When Anxiety Brain Attacks

More and more lately, I feel like I'm taking control of the parts of life that Anxiety Brain has long ruled. Identifying the difference between my own thoughts and the ones that Anxiety Brain sends my way. Telling Anxiety Brain off, frequently multiple times each day. Facing my fears in direct defiance of what Anxiety Brain tells me. But the more I fight for control, the more viciously Anxiety Brain fights back. I grow weary. I pause to catch my breath and regather strength. And those are the moments when Anxiety Brain attacks.

When Anxiety Brain attacks, it takes full control of my nervous system. My body switches into full-on fight-or-flight mode. My heart races. My breath quickens and shallows. My muscles get ready to run, tensing up in anticipation; if I don't move my hands and legs begin to shake. My digestive system turns off any hunger and feels ready to dispel any remnants of what I last ate. My eyes well with tears that refuse to fall, at least at first. I try to snap out of it. I take a deep breath - or two, or three, or a hundred. I try to use up the energy built up for flight, shaking out my arms and legs, bouncing in place, pacing the room, even taking a short sprint given the opportunity. I analyze the thoughts Anxiety Brain is sending my way and counter them with logic and facts, telling myself not to worry, that everything will be fine. I cope. I push through. But I can't seem to seize back control of my nervous system - not when Anxiety Brain attacks.

When Anxiety Brain attacks, memories of the past begin to haunt me. I remember my embarrassing words and actions of the past and wonder if those who witnessed them continue to laugh. I remember the time spent with people and wonder if I was truly welcomed or merely tolerated. I remember the conversations I've had and wonder how many things I said that made the other person think less of me, or how many things I said that offended them. I remember all the times I've failed those around me - as a friend, as a relative, as a neighbor, as a colleague, as a teacher, as a leader, as a citizen, as a Christian, as a person - and I wonder if I'll ever be forgiven by those that I hurt in my failure. I reflect on these memories and try to hold onto the good. I look for the bright sides. I cling to the positive feedback, verbal and non-verbal, shared by those who were a part of each memory. But I don't fully trust my own perceptions of things past - not when Anxiety Brain attacks.

When Anxiety Brain attacks, my most valued allies become my greatest enemies. The person who first caringly identified the signs of an anxiety disorder within me becomes the person I'm most afraid to share those same struggles with for fear they'll be disappointed that so little has changed in the decade since that life-altering night. The person who has more than once checked in on my mental health and told me to contact them when times get rough becomes the person I'm most likely to skirt around the truth with and resist contacting in those hard times for fear I'll be a nuisance with my inability to cope. The person who first demonstrated to me that it was okay to be open about mental health struggles in our friend group becomes the one I'm most afraid to be open with for fear they'll judge me for not conquering my similar struggles as well as they have. The person who I've told multiple times "You keep me sane!" becomes the person whose possible potential negative opinion of me drives me insane with a worry that keeps me up at night as I over-analyze my every word and action of the past, present, and future for fear that I'll at some point do something to devalue myself (if I haven't already) and lose their friendship. I try to combat my fears by taking these people's words and actions at face value. I hold to the clear moments of love, acceptance, encouragement, and support. I try to believe that they are being honest when they tell me that I am valued, and that they won't abandon me for my imperfections. But I wait for the other shoe to drop and the relationships to fall apart because I can't find it in me to fully trust other people to stick around - not when Anxiety Brain attacks.

When Anxiety Brain attacks, I feel stupid. I feel ridiculous. I feel irrational. I feel weak. And then I glance up from my writing to discover a recently-completed art project. It is simple, but deeply meaningful - filled with words of positivity. Each color representing a different person. Some friends, some family, some mentors. Ones who have known me since childhood and ones who've come to know me only recently. People who have taken a moment to share thee good they see in me. Each word representing some aspect of me. What I've done. What I've said. What I've written. Who I am. But that's when Anxiety Brain attacks again, fogging my vision with a cloud of doubt. "That may have been true then, but it's not true now," Anxiety Brain says. "They wouldn't say that if they knew __________," it says. I pause and read each word again, recalling the full quote that was the source of each - quotes stored away in a separate, equally treasured place; each nearly memorized at this point. The cloud of doubt doesn't disappear, but it does thin. Often only time can heal when Anxiety Brain attacks. But those positive words, the memories of the people who shared them with me - they help lighten the load while I wait for Anxiety Brain's attack to subside. They remind me why I keep fighting. They strengthen me for the next time when Anxiety Brain attacks.

My Writing Space at a Glance

The Art Project

Getting Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable

For the first time since I graduated college, I feel like life is falling into place enough that I get to have a relatively normal summer. Most summers I prepare for my life to be completely uprooted and try to plan for whatever the following school year will bring without actually knowing where I'm going to land. This year I'm lucky; I don't yet know the full details of where I'll plant myself next year, but I know enough to feel calm and settled and motivated to tackle the tasks I need to in order to find my footing again. When I realized just how many uncertainties were taken off my plate, I got excited. I started planning for a mostly anxiety-free summer. Except I've realized it's not going to be anxiety-free - but not for the reasons you may think.

For the majority of time that I've seen therapists since my initial mental health diagnoses, our appointments have consisted of crisis management. It's been 8 years of major life stressors (or occasionally minor life stressors that Anxiety Brain blows up until I'm no longer being a functional human being). Outside of building coping skills that work in both times of major crisis and times of minor stress, I've never really progressed in battling Anxiety Brain. I've spent a lot of time getting pushed backward and trying to regain the ground I once had only to get pushed back again, sometimes landing me further behind than I was before. I haven't quite figured out how to move beyond where I was when I first realized that I had a problem. I haven't figured out how to start gaining new ground.

With most major life-stresses off my plate and very few plans for the summer, I decided that I wanted to take this time to start tackling some of my battles with Anxiety Brain head-on - and one battle in particular rose to the top of my priority list. Anxiety Brain likes to tell me that no one wants me around, and it knows that its biggest enemy is people demonstrating that they actually do want me in their lives. Anxiety Brain is also a crafty self-preservationist, so it targets particular people - those who are the most valuable to me, most supportive, most likely to help me grow as a person (or some combination of all three) - and turns those people into my biggest enemies. Anxiety Brain takes a single person or group of people and tells me that that person or group's opinion of me is the only one that matters. And then Anxiety Brain tells me that they don't like me, that they don't want me around, that they think I'm some horrible awkward person that's maybe allowed to exist but only if I'm off hiding in some dark hole where I can't bother anyone. Then, because that person or group is so valuable to me, I'm desperate to convince them that all the things Anxiety Brain says they think about me are wrong (whether they actually think those things or not). So when I do get to hang out with that person or group, I spend the whole time afraid to do anything beyond existing, afraid that I'll say or do something that will rain down their judgement upon me, afraid that if they don't already think all the things that Anxiety Brain says they do, I'll manage to change their minds so that they agree with Anxiety Brain by the end of our time together. It's why I spend the hours, days, and even weeks leading up to social plans feeling nauseous every time I think about it, half-considering backing out of the plans altogether. It's why I spend the hours, days, and even weeks afterward replaying conversations in my head, over-analyzing what was said and the non-verbals accompanying it, reinterpreting even the positive parts of conversation as negative. Doing this often gets so exhausting that I eventually retreat into isolation, occasionally daring to enter social situations but only when someone else reaches out first.

