The Thing About Anxiety

About a year ago, I started paying more attention to that tingle in my stomach, that knot in my throat and the pounding in my chest. 

What I thought to be complete psychotic female meltdowns actually turned out to be, to my surprise, anxiety. I've always been a Nervous Nellie but I always attributed it to my Type A personality, control freak-isms, and well, being crazy.

When you say anxiety it kind of feels like an allowance to be psychotic. I take what I can get. 


She's not crazy. She just has anxiety.

Once I was self-aware enough to realize my anx and pumped to not actually be insane, I started trying to get a hold of myself and not be such an anxious freak. 

Always Typically, it backfired. Because the more you focus on not being an anxious freak, the more you actually become an anxious freak. You become stressed about your stress and it's such a mind-fuck that you end up in the fetal position crying, sweating, blacking out, texting your mom.


Cue tingle in stomach, knot in throat, heart pounding. Anyone who has had anxiety knows, once you get to this point, it's pretty much all over. There really is no calming yourself down from here. And what's really fun -- when you're in the middle of this cycle and some ass clown is trying to help by saying; calm down, just relax, settle, breathe.

CAN'T. WON'T.

At this stage, you're either going to run into a full-blown anxiety attack or you're going to pass out.

The thing about anxiety is that sometimes it hibernates. Something happens that would typically turn you into a crazy ball of anx and it doesn't. It's kind of like that '...wait for it...wait for it...' mentality and then it never comes. And you're like 'go me!' because look how fucking calm you are? The epitome of laid back. I'm practically a stoner by now. 

Just when you start listening to Reggaeton and checking your companies drug testing policy, It comes back. You have a Super Bowl-sized meltdown about something totally irrelevant, like whether or not you should get bangs. You stay up all night, you toss and turn, you research pictures, take dozens of screen shots from your iPhone, write a pros and cons list and before you know it, it's 4am and you JUST DON'T KNOW IF YOU WANT BANGS OR NOT.

You spend the entire next day in an adrenaline hysteria, scour the Internet about haircuts and really try to make a rational decision. Because, if you make the wrong decision, well, you just can't deal. 


And so help me God if someone has the audacity to tell you this 'isn't that big of a deal.' 


Obviously, I know that. War in Middle East, American economy, poverty, Demi Moore - bigger fish to fry, I get it. The thing is, I know getting bangs isn't that big of a deal but I can't stop thinking that it is a big deal. That's what anxiety is. This issue has all the sudden become life or death and you become so wrapped up and enveloped in your stress that you can't move past it (without panic attack, passing out). 


It's a bizarre feeling that seems difficult to describe and even more ridiculous to write about. But I'm having one of those days today, and I can be comforted that I'm definitely, probably just a little bit absolutely I'm fucking off my rocker insane in no way crazy, I have anxiety.