Anxiety disorders are kind of misunderstood. Everyone has
anxiety, so I think some people don’t get what the big deal is. Anxiety disorders became a manipulation tool for doctors and the pharmaceutical
industry more readily than other disorders that could necessitate taking medicine because there is ostensibly an entire population of people who have symptoms. So it has become this sort of ‘where’s waldo?’ of people who actually
suffer from anxiety in their day-to-day lives.
Living with an anxiety disorder basically means that every
moment of your life has you on the edge of your seat, and not in a fun, roller
coaster way. You are constantly in this mode where you try to
prepare for an assumed disaster that might never come, a perpetual fight-or-flight. Most situations and
conversations toss you head first into a sea of “what ifs.” You basically are never relaxed. I don’t have the
ability to relax because there is always something to worry about.
And here’s where it’s a disorder: you lack the ability to
discern when anxiety is useful and when it is detrimental. I think normal
anxiety has its function. It’s like a preparation tool. But when you start
putting anxiety before everything in your life, you create this unyielding force
field of worry that follows you around wherever you go. No moment is sacred.
So next time you are talking to someone with an anxiety
disorder, keep that in mind. It makes you do and say really weird things. It
makes a lot of people jittery. It makes you talk too much or too little.
Sometimes it just makes you say really weird things. Like today at the coffee
shop. I told the coffee guy that I was smarter than him while he got my coffee.
What? Why would I say that? My anxiety also makes me laugh a lot at weird and
inappropriate times. It makes me do the craziest things, really, now that I’m
thinking about it .So keep that in mind. It’s not me, it’s the anxiety. And a
little part just me, too.
Comments
Post a Comment