Photo by Alessandro Erbetta on Unsplash

Do you know who you are when you don’t feel anxious?

It’s something that I’m still discovering for myself.

I’ve found it to be a layered type of experience, hidden layers. It’s not until I start feeling calm that I really see how anxious I’ve been feeling, and how feeling anxious has affected my behaviour, my sense of self, and what I achieve, or rather, don’t.

I hadn’t felt anxious for a while. I’d been enjoying writing, doing my website, making plans, starting to implement them, meeting people. It was quite lovely; peaceful, there was time for everything.

Then it started, that slow descent. I’m not good enough, I don’t know enough, I can’t do what I want to do, no one is interested because I’m useless… then sudden hits of panic, fear, dread, and anxiety screaming in my head. That I must get a job, any job, and if you’re not going to do that, well…… this is what you’re heading towards…

But…. I’ve been hearing this for a long time now, years. Every time it shouts too loud I stop and listen to it. I do what it says, I get a job, my own work slows down and eventually stops, I get tired, burn out and I’m back at the beginning again. It’s the same loop time and time again, a pattern repeat. I’ve made slow progress.

Recently I thought that I’d wait it out, keep on doing my stuff, see what happens.

What happened was that I crashed. I reached rock bottom and I hit that point where I didn’t give a shit what was going to happen I was just so sick of being in this loop. No more of this.

I knew I would be fine. All of this drama was going on in my mind. It’s done it before, with PTSD. If I could survive that, then I can do anything. Knowing this didn’t stop it from feeling awful and real and desperate and I had no answers, only a desire to push ahead this time. Anxiety demands answers and doesn’t like it if none are forthcoming.

I talked to friends and I started to see what had been going on behind the scenes. I began to notice where the gaps in my knowledge were, what I didn’t understand. And I started to fill those gaps with what I needed to know. I needed to know a lot. Costs of doing business, general living expenses, savings, what I wanted out of life for me and my children. It blew what I thought I knew out of the water. The brain fog started to lift and indignant anger took its place. How come I haven’t looked into this before? I’d been working off a faulty plan and anxiety had kept me from seeing it.

I napped on and off for 2 days straight at the weekend. When I was awake it was the type of awake that has you staring at the horizon and nothing in your brain clicks into place. It used to worry me, still does a little. I do know that eventually, it goes, I’ll wake up, something will be different.

It was different today, I felt clearer, I wanted to write, I wanted to move forward with some plans. These plans were taking me in a completely different direction to the one that I’d, well, planned. Things were making sense in a way that they had never done before.

Then I opened an email and anxiety hit me. It was like lifting the lid on a pot of pure hell. I felt distant enough from it for it not to engulf me. It was like a whirling torrent of pure hatred directed towards me. ‘Shit’, I thought, ‘that’s been in my head for years’. I put the lid back on it and slowly stepped away. The words and the energy reverberated around my mind for a few minutes longer.

There’s something about being so close to something so toxic that makes you want to shake it off or have a wash. I went back to writing.

So, who I am without anxiety? Usually pretty calm, content, brimming full of ideas. But this, with work, is unchartered territory for me. I’m a bit tired, cautiously optimistic, standing on a precipice above the clouds, in the quiet, leaving behind the security of the screaming banshee in my head directing my life in circles.

Different, that’s who I am.