It would be a safe bet to say that everyone has experienced some form of anxiety in their lifetime. We can feel anxious about a test, a first date, or even the day to day decisions we make regarding our job or social life. Just because we’ve all experienced anxiety doesn’t mean that anxiety is the same for all of us. Anxiety feels different for everyone. Having feelings of anxiety is not the same as suffering from an anxiety disorder. And as an individual that suffers from Generalized Anxiety Disorder, I can say on good authority that sometimes anxiety can be easy to explain, but most days, anxiety is more complex than words can even describe.
Anxiety is much more than “just worrying.” I’ve battled with my anxiety for my whole life, but for a long time, I didn’t recognize it as anxiety. It presented as other things — physical symptoms or my mind racing a million miles a minute. It was being bored, but not wanting to do anything; being tired, but not being able to sleep. When I’m having a particularly anxious day, I feel like I’m forgetting something important…ALL DAY LONG.
It wasn’t until I did some serious soul searching that I finally started to understand my anxiety for what it really was. Anxiety is a shape shifter. It can take on many forms on the outside, but at its core, it’s always the same.
Fear.
When we’re anxious, we’re actually afraid. Anxiety is fear of anything and everything all at once. I can’t speak for anybody else out there that also suffers from GAD. I can only share my thoughts and experience. If nothing else, maybe this can help you explain to someone else in your life how you’ve been feeling.
Anxiety is so much more than just the physical symptoms, but the list of ways your body can tell you it’s feeling anxious is long and kind of exhausting. For years, I never even realized that these were ways my body was trying to communicate with me. My body was all like, “Hey lady, we’re freaking out right now!” And I was just like, “Why the hell am I feeling like this?!” Some of this may seem familiar, or you may experience something completely different. Either way, we can all learn more from each other about anxiety by talking about it.
Physical Symptoms of Anxiety:
- Headaches
- Stomach pains
- Heart palpitations
- Shortness of breath
- Hot flashes or chills
- Hyperventilating
- Uncontrollable crying or emotions
- Inability to sleep
- Feeling panicky, scared or irritable
- Nausea
- Skin rashes
- Feeling shaky or restless
- Fatigue
- Muscle Aches
- Dry mouth
- Inability to concentrate
- Feeling detached or stressed out
More than all the physical symptoms, there are a whole bunch of ways that anxiety plays tricks on your mind. Self-doubt can be pretty undeniable, especially when you suffer from GAD. A friend doesn’t answer a text right away? Anxiety says they must hate you now. Not feeling well for a few days? Anxiety tells you that you must be dying. Any worst-case scenario is not off limits.
I like to think of my anxiety as a little monster that lives inside my head. Sometimes, she comes out and wreaks havoc, but most of the time, she just tortures me from the inside. It’s like the anxiety is the puppet master, and I’m attached by the strings. She tells me what to do, how to act, and what to think. It can feel like I’ve lost all control.
Giving up control is probably the hardest part for me. I need to be in control, most likely because there is so much about my life that I have no control over. For me, I tend to bite my lips. I pick at my cuticles. And over the last year or so, I’ve developed the bad habit of pulling out my hair. Because of anxiety, my sleep has suffered. My eating patterns are all over the place. I lost a lot of people that I thought were my friends. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel. And it’s okay to not be okay.
Sometimes, it feels like you’ve been holding your breath under water for so long, that it might be easier to just swim down. Anxiety can make you feel like you’ve forgotten how to breathe. I wish I could offer a “cure-all” for it. Trust me, if there was one, I would be all over that. The only real way to get past anxiety is to work through it. Learn the ways your body is communicating with you. In a future post, I’ll offer some ways to better handle anxiety, but for now… Just know that you’re not alone.
