I know that anxiety has been talked about
many times on the blogosphere, but I just feel like I needed to write this
post, as much for myself as you. I developed social anxiety in 2013 and started
to receive treatment at this point, I’ve been told that my anxiety was fuelled
by my body dysmorphic disorder, which had stemmed from years of bullying.
After three years of living with anxiety
I’ve concluded that it’s like walking through life with yourself as your own
worst critic, the meanest bully - you devise the worst ideas about what you
could do wrong and then cast this self-doubt as a dark shadow over your day so
that it taints everything that you do. I spend a large portion of my day
feeling suffocated by my doubts and fears; what if I look stupid? What if I
fail? It’s hard to take chances and live your life when you believe that the
outcome of all your actions is going to be bad, you begin to stop doing things
because you believe your anxiety. You believe that you will make yourself look
stupid, that you will fail. The more that you avoid these triggering
situations, the more you nourish the anxiety, anxiety feeds on fear and
avoidance.
I can manage my anxiety quite well most
days, but I do feel like it holds me back from living my life to the fullest
and being the happiest that I can be. I hope that one day I will wake up
without the suffocating feeling engulfing me.
It’s important that you don’t let the anxiety
win. You don’t have to worry about taking a massive jump into the darkness,
just concentrate on taking baby steps. Don’t feel pressured into taking
medication or having CBT if you don’t want to, choose the treatment that you
want and see what works for you. Personally, CBT didn’t work for me, but after
trialling different medication I’ve found something that helps me to manage my
anxiety to a certain degree.
Shona xx
Shona xx
