It’s been a very long time since I talked about my anxiety. It may be because, in the last five years through therapy and self-reflection, I have reached a place where whenever this wild beast rears its ugly head from the bottom of my stomach to the corners of my chest, I somehow tame it.
I journal, take myself on walks, lift weights, listen to good music, meet a friend and get lost in their world or dive into a book. In our chronically online world, anxiety triggers are everywhere. So learning how to navigate them is a crucial part of survival. You build walls and boundaries and only let people in who are good for your soul and for your head.
Last week when the wild beast visited me, I was caught off-guard. Was it because I was so exhausted from the late nights I had been pulling at work? Was it because travel-drained and sleep-deprived my body had let down the barbed-wire fences and relaxed for a little bit? Was it because the stress of this month was more than I had anticipated? It could be any or all of these, but on Thursday when I felt my stomach drop and my hands shiver, I realised that the anxiety I had carefully kept out of my world for so long has come back with a vengeance. I felt my head grow heavy, and my body tense up – it’s what you would feel if you encountered a wild beast on a forest hike. It was fight or flight. As I write this newsletter to you, my stomach feels pitless and I have had a headache that has lasted me four days now.
I had forgotten how living with constant low-lying anxiety feels like. It is debilitating. You lose your appetite, you lose your ability to experience joy, you forget how to even fake a smile and you find yourself crying into your partner’s chest at busy crossings in the middle of the day. And the worst of them all – no one can see what you are going through. So, you are expected to go on with life like nothing is wrong, that every part of your body and your mind aren’t asking you to just give up. You still show up to work meetings, talk sense, and do your tasks but your heart is thumping against your chest, your joints hurt from the stress and your left eyelid won’t quit fluttering.
What do you do when this has been your reality not just for about half a week but for almost half of your life? When you have built coping mechanisms but when it strikes it feels like half a decade's worth of the work you did has been undone? How do you get yourself back to equilibrium?
My friends tell me to prioritise myself first and take that sick leave. They ask me to do it now before it gets so bad that I have to be away for longer to recover. My therapist tells me the same thing but she doesn’t give me the answer; she pushes me to come to the same conclusion myself. But my overachiever, A-type heart tells me to stick it through so till the end because I have worked so hard on whatever is causing me this anxiety. Alex holds me tight whenever I ask him to. Leyla tells me to give myself a hug (this works!). I try to journal and write this newsletter. The pit at the bottom of my stomach fills up for a moment before it drops again.
What I am trying to tell you is that being an anxious person is hard. Sometimes, even when you know all of the solutions, your brain rejects them and forces you to coexist with the wild beast. But the wild beast is unpredictable. Sometimes, it is like a nonchalant pet cat, leaving you alone, at others, it is a clingy dog that won’t leave you alone even if you just want to get your 'shit' done and in special circumstances, it is a vicious Bengal tiger waiting to maul your nervous system into fragments.
You can’t tame the wild beast effectively. You can only wait for it to get tired of wreaking havoc on your body and leave. And after it’s gone, you can build stronger fences, taller walls and stronger bolts for your doors.
Until next time, taming my wild beast,
A tight hug