In college, when I had depression, I was told over and over to "fight it". The problem is, when you have depression, it sucks the fight out of you. It destroys your willpower. I remember many days when I laid in bed all day long until my blood sugar crashed and I was forced to eat. There's an old phrase "Go with your gut", but when you struggle with depression, everything in you tells you that you shouldn't do anything. I knew, because I worked at the Student Support Center, that you shouldn't listen to that voice. Still, most days, I didn't put in the effort to muster the willpower to get up and do... Anything.
I've had anxiety for a long time. Trust issues, self confidence issues, generalized anxiety. I thought I knew what it was like, and very harshly judged people who let their anxiety get in the way of living their life. Quitting jobs cause it was to anxiety producing? How crazy. Over the last few months, though, I experienced the most harrowing, overwhelming, debilitating emotional struggle I think I have ever experienced with my anxiety. That's coming from someone who was suicidal in college.
The biggest difference I experienced, and the reason that my anxiety was harder on me, was because while depression drained me of willpower, desire, and feeling, anxiety didn't. Instead, I had all my stubborn willpower, and I felt like I was running against a wall of overwhelming fear that came crashing down every time I made any progress. Instead of an absence of emotion, my emotions were amplified until I couldn't hear anything else.
I have always considered myself a capable person. I work hard, and I get where I am going. Feeling like I couldn't make any progress destroyed me. I felt that if I couldn't even control my emotions, that I couldn't contribute to my loved ones. I couldn't believe them when they said they loved me because I couldn't see what there was to love. I felt that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't possibly contribute enough to anyone's life for them to want me around. I completely lost any sense of value that I had. I felt stuck.
I struggled with this feeling for months. I had so many people supporting me, and I even tried to reach out to help myself, but I couldn't figure out how to change my mindset. If I couldn't win against an emotion, how could I possibly be of worth? I was doing everything I could think of- meditation, medication, exercise, cutting caffeine, reducing sugar intake, talking to people when I was anxious, I even tried getting a dog (that didn't work out at all). I was going through all the motions, but I was so overwhelmed by my fear that I couldn't move forward.
One of the things I did was sign up for a course called recovery formula. (If you are struggling with anxiety and willing to put in work to get better, I highly recommend it.) It helped me change my mindset, although it took time. One thing in particular stuck out to me. It said not to fight my anxiety. At the time this completely perplexed me. It explained that in order to "fight" it, you have to focus on it, and your mind attracts and magnifies the things you focus on. Instead, when you feel anxious, acknowledge the feeling, but don't engage. This was the biggest turning point for me. Once I understood and implemented this concept, things started to get better.
However, things were still slow, and I still felt stuck. I remember one night sitting on the floor in my boyfriends home and crying about how frustrated I was. I truly didn't believe that he could possibly still love me in the state I was in, much less believe in me, particularly after some of the things I had said in my most emotional, raw, and irrational moments. But somehow he let each of them go and forgave me over and over again. That night, I felt horrible about myself because I knew that what I was doing wasn't fair to him or me, and I was so incredibly frustrated. He told me that he wouldn't have stayed if he didn't believe that I could get better. I was stunned. How could he possibly believe in me after months of irrational emotional outbreaks? But somehow he did. He told me, as he had every day for months, that he loved me. And that time it stuck. It broke through the walls I had put up of shame and self blame and hatred towards myself, and let a tiny bit of light in.
And then he said that he believed I could do it, but doing everything in the world to get better wouldn't help me if I didn't believe in myself. And it woke me up.
I still have really hard days, where I feel afraid. But since then, I have worked really hard to see and remember my worth, and to always strive to be my best self. Some days that is a little better than others. And if you are reading this, and you are feeling anxious and afraid, I know that you can too- but first, you have to believe in yourself.
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