Until this Spring. Until out of nowhere I started finding insane moments of courage to fight back against Anxiety Brain. Until I decided to stop isolating myself and start letting people in. I've finally learned that not only do I need people in order to survive, but I really need people in order to thrive. When I look at life over the past year, my ability to effectively manage anxiety directly correlates with how connected I feel to people I've claimed as a part of my support system. So as I looked at a summer with no consistent social activity planned, I realized that in order to continue the positive projectile I've been on for the past few months, I needed to find ways to be around people.

But I was left with a dilemma. In order to spend time with people, you have to make plans, and to make plans you face two scenarios - to either extend an invite or to accept an invite extended by someone else. Each of these seems simple enough - but not when you have Anxiety Brain around to complicate things. You know those comic strips and cartoons that depict a character trying to make an important decision with an angel sitting on one shoulder and a devil sitting on the other, each arguing which option is better? Living with Anxiety Brain is kind of like that sometimes. Except they're both devils (because there's nothing angelic about Anxiety Brain). And they're competing with each other to make each option and its consequences sound more terrifying than the other. And they're less trying to get you to choose one way or the other but instead trying to make you feel paralyzed because both options sound horrifying and awful, and you wish you could somehow not have to be in charge of choosing either one. That's what my last few months have been like as I've tried to figure out the best way to make sure I spend as much or more time with other people than I do with just Anxiety Brain this summer. To extend invitations or not? To accept invitations or not? Anxiety Brain has had me spinning in circles for weeks.

To someone with Social Anxiety, extending an invite is clearly a terrifying experience. Even the informal "Hey, we should hang out sometime!" can trigger debilitating anxiety levels. Extending an invite risks rejection. Even a simple "No" is something that Anxiety Brain reinterprets to mean "You're horrible and awful and weird. Why would I, or anyone else, ever want to spend time with such a depressing waste of space? You're such an annoyance! Please just stay out of my life and never ask me to spend time with you again. Also, if you see me somewhere else, just stay away. Wow, I can't believe you actually thought it'd be a good idea for us to ever hang out together! " That's out of a simple "No." So now imagine what Anxiety Brain does when that "No" is elaborated on. Even the "I don't have time right now" or "I already have plans" get twisted into "I'm lying to spare your feelings, but let's never, ever hang out together, and please don't ever invite me to spend time with you again." Complete non-responses turn into "Who on earth do you think you are? Do you really think that you're actually good enough or liked enough to spend time with me? What are you, delusional or something? I'm just going to ignore you and hope that you go away." On the days that Anxiety Brain is feeling particularly cruel, it brings up all the times in the past that an invitation was met with rejection and the feelings of embarrassment and defeat that followed and then asks if its worth risking the possibility of repeating that experience. The unknown of how someone else will respond to an invitation is a limitless playground for Anxiety Brain to dream up every possible negative outcome. This means the simple act of sending a text saying "Hey, we should get together sometime!" is one that often takes me months to convince myself is worth the risk of sending.

You'd think, then, that receiving and accepting an invitation would be easier. It's not. Turns out that Anxiety Brain makes it just as intimidating. Because Anxiety Brain's first question is always "Are you sure they didn't invite you by mistake?" Anything from someone saying "Hey, we should hang out!" to sending an invite to an actual social gathering brings forth this question. What if it was a mistake? What if they meant to ask someone else? What if the whole purpose of the invite is because they want to sit down and tell you how awful you are? What if they accidentally included you in a group that they didn't intend to? What if the invite was sent out of obligation, and they didn't actually want you there? What if they regretted the invitation as soon as they extended it? Then, if by some miracle I make it past the questions of the invitation's legitimacy and genuineness, Anxiety Brain bombards me with all the things that could potentially go wrong if I actually show up. What if I wear the wrong thing and look out of place? What if I don't know what to say to keep the conversation going? Or what if I say all the wrong things? When I'm supposed to bring food/beverage to share, what if they don't like what I bring? When it's a gathering of multiple people, especially large numbers of people, what if I don't fit in? What if I get left out of the group? What if I'm left on the outside looking in - or, even worse, on the inside but feeling like an outsider?

Anxiety Brain's tactics have had me spinning in circles for months about all the woes of inviting people to do things and whether I should accept invitations once I've been invited to a social gathering. I've lost more sleep over this issue in the last few months than I have over this Spring's job search. And I'm sick of it.

Like I said before, I need good people around me not just to survive but to thrive. Plus I simply love being around people that I care about. Being an introvert may mean that I often get over-stimulated by large groups and loud spaces, but I still love being around people. My favorite hobby is to learn about people and their life stories; I collect and strive to remember every detail because people matter to me. I want to spend time with them. And I'm ready to be done listening to Anxiety Brain tell me not to. So this summer I made a choice. I decided to step out of my comfort zone in an attempt to achieve something I've wanted for a long time: more time spent with people in my life that I value.

Let me tell you, it has been hard. It's a good thing I decided long before summer started that I wanted to spend time being more social because it took months of drafts of messages and conversations to start reaching out to people. Initially I waited for an insane moment of bravery where I felt invincible enough to not care the consequences of reaching out to people, but that moment wasn't coming soon enough. In the time apart from consistent, positive social contact, Anxiety Brain was quickly taking over. Instead of an insane moment of bravery, it took sheer will-power to start contacting some people (though I'm still working on finding the bravery and/or sheer will-power to connect with others). Suddenly I had multiple days on the calendar with plans scheduled to hang out with people, and I have a number of other plans in progress. It turns out that I discovered a whole new set of Anxiety Brain battlefields along the way (brought on by the new experience of having 5 electronic conversations going on at once between Facebook and texting), but I forged ahead anyway. Beyond extending invitations myself, I also (so far) have yet to turn down an invitation to spend time with friends, though accepting invitations has taken just as much extreme fortitude to do as it did to extend invitations. Through it all, I've fought through most of the anxiety, and I've generally been pretty proud of myself. I've also been exhausted. Anxiety Brain takes a lot of hard work and energy to fight, and it's just as unnerving as major life stress - so I'm exhausted. But I also know that choosing to attack this particular battle head-on will, at least theoretically, be good for me in the long run.

