One of the weirdest things for me is that my anxiety rose along side my depression. It happened very gradually to the point that I really didn’t notice it. Early on I just assumed it was because I never really liked crowds and was always more of a lone wolf. Over the last year or so I’ve tried to reflect and assess my sense of anxiety in more detail.
For some, the physical manifestations are more severe than what I experience. I’ve generally had tension, slight heart rate increase, the occasional knots in my stomach. I can generally tolerate heading out somewhere and being around people but sometimes it just takes one or two trigger stimuli to make me really uncomfortable. Public displays of affection usually have me turning the other way. Really cheerful faces started to make me feel sort of alien. That sense of “why can’t I just be like everybody else around me”. I think for a lot of folks battling anxiety there’s a pervasive fear that everyone around us sees the fear, the sense of not belonging and is judging.
It’s always a bit weird talking about clinical anxiety with someone who hasn’t gone through it. Most folks associate anxiety with nervousness but there’s that subtle difference of severity which makes anxiety so debilitating for some folks.
I happened upon this interesting photo series while looking for inspiration.
The creator did an excellent job in creating some very powerful metaphors about the struggle of those suffering from severe anxiety. The door full of deliveries eerily strikes a chord with me, as did the sink and the floss picks. The smallest social norms become seemingly colossal hurdles. I think to many, they’ll look at that statement and think “It’s all in your head”. The thing is, what isn’t in your head? Your perception of your reality is by definition there in your mind. Some of us are just perceiving things in ways that are harder to address than others.
