I underwent a year of treatment to get a better understanding of Anxiety. How it affected my life, how to wrest control back, how to ground myself and focus on what was actually happening. My mind had spent so long fixating on imagined futures that the present moment was almost foreign. I felt vulnerable. A large part of my anxiety centred around being prepared for anything that might happen, especially things that I couldn’t anticipate. Stay constantly alert, vigilant, ready to act because when this impossible-to-predict awful thing happens, I’d be the one best positioned to react and keep myself or my loved ones safe. I had to learn to base my worries on my experience not my imagination. This didn’t stop me from worrying, it didn’t remove my lizard brain survival instincts, but that was never the goal. It merely allowed me to control the fear tap more and reduce the flow. Even turn it off for the first time in my adult life.
There was only one problem with all of this. Basing myself in my experiences meant facing my experiences. I didn’t fancy doing that. Despite my therapist being aware that I had lost Jas to cancer, the topic of trauma was never properly brought up. I was happy to leave it and thought my work on Anxiety was enough. I did feel much better. The nightly panic attacks were mostly gone, I wasn’t tense 100% of the time I was in public, and my relationship with myself graduated from vitriolic hatred to “he’s alright I guess”.
And then my therapist left the practice, and I was forced to look for support from someone else. Cool.
In my mind, finding another therapist was purely about finding someone to check in with. I thought I had completed my journey but having a regular therapist would be just as important as having a GP (I still hold to this actually). So, I googled nearby psychologists and found Lance. He was local to me at the time, came recommended, and had a free slot for new patients. Perfect. I attended my first appointment, let him know what I was after, and gave him a brief summary of my journey so far. He asked me a bit more about what happened with Jas and I offered a few more details. He sat quiet for a moment then hit me with
“I think you might have some unresolved trauma around the loss of your sister. Have you ever talked to anyone about PTSD?”
My heart and my stomach switched places. This man had the audacity to pull to the light this secret that my mind had worked so diligently to hide from me. The secret that I was absolutely, unequivocally, still not ok.
Lance told me he would very much like to help me deal with this and he had a lot of tools we could use to make the process as easy as possible (see: super fuckin’ difficult). So I accepted. If there truly were unresolved issues, I was keen to work on them. A week later I was tasked with writing down what had happened and it was then that I realised that I hadn’t ever truly thought about it, not actively. It took me several days to finish my account. I presented it at the following appointment, shaken to my core by reliving the worst day of my entire life yet proud of what I had accomplished. He agreed. He was impressed by how I had thrown myself headlong into it, despite the horror I had to face. Then he made me write it again.
“This time, add in the details you left out.”
My dear reader, please know that I’m not exaggerating when I say that I had never be so afraid. Because he was right. I had left the worst parts out. I hadn’t even meant to. Lance described trauma as a cupboard stuffed with glass then hastily closed. As soon as you even nudge the cupboard door, it will all come spilling out and shatter on the floor. So, you avoid it. You may even forget about it. Sure, you can function just fine without it but it’s a big cupboard and you have other precious things stored inside. The lost space and missing items will eventually have to be addressed. Life will get better if you open the cupboard. But man. It’s scary.
It took me weeks to finally do it. When I did, I wept for hours. The pages of my journal are warped from it. Ink is smeared. But I did it. The account you can read at the start of this page is that same one. Only with this in hand could my treatment begin, for hidden within it were the anchors of my disorder.
Looking back on my life, even into my childhood, Anxiety had been a constant companion of mine. I was a nervous, shy, quiet child. I was afraid to ask for anything or make complaints to my parents (despite never being punished for doing so). I got really good and closing doors silently. Lots of little indicators that social media psych majors would cheerfully point at and say “here’s the top 10 signs you might have…”
I also took an hour to fall asleep then had vivid, stressful dreams nearly every night. I had a very hard time engaging with the world for any more than a day and would often disappear into a book or a video game (I still struggle with that actually). The nervous, quiet child grew into a flighty, antisocial adult.
