It's a sinking feeling, for me, it always has been. It's different for everyone. I know people for whom it becomes hard to catch their breath, others where they get pain in their head or their neck. But me? It feel it right in the pit of my stomach.
Anxiety. It's a strange old beast. Webster's English dictionary tells me that it's "a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease about something with an uncertain outcome". Bollocks to you, Mr Webster. Have you ever experienced proper anxiety? Apparently not. There are plenty of sensations I dislike and things that make me uncomfortable. There are not many things in life I hate. I fucking hate anxiety. HATE the bastard. It has coloured my life in so many ugly ways. That pit in my stomach. It's overbearing, overpowering, overwhelming. It's a huge part of who I am. As age brings a vague sense of wisdom with it, I have begun to ponder if rather than battling against it, might I be better off embracing it? And if so, how?
The dramatic twists and turns of my youth no doubt brought about huge uncertainty, but it wasn't until I hit my late teens that I really remember intense anxiety first rearing it's head. My earliest memory of such was when I was about 15. A year or so had passed since the accident which fractured my Dad's skull. My Mum was out in town, said she'd be back about midnight. Midnight came and went. By two am I was positively crippled with it, doubled over. In retrospect I can empathise with my younger self because I was not knowledgeable enough at that age to even understand what was happening. I was mentally fearful that something tragic had happened to Michelle, a trait that has stayed with me ever since what happened to my Dad. At that age you don't know enough to block out those thoughts and you embrace them. The fear would feed the anxiety in my stomach. The anxiety in my stomach would feed the fear and worry in my brain. My thoughts would get more and more dramatic. The anxiety would get worse and worse. I remember lying in my bed with my heart thumping out of my chest, real fight or flight stuff, like I was about to go to war.
So it went. Relationships and work were always worst. Relationships in particular. I have carried around a deep seated insecurity my whole life, a feeling of inadequacy that has filtered into all my relationships. A minor argument with a girl I was going out with and I would need endless reassurance that this was not going to be the end of our relationship. Of course, paradoxically, the more reassurance I sought, the rockier the ground on which the relationship stood. But the anxiety fed the worry and I had no choice. I was incapable of making cognizant decisions to act on these impulses or ignore them, the anxious feelings have always been so powerful that thought never got a chance to show its face before the impulse forced me to act. It worked both ways as well. When I wanted to end a relationship that I was unhappy in, once I did it a huuuuuge anxiety would creep in, fed by the feelings of inadequacy I mentioned earlier - have I made a mistake? Will anyone else have me? - and I could not stay the course long enough to bypass them. Before I knew it, I would take the girl back. Within a week or two I'd be cursing my decision making.
And then there is the lengths to which I will go to avoid anxiety. In my teens and early 20's, it was alcohol. In later years it's been mostly food. Anything that will change my chemical make up and make me feel something else. If I am so full I could burst, well at least that feeling in my stomach isn't anxiety.
This has followed me around my whole life. There have been times when I manage in it better than others. Now is not one of them! But the only person who can change that is me. No one else is going to do it for me. I have to pull myself up by my bootstraps and tell myself it is ok not to be ok. Uncertainty is part and parcel of daily life. It is not to be avoided. It is to be embraced.
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