How does anxiety affect you?

Anxiety affects people in many different ways, most of which I have already covered. In this post, I have split them into main sections.

1. Physically

As mentioned before, anxiety can affect your body. For example, sickness, headache, your stomach, sleep, you can become irritable, fidgety, eating less or eating more etc. It changes for everyone. However the problem here is, some of these symptoms represent illness. Even though from the outside people know you are not ill, you can't help but question it yourself which can sometimes increase your anxiety and stop you from doing the things that you love.

2. Mentally

Anxiety is exhausting. From the minute you wake to the minute you go to sleep, it is with you. It often means not being able to do the things that you love and want to achieve in life and can make it difficult to complete the smallest of tasks. For someone who really wants to strive and do well in life, this is extremely difficult as you feel life is passing you by where as everyone else is out having fun and this mental barrier often leads to depression. Depression and anxiety come hand in hand; if you are depressed you often become anxious and vice versa. It can create a very debilitating lifestyle.

3. Relationships

Generally speaking people are really supportive, however there will be some arrogant people out there who are not.

Support is great but people can become tired. Some members of my family don't always understand and can lose their temper if I can't do something, where as othher people will just brush it off and be a bit insensitive with their ways. It can be exhausting looking after someone whom is constantly unwell, but that doesn't mean they don't want to support you.

Do people really understand?

As mentioned in previous posts, some people may not understand and this is why there is stigma, discrimination and bullying.

The problem is you will only know what it feels like if you experience it. However there are some great people out there such as your therapists, friends and family who will all try their best to understand and support you. You could have all of the information in the world on the topic, but still not fully understand it.

The best thing you can do to help a person understand is to try and explain it to them simply. You could use the flight or fight system as a short example. Of course, they may still find this weird...after all, panicking about getting into a car may seem strange to another person. The way my mum explained it to my teachers is likening it to a phobia. When I had severe problems with getting into school, my mum explained that it's like having a phobia of spiders. You're scared of them, but you don't know why.

The many people who support you and love you will try their best to understand and even if they don't, they will still continue to support you. As you've read in the last post, there are a few family members and friends that don't understand and have said that to me, but are still ever so kind. But there are people that won't understand and may be quite ignorant about it and that is their problem. Until they've experienced it themselves, they will never know. They may make sweeping statements or get angry - just ignore it and try to explain to them if they're willing. Not everybody is going to understand your situation, just like not every person understands every single maths problem.

Remember that you need support throughout your recovery, not people who don't care and this is where you have to be a little bit selfish. Keep going!

How will people react to me?

In the last post we covered the idea of stigma and you would be correct in saying that stigma is a reaction of mental illness. However, in this blog post I want to talk about how people react to your mental illness journey. I've split this into two: People being fed up and people who don't think before they speak.

The people who are supporting you, love you and want to be there every step of the way. Unfortunately, we are all humans and we cannot sustain such support for a long period of time. We all need time to ourselves. What I've found is that occasionally friends and family will become tired, have a shorter temper and want time alone. Just because they are a bit fed up, doesn't mean they love you any less or care for you any less. Some have even indirectly said that they can't take it anymore. They will support you 100% of the time and just because they may be finding it hard to see you suffering, doesn't mean they have stopped supporting. They are just charging their batteries to help you further! Don't give up on yourself. 

There have also been times when what has been said is possibly inconsiderate and insensitive.  When something inconsiderate is said, I just try to brush it off and argue that it's them who has the problem. For example, I'll speak about my problems, if it's topic of conversation. However when I told about my troubled thoughts, I got told that I wasn't the person to be expected to have these problem and everything carried on as normal. I put it down to a lack of understanding that leads to a lack of compassion.

You are not to blame for your situation and sometimes people will sometimes say things that they don't think about before hand.

Remember, your friends and family may have helped you through your hardest times, so don't forget to help them when they're feeling a bit fed up.