember right. And poor Ryan just laid next to me on the bed as I kicked and flailed and hugged pillows to my face before flinging them away. I couldn't be touched, I couldn't be comforted. I just railed against the injustice of the world while really I was just so terrified of failing.

So I never went back. I was past the withdrawal deadline but it didn't matter because I couldn't do it anymore. The thought of going into that classroom and sitting down, even just to "Christmas tree" the tests and try to get a few points so I could pass the class was too much for me. Even thinking about it now, I'm sick to my stomach thinking of having to face those classes again. Face my professor who thought so highly of me that he kept encouraging me to go to medical school. How could I ever face them again with half measures when I had been one of the best? I feel like I let him down. I let myself down.

The worst part about all of that is even though I was physically incapable of studying, physically incapable of going back to that class, it felt like I could have if I just tried harder. It felt like I could have rallied if I wanted it bad enough. If I wasn't so damn lazy. Except I wasn't lazy with that class - I studied 6 hours a day, every day for that class alone. But because I couldn't finish I felt like it was because of my laziness. Perhaps another throwback to a childhood with a mother who lashed out at her children because she couldn't lash out at her boss; I was often called lazy as a child and it hurt. It hurt because it meant I failed and I didn't want to fail my mother because that made her mad and not love me anymore.

Well, she did - I just didn't see it because I was a child and couldn't grasp the enormity of the personal hell my mother suffered every day. Kids aren’t great with understanding complex emotional webs - they see stuff pretty simple. Mom is happy and loves me or mom is angry and hates me. Not a lot of room for in-between there, to a child's eyes. So, when I failed and made mom mad, I made my mom not love me and that is the worst feeling there is. When I failed and made dad yell I made dad not love me and that hurts so bad you can't imagine.

It doesn't matter that as an adult I know now that my parents loved me but had their own issues going on to deal with - it doesn't take away that ingrained dread of failure and the consequences that come with it. Funny thing they don't tell you about therapy: knowing why something happens doesn't make that thing stop happening. It's not some weird magic where you find the reason for a problem and suddenly that problem is gone. It just gives you answers you didn't have before so you can try to work around them. That's why a lot of therapists now don't bother looking for why you feel that way but what to do when you do feel that way.

So when I'm anxious and I'm suffocated by the thought of failing at work I'm supposed to remind myself that it's okay to not be perfect. That my bosses are aware of my treatments and are understanding and I just need to let them know and we'll sort it out. I'm supposed to remember it's not my fault. I'm supposed to remember I'm still a good person and a good worker even if I'm having a bad week.

Unfortunately, when you're crazy it's a little hard to remember that. That's what the therapists are there for - to remind you. And remind you. And remind you. And beat it into your head until you believe it. I haven't been in therapy long enough to believe it. Yet.