You see, after I'd already made my big plan to work beyond my anxiety comfort zone this summer, I shared it with my therapist. She pulled out a picture of the "Window of Tolerance" - a graph split into three sections with a line representing a person's stress. The goal is to stay in the middle section - too high and you go into fight-or-flight mode, too low and you go into freeze mode, either way you can't effectively deal with the stress that you're feeling. We talked about how I live most of life at the top of the graph in fight-or-flight mode. With decreased life stressors for now, I'm mostly in the middle section - but my middle section is a lot narrower than the average person's. The good news is that when you're not spending all your time outside of that middle section, that "Window of Tolerance," you can work to stretch it to be bigger. Choosing to push yourself just past your threshold eventually retrains your brain to believe that you'll make it through that stress, and it becomes part of your Window of Tolerance, and that window grows.

I had already known that I wanted to fight Anxiety Brain this summer in order to better expand and strengthen my growing support system. I knew that I wanted to find the courage and tools and coping skills to deal with the anxiety-triggering scenarios that have often divided me from my support system in the past. But until that appointment, I had never consciously considered that putting in the hard work might mean that the power of those anxiety triggers diminish, that they could be everyday, manageable life stressors instead of energy-sucking, paralyzing ones.

So this summer I'm taking advantage of this time with fewer life stressors, and I'm forcing myself to get a little more comfortable with being uncomfortable. It's terrifying and challenging and draining. Anxiety triggers don't change overnight - but if gradual, repeated exposure means that coping with them becomes easier, I'm all in. So I'm trying. I'm trying to spend time with more people - whether that means extending an invitation or accepting one from someone else. I'm trying to remain open in writing about my anxiety struggles - the big and the small, the understandable and seemingly insane - even though I've hit a point where every time I finish writing any sort of post I'm ready to run screaming in the opposite direction as far away as possible to find a cave where I can barricade myself in and cease to let people see all the less-perfect sides of me. I'm trying to have real conversations with people, ones where I'm willing to admit all my flaws and failures, anxiety-related or not. I'm trying to not only accept but invite constructive criticism, to allow people to share their opinions and advice with me without letting myself feel like a failure for being less than perfect and without assuming that my inability to have previously followed their advice (or my inability to follow it in the future) dooms the future of our friendship. I'm trying to grow.

All these things I'm trying to do are anything but comfortable. Some moments or even full days the mere idea of willingly facing all these anxiety triggers makes me want to curl up in a ball on the couch, snuggle with my dog, and spend the rest of the summer bingeing the long list of shows I want to watch and re-watch on Netflix. And some days (like last Monday), when I need a break from the toil of growing, that's exactly what I'll do. But most days I'm going to keep trying. Keep pushing myself. Keep building my ability to tolerate those anxiety triggers. Keep taking deep breaths and telling myself that even though I'm intentionally putting myself in uncomfortable situations, I'm going to be okay. I'm going to keep working toward the skills I need to be a healthy, functional human being and not a falling-apart, dysfunctional mess.

As I strive to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, the conversation I had with my roommate one morning earlier this week comes to mind. We've been friends for 19 years now, and she's been one of my closest friends through all that time - but I've only in the past few months started actually sharing what it means when I say that I'm having a "rough anxiety day." In recent weeks, our conversations have evolved into me saying "Hey, want to know the stupid thing Anxiety Brain has been telling me today?" and her listening and providing sometimes repetitive feedback as I circle through the same conversation with Anxiety Brain over and over again. It's been both freeing and petrifying all at once - but it's made a difference. And this particular conversation stands out.

Me: I don't know if I should go to that social event next weekend.
Roommate: You should definitely go.
Me: But I'm pretty sure the invite was a mistake.
Roommate: It wasn't a mistake.
Me: But what if it was a mistake, and then I show up, and then it's awkward?
Roommate: It wasn't a mistake. They invited you because they want you there. You should go, and you'll be fine.
Me: But what if it's still a bad idea for me to go?
Roommate: Am I going to have to kick your butt out the door to go to the social event that day?
Me: Quite possibly. (Pauses) What if the invite was a mistake, and then it's awkward, and then the person who invited me wants to cancel the plans we have later this summer.
Roommate: They're not going to cancel the other plans you two have. And you should go to the event.
Me: But what if it's awkward?
Roommate: It won't be awkward, and you should go. Is that what Anxiety Brain needs to hear?
Me: Yeah... Or you're welcome to share your actual opinion, too.
Roommate: You should go, but it might be awkward.
Me: Okay. (Takes deep breath because that's not necessarily what I wanted to hear, but I'm trying to appreciate the honesty, which I asked for, as Anxiety Brain starts telling me all the ways it could possibly awkward). But what if it's not okay that it's awkward?
Roommate: It will be fine. That type of social event is pretty much always a little bit awkward, but you'll be fine, and you should go.
Me: (Thinks for a moment) You know, the last two times I went to that type of social event, neither of which involved the extra circumstances that are freaking me out about this one, it was a little awkward. But it was okay. (Internally: That means if I go and it's awkward, it's probably the type of event making it awkward, not me making it awkward).

In that moment, I realized how often in life we as humans have to force ourselves to face the uncomfortable. From the awkwardness that accompanies certain types of social events to the awkwardness which we experience when trying something new. It wasn't just an Anxiety Brain thing - it was a normal person thing. I could work to accept the likely awkwardness; I could let myself get comfortable with the idea that the event might be uncomfortable.

What makes this conversation even better? Three months ago, the conversation wouldn't have happened. Three days beforehand, I probably wouldn't have asked her to share what she really thought. I felt ridiculous as I spewed every single question that Anxiety Brain was throttling at me that day, most of which she had heard before, most of which she will probably hear again before I hopefully convince myself that I should attend the event. But I was working to get comfortable with the uncomfortable. And in doing so I not only made some anxiety triggers a little less triggering, but I grew a little bit as a person - and that was the whole point to begin with. To face my fears of interacting with people so that they can be there to support me and to help me grow. I got a little more comfortable with feeling uncomfortable and because of that my world changed just a little bit - and I can't wait for it to change like that again.

I am a Duck

"You guys - Heidi is our duck!" I heard a voice announce as we prepared for our concert that evening. I was incredibly confused. I'd never before likened myself to a duck. The only person I knew who had was one of my teaching mentors who was referred to as "Mama Duck" because of how she watched out for all her "duckling" students. Somehow, I figured that this wasn't the same thing.

"Okay..." I responded, unsure how I was supposed to take the comment.

