Anxieties

I've talked about dealing with anxiety issues for 3-4 years now - first ever panic attack was somewhere around this time of year during my junior year of college. But looking back, it's been an underlying issue for years. It's really about anxiety in social situations. I can't handle people seeing me as anything less than perfect. And by people, I mean anyone who is my peer or above. (This is why teaching is great for me - the people I spend most of my day with are younger than me; therefore, their opinions, for whatever reason, feel much less threatening.) Any little thing that I do wrong leaves me feeling incredibly embarrassed. And this isn't just mild blushing and sheepishness. My head burns, I get intensely nauseous, I feel worthless, and these feelings all haunt me for hours, days, weeks, months, and years after the incident. (As in memories of a time that I got embarrassed for getting in trouble for something little when I was 3 years old can still tie my stomach in tight knots, burn my face with embarrassment, and take away my appetite for the rest of the day)

And the worst part? I'm well aware that most of my anxiety is entirely irrational. There's no way that everyone in earshot is staring at me and thinking that my shoes are dumb as they squeak when I walk down the hall. But that's what I feel like (and is the reason I'm glad that I finally found new tennis shoes after 3 years of squeaky ones that made me feel incredibly self-conscious). There are myriads of things that normal people do all the time that I avoid or can hardly bear due to feeling anxious and self-conscious:

• I struggle to walk into a room full of strangers and/or acquaintances by myself. On our last professional development day when student council was holding a pancake breakfast for all of the teachers, I tried to walk into the cafeteria on my own. I tensed up so much and was breathing so shallowly that I chose to turn around and walk right back out. I skipped breakfast altogether that day and felt more comfortable awkwardly sitting in the empty room where we were meeting later because at least there I could blend into the furniture unseen rather than be the one walking around where everyone could see me and know that I didn't really belong anywhere.
• At stores, I use the self checkout because I feel so uncomfortable talking with cashiers. And I'd rather keep something broken or spoiled or that I don't want/need rather than dealing with returning it; I fear any possible conflict that might arise and cause the person at the store to think I'm stupid.
• I feel claustrophobic in crowds of people. Being in the middle of a crowd makes me physically tense up.
• I can never say what I think. Sometimes not even with my closest friends and family. To share my opinion risks having the other person think I'm wrong and therefore stupid, prejudicial, old-fashioned, etc. With friends this becomes even harder because in my head I am convinced that if I disagree with someone, they will no longer want to be friends with me
• I can't take constructive criticism. At all. To the point that I now burst into tears as soon as the person is not around. Because it means that they know that I'm a failure (which I'm already self-critical enough to know - but it's mortifying for other people to know what feels like my deepest, darkest secret - that I'm not perfect) I can't even take random minor criticism - like the time it was mentioned in passing in an email that I had made a minor mistake on something at school and proceeded to have to have a teacher on prep have to take my class for 20-30 minutes while I worked through a panic attack.
• I can't make phone calls. Like really can't. I'd rather do things the hard way than get help via a phone help line. Calling people makes me feel nauseous. I use electronic communication whenever possible. Because in writing I can edit and edit and edit what I'm saying and I can avoid getting an immediate response (and therefore pretend for a while that the communication doesn't exist). I love automated phone services. I pray to get the machine whenever I make a phone call - and will call people at times I know that no one will answer in order to avoid having to have a conversation with a human being. As I've struggled with depression and anxiety issues over the last 4 years, plenty of people have given me their number and told me to call them if I need someone to talk to - but I've never called them for fear of being a nuisance, of my perceived need seeming dumb, or of losing a trusted friend or mentor when they realize that I'm something less than perfect. (P.S. When it came to finally scheduling appointments with a new counselor and a new doctor, making phone calls made me so anxious that I avoided it for months until my mom decided to make the appointments for me.)
• I fear authority figures. Because they have power over me. And when they realize that I'm not perfect, they have the power to make decisions that could negatively affect the major areas of my life (e.x. grades, job, etc.) I generally avoid any contact with people who can make decisions about my life that I feel powerless over.
• I can't take the time to take care of myself. As in, I will sacrifice my own well-being to do basically anything that other people think I should do. This ends in things like staying 2 hours after school with students and then averaging 3-4 hours of sleep a night during the week so that I can be the perfect super-teacher that I feel everyone expects me to be (they say that they don't, but let's be serious - a super-teacher is what they really expect). I also fear that if I take any time to take care of myself, I will be labeled as selfish and then be judged as such.
• I can't be around other people when I'm not emotionally put together. That one has brought on many a panic attack. I used to not care who saw me cry. Then I lost nearly all of my "friends" during the portions of college where my depression was worst and at some point in my head I credited it to the fact that no one wants to be around a person who can't at least fake being happy 100% of the time. So now I'm down to fewer 10 people that I won't literally run away from if crying or having a panic attack (seriously - I once locked myself in a bathroom at a family reunion because I couldn't handle being around anyone there when I started having a panic attack).
• I can't break rules. Not even the little ones that everyone breaks. Because I might get in trouble. And then have to deal with an authority figure (who, by definition, is a scary person) who will clearly think I'm stupid and then make some sort of decision that could seriously affect the rest of my life.
• I fear any little thing that might call attention to me and make me seem like a nuisance. Like my old squeaky tennis shoes. Or sneezing (it took me until the last year or two to not hold in a sneeze - and I still try to hold it in during meetings or at performances for fear that I might bother someone else by sneezing)
• Did I mention that all of these things are entirely irrational? Because I'm well aware of that. Which makes me feel even more stupid and imperfect. Which only heightens my need to hide these truths from the world because I fear that the world might find out that I'm stupid and imperfect.

