You can’t stop the waves but you can learn to surf!

Living with anxiety is like being followed by a voice. It knows all your insecurities and uses them against you. It gets to the point when it’s the loudest in the room. The ONLY one you can hear.

Do you ever feel like you don’t belong, like every single person is judging your every move, like you’re the ugly duckling in a pond of swans, like everyone is against you? That’s anxiety. It can mess with your brain in ways that nobody else would understand. Make you feel worthless, unloved, underappreciated, like you are never good enough. Anxiety is the most common mental health condition in Australia. Up to one-third of women and one-fifth of men will experience anxiety at some point in their lives some more so than others. When we’re very anxious, we have intense feelings of worry or distress that are not easy to control. Anxiety can interfere with how we go about our everyday lives, and make it hard to cope with ‘normal’ challenges.

When I was in primary school, there was this girl, I didn’t know who she was, she was just a year below me. One day she went up to my friend and asked her if that Erin Maxwell chick was dropped on her head as a child because she looks like a fish from the side. Probably the most ridiculous comment someone could make about one’s appearance. But for me this comment affected the rest of my schooling. From that moment until I graduated year 12 I was so cautious of letting people see me from a side on profile because I was so petrified of the fact that people would think I looked like a fish. Maybe it’s my big brown googly eyes, small button nose and flat face that resembles Dory off finding Nemo I don’t know but that comment hurt me. Some of my friends started calling me fish head, it wasn’t in a mean way to upset me that was just my new nickname. I tried to go along with it as a joke but deep down it hurt and it affected me more than they knew. I even made my snap chat name as fishead_maxwell to make it seem like the nickname didn’t bother me. I still to this day look at photos of myself in disgust because I feel like I look too “fishy” in them. This is what it is like to live with anxiety.

The constant fear that people are talking behind your back, the constant worrying about every little thing said to you. Someone tells you your top is ugly; you throw it out even if it is your favourite piece of clothing. Someone bullies you about a body part of yours you laugh with them at first then cry yourself to sleep that night. Someone tells you that your breath stinks one day, from then on you are constantly worrying about what people are thinking when you talk to them for basically the rest of your life. You worry about the tinniest things, and pick yourself apart when you make mistakes. You remember conversations or events you may have had years ago that embarrassed you or upset you and still to this day those memories affect you, even though those around you would have forgotten all about it that same day. You strive to feel accepted, wanted, loved even though you already are.

Anxiety can affect the relationships you have with friends, family and partners. Some people don’t even know they are suffering with anxiety and I feel like once you do finally realise you have mental health issues and you admit that you need help it becomes easier to control. For me anxiety has affected my relationships the most. I am a happy girl most of the time, I am fun most of the time, I am caring most of the time, I am adventurous most of the time. But sometimes out of nowhere I can go from being over the moon happy to a ball of complete depression and anxiety. This makes dating very hard for me, when the person you are dating doesn’t understand what you are going through. They can’t seem to grasp how someone can go from being so happy one day to being so upset and down the next. Your mind is continuously working against you finding any way possible to make you feel inferior. You scream for constant reassurance of that person’s feelings for you, the constant need for affection, needing to know what they’re thinking, what they are doing, their whereabouts when you aren’t with them. Without this, in your head you are coming up with the worst possible scenarios imaginable to the point you then start a fight out of nowhere to try and make that person confess to something they aren’t even doing such as cheating or lying.

Eventually that person gets tired of fighting an ever losing battle with your mind because they simply just don’t understand you. They start to tell you, that you need help or that you have serious issues that they can no longer deal with. Dating someone with anxiety is difficult but having anxiety and dating someone without it is even harder. You want that person to understand what is going on in your head so badly but you just can’t find the words to explain yourself. It isn’t something that is easily explained, everyone suffers in different ways and there really isn’t a cure other than finding something that helps you to control it. For me healthy eating and regular exercise is the only thing I have found that keeps me in a calm state of mind. I also like to keep myself busy the busier I am the less time my head has to fill up with self-doubt and negativity. I am very lucky that I have met someone that understands me now as he himself suffers a little so he can understand how I am feeling from time to time and relate. He knows how to calm me down when I am in a panic, he knows how to react when I am trying to pick a fight over nothing, he knows when to be silent when I need time to breath and he knows when to speak when I can’t find the words to say. He never has to ask me what’s wrong he just knows when something is not right. He has stood by me no matter what I throw at him with my emotions and actions and I am ever so grateful to have someone so understanding in my life.

Anxiety can make you feel so alone when you are surrounded by people. You are not alone, there are many others out there that are fighting the same battles that you are. Don’t be afraid to reach out for help, you can and you will beat this illness! You just need to find something that can help you to control it. Anxiety is like quicksand, the harder we struggle to escape, the deeper we sink. If you feel like it is starting to take over stop for a second, stop what you are doing and take a deep breath, breathe in and breathe out 3 times. Look around at your surroundings and think about 3 things you are grateful for, 3 things that make you happy, 3 things that make you smile. Hopefully this can help you to forget whatever was troubling you in the first place. Remember you are strong for getting out of bed in the morning when it feels like hell. You are brave for doing things even though they scare you or make you anxious. And you are amazing for trying and holding on no matter how hard life gets. You are no less of a person than anyone else for struggling, for living with this illness, you are superior! It’s exhausting fighting a war inside your head every single day while smiling on the outside.

” The strongest people are not those who show strength in front of us but those who win battles we know nothing about”.