"Calm on the outside, paddling like crazy underneath," it was explained to me. I smiled at the thought and took the analogy as a compliment. It meant that my fellow choir members saw me as someone that looked to have it together, someone they could count on to perform well in the evening's concert. But they also knew me well enough to understand the nerves and inner chaos that would go on as I performed. I had just that day declared while parsing through all my concert music that I'd be fine so long as I remembered to actually think about what I was doing while I was singing. I knew all of my frequent mistakes and how to fix them; it was a matter of paying attention during those moments through the music. Plus, as a singer, I'm almost always a bundle of nerves, no matter how much fun I have during an actual performance or "sparkle on stage."

But the best part of the analogy given to me by a member of my choir family is that, unbeknownst to them at the time, I've been a duck for most of my life. I've spent the vast majority of my life attempting to look like I have it all together, hiding any imperfections while on the inside I've been crumbling. I was diagnosed with social anxiety disorder when I was nearly 22 years old; I'm pretty sure it had been around since I was about 7. Through the 15 years that passed between, almost no one ever suspected that I was falling apart inside. My grades were some of the highest among my peers. I was physically healthy by most normal measures. I had enough friends to keep me from appearing to be a loner. I was involved in a variety of activities both at school and at church. I was often seen as a model - and I was determined to hold on to the image.

For me, social anxiety is ironically less about fearing people and more about fearing abandonment. Through most of my life, my disordered brain has convinced me that if the people around me see my flaws and failures, they'll cut me out of their lives forever, leaving me isolated and alone. So I hid my flaws and avoided all failure. I freaked out over every grade that wasn't an "A" (or, as a young child, over every grade that wasn't 100%). I never shared my beliefs and opinions unless I knew for certain that the people around me felt the same way. I avoided confrontation and allowed myself to be a doormat. I followed all the rules, including never entering a building through a door labeled "Exit." I avoided authority figures when I could and followed their every command to the letter when avoidance wasn't an option. Stuck in the middle of two opposing sides, I remained silent, afraid to disappoint either one. With each person in my life, I wore a mask conforming to their image of what I should be, my life littered with thousands of such masks. Occasionally I'd consider letting down my guard. I'd say what I thought, question authority, stop trying to be perfect in school, at work, or in social situations. Each and every attempt blew up in my face. So I put the masks back on, resigning my life to one of exhaustion caused by trying to live up to every person's idea of perfect.

Being a duck is supposedly a good thing. It's a "Don't let them see you sweat" mentality. And there are plenty of times that's true. More than once through the current school year, I've been told after both formal and informal observations that I stay visibly calm during what feels to me like chaos. The days my lessons fall apart, the days the kids are rambunctious,  even the day that a fight nearly broke out in one of my classes? I'm told I appear calm and collected, and on the outside it didn't show how much my brain was racing trying to find solutions to whatever the day's problems were.

And it goes beyond teaching. A year ago I joined the board of a small non-profit in my hometown that raises scholarship money for graduating seniors in the local school district by way of putting on an annual variety show. I spent most meetings with my head swimming having no clue what was going on, too scared to take on any role beyond being in charge of t-shirt ordering, and even that sent me spinning. It took a month of panic attacks to get the process rolling, and there were more panic attacks along the way even after that. But apparently I hid the stress well because lo and behold I was asked to consider taking on a couple of different executive positions on the board - because that sounds like a good idea for someone who was having panic attacks about t-shirt ordering of all things. (Though, in a big step for me, I did agree to take on the secretary role because I love the organization and that's a role that theoretically shouldn't trigger as many of the anxieties that come from, you know, talking to people.)

Often people think of being a duck as an admirable quality - but it's challenging to be a duck. It means that  it's not easily visible to the people around me that I'm crumbling inside. When I'm sitting on the couch staring at my phone, it's not because I'm bored or too lazy to tackle the million projects I should be tackling - it's because it's taking every ounce of my energy to keep from spiraling down an anxiety black hole. When I sit and stare at my computer screen for my entire prep time at work rather than writing lesson plans or creating materials for my kids to use or contacting student families, it's not because I feel like wasting my time but because I'm holding back the tears and/or panic attack lying under the surface. When I cease to reply to friends' attempts to contact me, it's not because I don't care about the friendship but because I don't know how to communicate with people when I feel like I'm falling apart. I look (relatively) normal on the outside while I'm internally teetering on the edge of a cliff, grasping at my remaining scraps of sanity, attempting not to fall.

Because of the stigma surrounding mental health disorders, being a duck is also dangerous. It means that I cling to my projected image of strength and normalcy to keep people from seeing my inner brokenness. It means that in the times I'm struggling the most, when I let anxiety brain convince me to make unhealthy choices like deciding to see how long I can last without eating or considering whether life is still worth living, most people will never know. Being a duck meant being so functional that my social anxiety went undiagnosed for far too long, probably would have remained undiagnosed had I not one summer grown so tired of my frequent, usually hidden, crying spells that I finally asked for help.

I will probably always be a duck, whether I'm managing my anxiety well or not. I'm even learning that I often have to tell my parents when I'm having rough anxiety days because I look calm and collected on the outside. And even when I'm successfully managing my anxiety, my relatively calm image doesn't mean that I'm not paddling like crazy underneath to maintain that level of functioning. My goal, then, is to be a duck who tries to show the world both sides of the water - both above the surface where I can be (or at least appear to be) calm enough to be a functioning adult and underneath where I have to constantly battle to keep going. Because in order to combat the stigma surrounding mental health disorders, the world has to see both. And in order for me to keep some semblance of sanity, the world has to see both.

The Other Voices in my Head

Most of the time, I live with two battling voices in my head: my own and that of Anxiety Brain. I even recently started a new, separate blog dedicated solely to the daily conversations I have with Anxiety Brain. For a long time, I let those voices duke it out just the two of them (though it took me a long time to recognize the difference between the two). It's hard to win a battle that way, though, especially because Anxiety Brain never runs out of the energy necessary to keep up the fight, and I generally grow weary, particularly when I try to fight it on my own. It took me a long time to admit that I often need reinforcements.

I'm stubborn, and I don't always like to admit when I'm wrong or that I need to rely on other people (and even when I admit that to myself, I don't like to admit it to the outside world, even the members of it that I trust). So there are moments when I get lovingly scolded or receive constructive criticism or am encouraged to think about life differently, and I don't want to listen. I want to be right. I want to do it my own way. I don't want to let other people change me. Despite the many masks I wear trying to live up to the standards Anxiety Brain thinks other people have set for me, my deepest desire is to be loved and valued and found worthy just as I am without having to change - especially by the people in my life who I value, respect, and admire. Then those same people say something or do something, and it sticks with me. Their voices join the two that have always been in my head - and sometimes those additional voices make all the difference.