And the masks. Oh the masks. The only time I was ever truly myself was when I was alone or with my older sister. All other times, I was pretending to be someone else. I had a mask for every occasion. I would constantly think of mundane conversations that I might have someday just so I could practice them in my head. I was a character performing his lines. Which was great! You can hate a character all you want; that doesn’t mean that actor is a horrible person. The problem with masks is that they’re heavy, exhausting to carry around, even worse to keep on. This left me constantly tired, which lowered my resilience, which kept me afraid. And so, the masks.
Now here’s the kicker. I was terrified of people thinking I was terrible and yet “knew” deep down that they would be right. I hated myself. Truly. And yet, I couldn’t just ostracize myself because it was my job to remain to help those dear to me. If anyone had a problem, I was to Fix It. The solution? Move every couple of years. Stay just long enough for people to grow to love me but not long enough to get to know me then leave while I was ahead. Start again and ride the high of novelty until the cycle repeats itself.
And, of course, I denied all of it. It couldn’t be true because it didn’t fit my carefully crafted narrative. Yet I knew exactly what to do to avoid facing these problems head on.
God. So many contradictions.
It needs to be said that if you sympathise with any of this, I urge you to talk to a doctor or a clinical psychologist about your experiences. I'm absolutely not an authority on mental health diagnoses. Only a qualified medical professional can say for certain whether or not you have Anxiety. I definitely did though, so if any of my words made your heart jump or poked part of your brain, talk to someone. It's 100% worth it.
I was raised in Nashville. It was there that I was taught to romanticise the ideals of modern stoicism, to replace my inner needs with alignment to Christian values, and to firmly affix my personal value to my ability to hold to my beliefs. To waver under hardship was weakness. To admit to negative emotions was to admit to faithlessness. To claim victory over these things was my constant goal and I took a lot of pride in my ability to stand above, be anxious for nothing, be strong and courageous, and completely bury how I was actually feeling. The mere suggestion that I might be feeling a bit anxious or stressed about something was an insult to the point where I would regularly make statements like:
“I don’t feel anxiety, why would I?”
“I’m always happy for there’s always a reason to be.”
Grief is notably insensitive to all of this. Trauma doesn’t give a single shit.
One year after the loss, my mother returned to the US to deal with trauma in her own way. This left me alone in the apartment where everything happened. It was left to me to move everything I wanted to keep, and give away whatever was left over. I spent a lot of time crying on the floor of that now-too-big apartment, which horrified me. The emotions were spilling past the cracking ceramic door of my ideals.
Sleeping was the hardest. I love a good night’s sleep. I’m a wreck without one. But there was nothing good about my sleep. I would spend hours locked in flashbacks of what happened, overwhelmed by her screams filling my mind. Always screaming. Eventually the routine settled into:
Avoid/dread going to bed.
Finally give into exhaustion.
Have a panic attack.
Fall into a restless sleep filled with nightmares.
But of course, this didn’t fit my narrative. I couldn’t admit to myself that this was all happening because that would also admit I had failed myself and God. I avoided doing anything different because I was so sure that eventually my faith would conquer the grief and I would go back to normal. For two years I lived like this, too prideful to be honest.
Eventually, I couldn’t handle the lack of restful sleep sleep anymore. I made an appointment with my GP (General Practitioner AKA doctor) with the intention of asking him about sleep aids. He listened, expressed understanding, and asked me to fill in a questionnaire to see whether or not sleep aids would be the best solution for me. Well, shocker, the test had nothing to do with sleep aids but was, in fact, a mental health assessment test. I scored quite high! A+ for Josh.
That GP saved my life that day. He made it clear, without words, that he understood the mindset I was coming from. And so he talked to me without judgement. He told me that what I was going through was common and not something to be ashamed of.
I wasn’t a failure for needing help with something too big to handle on my own. That just meant I was human.
He helped me make an appointment with my first clinical psychologist. I would spend the next three years having an appointment every week.
Fellow Writer 