Me, Myself and Anxiety.

Mental health is a funny old thing. Talking about it brings many a conversation along side it all doesn’t it? I feel like the world and their wife is talking about mental health these days and it’s all about how we aren’t talking about it.

Maybe I should talk about it.

Sort of seems weird to me to think someone might be reading this and they don’t know about my anxiety. They’re might be people I went to school with reading this thinking they had no idea that on the inside I am in fact a huge nervous nelly (as lee likes to call me).

I always like to say ‘I was born anxious’ because I was! I have always been a worry wart where I would panic over simple things and get worked up, throw up, and sort of move on. When I was little and at school my mum would give the teachers extra uniform for me to change into because she was sick of them sending me home for no reason. Imagine being a tiny tot and worrying so much about the world, bit sad really.

After a while I think my anxiety, not so much wandered off but definitely became less dramatic. I would certainly have my episodes but it wasn’t like everyday when I was little, or so it felt anyways. Probably until I was about 14 and I was in PRIME puberty stage when everything in my brain had turned into soup and that’s when the real panic attacks started to happen.

It’s been a weird journey from then really, sometimes I’ve gone nearly a year without a big full blown panic and then I have them about three times a week because I hear a helicopter or maybe I had a headache in an odd place and I’ve decided it’s a tumour. These are the sort of things I get worked up over, tiny and very pointless things. And it is so annoying. SO ANNOYING.

If you haven’t grasped that I’m very annoyed with my own anxiety let me just delve deeper for you. What annoys me about my anxiety is my vulnerability to those who surround me. Boyfriends are a prime example of these people. Especially when they think that you ‘need them’ to some how stop yourself getting into this panicked state. It’s infuriating. Yes granted it’s nice to have support and someone calming you down if you’re afraid but the whole ‘oh don’t worry I’m here theres nothing to be scared of oh you poor little girl you’re so fragile’- piss off. Piss off forever. Yes I’m a mess, yes I’m currently having a panic attack BUT let me tell you someone ladies and gents just because my brain decides to go loco every so often DOES NOT mean I am 1. A wimp or 2. Not brave.

This is something that I’ve only recently come to terms with. Y’see I have an insane fear of flying, so insane that when I went to Spain just recently I had to have tablets for 3 weeks before hand and very strong tablets for the actual flight AND I still sat on the end of the bed at 4:30am the morning of the flight thinking ‘I really can’t do this!’. But my mum and Lee told me some solid and great things during these weeks of absolute hysteria and that is 1. I am allowed to be afraid, but I must remain calm and 2. I am brave.

I am brave.

And as those plane wheels touched that tarmac and I managed to keep my cool the entire flight with no shaking, no throwing up and no intense feeling of doom- I cried. I shed real life tears like never before because it hit me like a tonne of bricks. I am brave. And yes some people face life threatening circumstances or have huge problems with so many more things but I was so afraid of my anxiety that for a few weeks it took over me like a shadow over my soul, but I did it. I felt the fear and I did it anyway.

I am brave.