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I was taking my first graduate-level class and taking it as a non-degree student surrounded by many who were already accepted into the Master's program - I felt out of place at best and extremely intimidated and inadequate at worst. One portion of the course was conducting, where I'd never never had much confidence in my skill. Then, lucky me, I found myself following a classmate who had been told by most of the others in our class that she did a fantastic job and that they struggled to find ways for her to improve. So I stood up in front of them to take my turn and said something to downplay my own abilities. The instructor looked me dead in the eye:

"You stop that negative self-talk right there."

She's on the short-list of people who's allowed to do something like that (and by "allowed," I mean won't cause anxiety tears or a panic attack). The loving reprimand stuck with me. Someone like that doesn't get on your case for "negative self talk" unless they see value in the skill you already have and the potential you have to keep growing. When Anxiety Brain starts to question my abilities as a music teacher, her voice jumps in to help fight back.

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Last winter I committed one of the cardinal sins of being a music teacher in a performing arts group who isn't charge of said group - I stepped on the toes of the person who was in charge of leading. I mean, it was a choreographer and not the official director, and I totally didn't intend to do it, but the way things went down made my faux pas very loud and very visible, and I was mortified. Trying to make up for my infraction, I tried to catch each of the people leading that choreography rehearsal in order to apologize for overstepping, but anxiety tends to make my already quiet voice almost inaudible, and I failed to catch either of their attention - so instead I went home and confessed my sin to the world of Facebook. What I got was an unexpected response from the group's former director:

"No, no, no! None of us think any negative thoughts about that. You were awesome! Truly! What you said was clear, positive, and instructive. You rock!"

Not going to lie, I didn't really listen to her at the time. She'd missed the quiet conversation that came before the louder address of the whole group. But her words nagged at me enough to convince me that the majority of the members in the group hadn't gone home complaining about my overstep, so it felt safe to show up at rehearsal the following week at least half-believing that I wasn't hated by most people there. That said, I vowed to never make the same mistake again, especially in a group often filled with too many loud opinions (because teachers make the worst students) and often too few people with the wisdom to know when to speak up and when to step back and let the person in charge do their job. So at a much later rehearsal when I noticed some choreography issues, I started to say something about it and then stopped myself out loud: "Nope. I'm going to keep my mouth shut." That same former director happened to be standing a few feet from me and shot me what can only be described as the classic "teacher look." I admittedly don't remember her exact words in that moment as much as I remember the look, but the message she sent was clear:

Knock it off! You're not in the way. Your thoughts and opinions are valued here. Stop beating yourself up so much. Just stop it!

She's also on the short list of people who can get on my case without me feeling like I'm going to fall apart. So her voice joined the others in my head, reminding me that my own voice was valued and worth sharing. And against Anxiety Brain's many words of discouragement, I started to use it. I decided to stay on that organization's board, even taking on an executive role. I started participating, sometimes even initiating, serious conversations about the show and its future, even daring on occasion to literally talk over the voices of others who bring many more years of experience than I do. I found my voice - but it never would have happened if I hadn't listened to hers.

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I spent much of last winter in the darkness of mental health crisis-mode, never to a point of not wanting to live anymore, but definitely to a point where I didn't know how I was supposed to press on in the face of feeling endless pain and hopelessness. And then in a single week, everything changed. I knew that it was the show I was in - and the people involved in it - that were responsible for the change, but it was performance week, meaning that that experience would soon be over. So I clung to every moment of that week, maximizing as well as I could the time I spent connected to the show and the time I spent surrounded by my castmates, trying to commit every moment to memory, wanting to have something to hold onto when it was over in order to keep myself from falling back into the black hole of a mental health crisis. Then life happened - or, more accurately, weather happened - and one of our performances got cancelled. I was devastated. And then one of the eternal optimists from that group of people showed up on Facebook with a post about finding the bright side of unexpected family time on a day otherwise full of cancelled plans.

"Looking on the bright side has been hard for me today ... Remember that all things will pass. Bad times. Good times. And the seemingly mundane times. I love my life!"

I remember taking a deep breath and thinking, "Okay. I'll follow your lead. Bright side - I only managed to sleep about an hour last night, and with being stuck at home all day, I can take a long nap. I also don't have to worry about driving and performing on basically no sleep." It lightened my mood momentarily, but in the days that followed, looking for the bright side didn't always help (anxiety brain has a way of making you feel like crap sometimes no matter how many bright sides you find that day). Even so, her voice still stuck in my head. As that eternal optimism started rubbing off on me, the bright sides of less-than-desirable situations started popping into my head on their own, no prompting necessary. So earlier this week when I woke up with a bad cold and felt generally awful, I found myself thinking "Well, at least there are only three more weeks of school, and I only have an hour of student-contact time today, and it’s still cold enough outside that I can handle drinking hot tea.” The thought that immediately followed my bright sides? A very annoyed “Dang it! Darn you!” - and then I smiled because her voice had changed me.

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For all the times our culture preaches teamwork and collaboration, there’s still a sense that you have to learn how to stand on your own two feet and succeed as an individual in order to have any value as a person. I bought into that viewpoint for far too long. That relying on other people made me weak. Made me dependent. Made me somehow “less.” A support system is important but should only be used in times of short-term crisis; using it for everyday life was a sign of general incompetence. All those messages? They were wrong. There’s way more truth in the cliché phrases “It takes a village” or “Strength in numbers.” The person behind one of the voices that lives in my head once told me:

 “None of us is perfect, but together we are better.”

When I stop trying to fight off the voice of Anxiety Brain on my own, when I’m too tired to fight it with my own voice, those are the moments that the other voices step in. And because they come from other people, people whose opinions I value and respect and trust, Anxiety Brain has a lot harder time beating them down. Those voices keep battling until I have the strength and tools to join back in and take up the fight again myself.

Strong is Fighting

"Strong is fighting! It's hard, and it's painful, and it's every day. It's what we have to do. And we can do it together." ~ Buffy Summers (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 3, Episode 10, "Amends")