Avoidance is my coping mechanism. I avoid social gatherings and meetings whenever possible; when I have to go, I spend most of my time trying to be invisible - because if no one realizes I'm there, they can't judge me for all of my imperfections. I avoid conflict at all costs. I avoid having any communication with strangers. I avoid authority figures. I avoid being the center of attention. I avoid speaking up in most any conversation. I avoid being seen, heard, or noticed. Because being invisible is better than being seen for all of the imperfections that I am.
And in some ways, being a teacher only makes it harder. Society holds teachers to a higher level of standards than it does most people. So anything I do that might bring judgement down upon a normal person will bring at least twice the amount of judgement upon me - because I'm supposed to be better than most people.
And for the record, there's still stigma about mental illness. I think that it's getting to be more acceptable to be a high school or college student who has mental health issues. But I feel that as an adult, particularly an adult who works with kids, I'm supposed to have a handle on everything, particularly my mental health. It feels like somehow if people know that I have mental health issues, they'll determine that it makes me unfit to be a teachers and to work with teens. It took me a month to tell anyone at school about my anxiety. Two months after that to tell anyone in my department - and that was only because they witnessed me having a panic attack in my office before school one morning. And many in my department still don't know. Quite frankly, if I had never had a panic attack at school, the only person there who would know about my anxiety would be the one who's known me since before I worked there and worried about my mental health years before I ever did. And of the people who have found out more recently, there's only one that I actually feel comfortable talking to about it. And the fact that there's still stigma in mental illness doesn't make things any easier for someone whose brain has already got her convinced that the entire world is already judging her for the rest of her imperfections.
I am finally seeing a new counselor. And I'm going to be working through some things. But something in me wanted to find a way to share with the world what it's like to live a life less than normal. To understand the fact that things that most people take for granted as being easy every day are things that are ridiculously difficult for me to do. And you can't see the difficulty - it's all inside my head, for one; plus I'm getting better and better at hiding it. But here's the thing - I know I've got a long and difficult path ahead of me while I'm working through this. And I want people to know that it's not easy. And I'm not always going to be okay as I'm working through things. But I am working through things - and I'd like to think that that's the part that matters.