Much of my last six months have have been plagued by one single question: "Why the h*** can't I manage to get my s*** together?" Now, I'm not the person who generally throws profanity around (even semi-censored profanity), but in six months I literally haven't been able to come up with a non-profanity phrasing that invokes the same level of emphasis and frustration. I've been beyond frustrated with myself - because when I look at the facts, I should be happy and thriving. I got a job teaching that, while not perfect, is in the content area and age group that I like and in a district that supports the arts and positively supports growth of young teachers. I didn't have to go through the stress of moving. In under a year's time I've found two separate groups of people that I value and trust enough to call "family." Each time another positive piece of the puzzle gets filled, I think to myself, "This is it. This is going to be the time that I can be a consistently functional human being, that I'm going to manage anxiety well enough that people don't see its negative effects, that I'm going to thrive." That feeling lasts for a week or two, occasionally longer, and then it all falls apart.
I finally admitted all this at my last therapist appointment. Her solution? Turn off the inner critic. Practice some self-compassion. I didn't really even know how to react to her suggestion. I mostly nodded and outwardly agreed because I'm a people-pleaser (because conflict is scary and to be avoided). But the suggestion that I should cut myself some slack seemed to be saying that I should just be in denial about how hopelessly flawed I am. Meanwhile, every day browsing social media or other areas of the internet, I'm reminded about how much older generations can't stand Millenials who can't just pull up their big-kid pants and adult already. I'm reminded every time that I share my fears about my job hunt that I chose to teach a subject that often gets cut or only offers part-time positions, and I'm really limiting myself by not being willing to teach in an urban or rural setting. More often than not, everywhere I turn, it feels like I'm being told that if things aren't coming together in my life, it's my own fault - that I am flawed, that I am a horrible person. If I have to live in a world that doesn't have compassion for me when I can't manage to get my act together, why should I have compassion for myself?
I was diagnosed with Social Anxiety Disorder about 7 years ago, and most days, I feel like I'm worse off than I was back then. Back then, I still excelled at my schoolwork. My first year of teaching, I consistently cooked real meals for myself. I didn't always get adequate sleep, but I did more then than I do now - and I was generally able to sleep through the night. I took my dog on multiple decent-length walks every day. I got myself out running. I was able to share my anxiety issues with my colleagues so that I could have them briefly cover a class for me when I had a panic attack. And while I had panic attacks on stressful days or through stressful stretches of the year, they weren't a completely regular occurrence. 7 years later, 6 years with the same therapist, and at least half a dozen different medications (not to mention dosage adjustments) later, and most days I feel like I've gone backward. I spend half my days living off chips, chocolate, and jelly beans. I stay up late, and when I do sleep, it's plagued by stress dreams. My dog is lucky to make it down the block, and I'm certainly not exercising regularly. And at least a couple of times a week, I have multiple panic attacks before I make it out of the house in the morning. Most of the time it feels like for every step I take forward, I fall ten steps back, and it leaves me feel like a failure of a human being. It makes me want to give up trying to get better.

"Strong is fighting! It's hard, and it's painful, and it's every day. It's what we have to do. And we can do it together." ~ Buffy Summers (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 3, Episode 10, "Amends")

Over the last month or so I've posted on Facebook a lot about my daily anxiety battles - the days I triumph and the days that I struggle. Given the number of new Facebook friends I have, it's one of the scariest things I've ever done. But when I sent the first couple of friend requests that spread to many other requests going both directions, I did so with one thought in mind: "I value you. I trust you. I'm ready to share this flawed part of me, the real and the raw. I'm willing to let you be a part of this journey with me if you're willing to join me." (Given, there may have been a "Here's hoping I don't scare you off" tagged onto that a few times - okay, most times). So I keep posting the daily battles (maybe too much sometimes). Even with all the great support I've received through that time, anxiety brain still hangs out in the background, telling me that these people didn't know what they were signing up for, that the more broken parts of me they see, the more likely they'll run away. Thankfully, many of the same people that anxiety brain says are going to abandon me are the ones who keep jumping back in as reinforcements in the fight. I just need reminders of that sometimes.
So I started a project. I started taking pieces of those Facebook comments and messages and writing them down to remind myself that I am worthy, that I am valued, that I am loved. I took the ones not just from recent days but from years back (or, at least, I'm gradually working backwards). And I ran across one that I'd forgotten about:

"Just wanted you to know that you are not alone! Anxiety is chronic, it cannot be cured, but it certainly can be managed. Stay strong!!!!!!"

It came from someone who deals with anxiety themselves and has been working to manage it for more years than I have. And it reminded me of something - anxiety doesn't go away. I mean, I know I try to convey that to other people all the time - but somewhere along the line, I forgot to tell myself that. Because no matter how many things are going right, anxiety will always be hanging out in the background. It's not pessimism - it's a reality. I will probably be battling anxiety most every day for the rest of my life. There is no cure, only management.
As depressing as that probably sounds, it was in that reminder that I found relief. It took off a lot of the pressure I'd been putting on myself. There may come a day when I manage anxiety well enough to pass as a normal person again, and to even function at a normal person level again, but even then it will almost certainly be with the daily battle against anxiety brain. And that's okay. Everyone has their own crud to deal with through life, and this is mine. There will be some days where anxiety brain is quieter and less persistent, others that its voice will be loud and constant. Some days I'll spend with a body in fight-or-flight mode, and others that physical symptoms will take up only brief moments. Some days I'll be able to fight it on my own by doing things like literally yelling "Anxiety brain, shut up!" (this may or may not have happened recently, with an emphasis on the may), and others I may need some extra help from the support system that I've built. There will be highs, and there will be lows, but what matters is that I keep battling.
Suddenly, that self-compassion made more sense. Because when my therapist told me to to turn off the inner critic, she told me that I should instead ask the question: "Even if I'm not where I want to be yet, what steps am I taking to get there?" The first thing that my therapist pointed out was that even through some rough stretches, I've managed to continue working when only 3 years ago I was on a long-term medical leave. I'll add to her thoughts that in my job, I've gotten picky about what positions I'll apply for and/or accept, but it's kept me working the most functionally that I have since my first year of teaching, and it wasn't that long ago that a hastily-accepted job offer accepted in desperation left me feeling so awful that self-harm seemed like a better option than showing up at work (which was how a 1-month medical leave turned into a 7-month medical leave on the day that I was originally supposed to return to work).
And my successes stretch beyond work. Not that long ago, I cooked a full meal for myself for the first time in over a year. I hit my Fitbit 3-day activity goal independently without relying on multiple days of choreography rehearsals. I've not backed out of social gatherings even in the face of high anxiety and panic attacks. And recently when someone caught me post-panic-attack and reached out and offered to help, I was able to share enough about what was freaking me out that they could find a constructive way to help - and I accepted the help on top of it. I've been consistently sharing my anxiety struggles on Facebook (because silence perpetuates stigma), even though it's one of the scariest things I've ever done, and even though I usually want to delete what I post within moments of hitting "share," I leave it there for people to see and read (at least 90% of the time, anyway).
Not that long ago I wrote another post about making progress - and I absolutely was - but when I wrote it I'd forgotten something: Managing anxiety isn't an uphill battle that you fight until you reach the peak and then get to relax. It's an endless roller coaster filled with twists and turns and hills and valleys - some in the light of day where you can see enough to know what to expect, and others in dark tunnels where you don't know what's coming next. Managing anxiety is about learning to handle all of those things. It's a battle. It's every day. It's hard and it's painful. But it's what I'm willing to do and keep doing. And I'm learning to lean on others to help me. Because over the last few years I've at least gotten tastes of what it feels like to fully manage anxiety - and it's so worth it.

We Need to Do Something Sooner

Note: Five years ago, I wrote a post in honor of Children's Mental Health Awareness Day. It's been on my mind a lot lately, and I considered simply re-sharing that original post. But enough has changed since then, both in my own life and in the world, that it seemed worth revisiting the topic as a whole, including some of the same stories while adding new ones based on more recent experiences.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting at dinner with a group of teacher friends, and the topic of student mental health issues came up. Our discussion included just how prevalent mood disorders have become, particularly among adolescents, and what has led to this growing trend. Given that the group had learned only weeks before that I face my own anxiety struggles, one of them turned and asked how long it had been for me. I replied that, officially, I was diagnosed during college, but looking back I was pretty sure I could have been diagnosed in 2nd grade. I don't really remember the initial verbal responses that followed - I just remember looking around the table at the shock I saw on each and every person's face.
I remember a time when I felt that same level shock when I looked at how long undiagnosed anxiety affected my life. The young age that I started experiencing symptoms of anxiety and the long time between my initial symptoms and my diagnosis have become accepted facts of life for me. It took a number of years, but I've come to accept, too, the number of times it seems that my symptoms should have been obvious to more knowledgeable adults in my life. But that doesn't make it right, and that doesn't mean that we don't need to work for change. 15 years passed between my first symptoms and finally receiving an accurate diagnosis. That's a long time to fight a battle by yourself, especially when it's a battle you don't understand or that you don't even realize that you're fighting. And I don't want any other child or teen to have to go through the same things that I did.

Because I wish I had known sooner.

When I reflect on my childhood, I think I started presenting signs of social anxiety when I was in 2nd grade. It was then that I struggled to make new friends in a class where I had none at the year's start, that I started growing pits in my stomach each time my teacher reprimanded any of my classmates, and that I discovered my identity at school, that as one of the "smart kids," felt threatened any time that I was anything less than perfect (the first time I got one wrong on a spelling pre-test was a truly scarring experience). I was lucky that year - I had a teacher who worked to help me the best that she knew how and that brought in the expertise of others to help me as well. Partway through the year, I started getting pulled with a few other girls in my class to be part of a "Friendship Club" with the school counselor. I thought nothing of it until adulthood when my therapist asked me if I'd ever been part of such a group. That year was the last time that my childhood school system did anything to help support my mental health as a student.
Third grade brought a less supportive teacher, worse problems with finding friends among my classmates, and many-a-Monday-morning where I "faked" sick to get out of going to school. And by "faked," I mean that I swallowed a bunch of air to give myself a stomachache so that I wasn't technically lying when I said I didn't feel good and wanted to stay home. This ended promptly when my parents brought me to the doctor thinking that something horrible was wrong with me at which point I thought I was about to get in huge trouble and decided to stop. Even after that, there were many morning meltdowns that led me to miss my bus and be brought to school late. Actually, there were many meltdowns at home in general because my childhood subconscious knew that home was the only safe place to express the turmoil I always seemed to be feeling. I knew that my parents would love me no matter what, so any lashing out I did was reserved solely for them. Even so, the meltdowns that appeared as tantrums and the general defiance that often followed lead to some family counseling that year. It helped my parents and me to function better with each other at home, but my inner turmoil remained.

I wish I had known sooner

A few years ago, I attended an annual mental health symposium and during one of the break-out sessions chose a seminar on anxiety in children and teens. As a part of his presentation, the childhood psychologist leading the session listed which mental health disorder should be suspected when children display mood disregulation during different age ranges. Next to the ages 7-12? Anxiety.
I don't think most people realize that. We think of anxiety disorders as things that set in when students experience the academic and social pressures of being a teenager, when they start using social media, when their whole futures are on the line and they start to feel like the weight of the world is on their shoulders. Younger kids sometimes have irrational fears, but they grow out of those, right? Anxiety and depression are only faced by bigger people with bigger problems, right? I was 7. I was throwing tantrums almost every morning because facing the neighbor kids, facing my teacher, facing my classmates, and trying to live up to their standards for me and getting nowhere near reaching those standards - those were all challenges that felt too much to bear. I presented mood disregulation when I was 7 years old.

I wish I had known sooner.

At some point, I began to internalize all my anxiety so that it wouldn't appear to cause such a problem - I hated having so many eyes on me. Perfect schoolwork was the only way to avoid the ridicule of my classmates. Perfect behavior in public was the only way to make sure that the adults in my life would continue to like and praise me. Perfect conformity to the images of the person my various groups of "friends" wanted me to be (sans compromising my core values) meant that I wouldn't have to be alone. This continued all the way through junior high. I can't blame anyone for not helping me then. My anxiety was high-functioning. I may have been crumbling on the inside, but on the outside I looked like a high-achiever. I looked like a leader. I looked normal.
Then high school rolled around, and while the outward levels of functioning remained high, the crumbling that had been happening inside started to show on the outside. This was triggered, at least in part, by spending my sophomore year dealing with the first hour class from hell. 4 out of 5 days on our modified block schedule, I started my school day in a hostile classroom environment led by a teacher who liked to spend their time bashing everything I believed in, every aspect of my identity. It was no wonder, then, that during my sophomore year I generally spent 2-3 days of the school week in tears for at least part of the day, if not the whole day. 2-3 days a week in tears, 5 or 6 classes a day, and only one teacher ever pulled me aside to ask what was going on - though my advisory teacher did once mention to my parents at conferences that he was keeping an eye on me.
Junior year brought not only an increased load of schoolwork but some unique challenges. While I no longer faced the anxiety-triggering class and teacher, the damage was done, and school had ceased to be a safe place, teachers were no longer to be trusted. I did find one sanctuary within my school day - choir. Choir provided a low-pressure escape where the hard work we put in was still fun, and some part of me deemed my choir teacher still trustworthy. And then that teacher committed suicide and sent that year of choir through the tumultuous emotions that come not only with grieving but with going through 5 different choir teachers in a year's time. I held my emotions in, though. I wasn't one of the inner-circle choir kids, so I felt like I didn't have a right to grieve. My parents thought that something was wrong, but I was in denial. They tried to schedule a meeting for me with my school counselor; she agreed but on the day she was supposed to meet with me, my parents were surprised to learn that she hadn't. The appointment was rescheduled, and once again she cancelled. She stopped replying to my parents' communication after that.
So I continued feeling the inner turmoil, believing that I'd grow out of my over-sensitivity, believing that my perfectionism wasn't a problem, trying to convince myself that everything I was feeling was normal. I never cried through as many school days as I did during my sophomore year, but during both my junior and senior year, I still spent enough days in tears that it seems like someone should have noticed. Someone should have said something. I never had a teacher during my junior year who pulled me aside to see if I was okay. I had one who did my senior year but I'm pretty sure that it was mostly because he thought his reprimand was the sole reason that I was in tears.
Through this whole time, I never sent up any of the big red flags. My grades remained extremely high (with 3.9 unweighted GPA by graduation). I had a solid group of friends and was able to make and keep some new ones. I stayed out of trouble. It took two D's on my second trimester 3-week progress report senior year to get called down to the office for the only conversation I ever had with my school counselor. She told me that she'd seen my grades come across her desk before and those D's were not normal grades for me; she wanted to make sure that everything was okay. I shared that I'd missed two tests when my family went on vacation leading into winter break and that I hadn't had the chance to make up those tests yet in the few days since returning but was scheduled to do so the following week. At that point she sent me on my merry way.

I wish someone had noticed sooner

There are still schools where the high-functioning students slip through the cracks. I worked at one of them. A place where academic success is placed at a priority over all else, including student health. Working with some of the school's highest achieving students, I saw kids who were carrying a higher stress load than any teen should have to carry. Kids taking 4 or more AP or College-Level classes beginning in their sophomore year. Kids who felt distraught over an A-. Kids who felt it necessary to go through the immense workload required for a test retake in order to bring their scores from a 98% up to 100%. Kids who dropped out of all their non-academic activities to keep up with schoolwork by the end of 10th grade. Kids who were consistently sleeping for 4 hours or less each night. Kids who I listened to my colleagues complain about at lunch for not being able to deal with stress "like a normal person." Kids whose data privacy mattered more than their mental health concerns at the single hour-long mental health training we were given as a staff (which got cut off at exactly the one hour mark, right about the time the only mental health professional who was presenting was finally being given a chance to talk, because heaven forbid we give up any of our remaining  7 hours of the day set aside for collaboration time to instead talk about student mental health, in a school that appeared to be careening headlong toward an epidemic of mood disorders).
That school system demanded an even higher level of perfection of its teachers than it did its students, and I left 3 months into my second year there, my mental health decimated, and I finished out the school year on a medical leave, trying to rebuild myself back into a person again. I couldn't last 2 years as a teacher at that school. I can't imagine spending 4 years there as a student. I recently learned that in that last 10 months that same school has seen 4 student suicides. And it still took students amassing over 1,000 signatures on a petition calling for changes in practice and education regarding mental health and the stigma surrounding it before school leadership started discussing real change.

They needed to do something sooner.

It took me a long time to piece together how I'd fallen through the cracks during my own school years, not learning some of the details of all that had happened until I was near done with college. Once I saw the bigger picture, I was mad at my childhood school system for a long time. Bitter about what had happened. Resentful of the many teachers who could have said something, who should have said something, and didn't. It's taken a lot of time to accept what happened, to give my teachers the benefit of the doubt, especially in light of the school counselor who told my parents she'd help me and then didn't. And I've had the chance to stay enough connected with the school district where I grew up to believe that things have changed for the better. When I think of the teachers I know who work there now, I feel like I can trust that most of them wouldn't let another kid like me slip through the cracks. I've forgiven. But I haven't forgotten.

Because I wish they had done something sooner.

I was diagnosed with Social Anxiety Disorder at age 22. I could have been diagnosed at age 7. That's a 15-year difference. 15 years of fighting a battle that I didn't even know I was fighting. 15 years of confusion that I couldn't handle life's stressors the way that my peers seemed to be handling them. 15 years of building unhealthy coping mechanisms. 15 years of thought patterns and memories to rewire in my brain. 15 years too late. Even now, 7 years after diagnosis, I'm still unlearning bad habits, still rewiring automatic thought patterns, still struggling to get myself to a place of continually functional anxiety management. And there are days I can't help but wonder what might have been different in my life, especially my adult life, if someone in the position to have the knowledge and training to see that something was wrong had seen something, said something, done something when my brain was a little younger, a little more malleable.

I wish someone had helped me sooner.

Living with an anxiety disorder is a big part of my life; dealing with my own struggles makes me hyper-aware of others that are like me. Not everyone carries the burden that I do, and I know that it's harder to feel like you can do something when you haven't lived the struggle yourself. But I urge you to be part of the changes that we need to continue to make to support children and teens in caring for their mental health. Educate yourself. Normalize mental illness by talking about it. Practice empathy in all interactions, including and especially those with people struggling with their mental health.

We need to do something sooner.

I can't go back and change my own past, and in some ways I'm grateful for it. I'm grateful for the teacher that my experiences as a student have made me. I try to keep an eye out for my students who struggle with mental health issues, offering a safe space and a listening ear the best that I'm able to, checking in on them when they appear to be having a rough day. I also try to be very aware of students who might be struggling. The students who cry through my class. The ones whose usually-upbeat personality turns sullen. The ones who start labeling themselves as "failures" or "worthless." The ones who stress out about getting an A- instead of an A on a single minor assignment or who insist on retaking a test to bring their score up from 98% to 100%. I listen to their struggles and work to find strategies that will help them cope. When relevant, I work to help their classmates understand their emotions and behavior, especially with my littles who struggle to verbalize what's going on. And I do what I can to make sure I'm not the only person who's keeping an eye on them, particularly if they don't already have a special plan in place. At the secondary level, I contact their counselor; at the elementary level, I check in with their classroom teacher. I contact parents. I make sure that my eyes aren't the only ones watching out for this kid because I can't do it alone.

We need to do something sooner

If you look only at the major indicators, you miss out on those of us who are high functioning - and there are more of us than you realize. It took someone who knew all to well what to look for to finally have a teacher who expressed her concern for me. She was the one who gave me a safe place through her class my senior year, even checking in with me once when she feared the classroom discussion of the day made me feel uncomfortable. It was through her that the rest of school became a slightly less scary place. And she continued to watch out for me after I'd graduated. When I was home over school breaks, we'd often meet for coffee. It was on one of such coffee dates that she revealed that she'd recently been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder herself. She shared how much of herself she saw in me and that she was worried about me. At the time I was too far in denial and pushed her warnings aside, but on the list of conversations I'm most grateful for, that one makes at least my top 3. That conversation gave me an opening for someone safe to talk to once I finally was diagnosed. She became a person I turned to for assistance in finding expert help when I needed it. It couldn't have been an easy or comfortable conversation for her to have, but it changed my life for the better, particularly in how I deal with mental health struggles.


More of us need to do something sooner.

I know that there are plenty of schools that have worked and continue to work to support students with mental health issues. That help to break down the stigma so that it's safe for students to share their struggles and ask for help. I've even worked at some of them. And I have plenty of friends who work at other ones. The school systems in particular have gotten a lot better over recent years, and the adults of my generation have grown up with a greater awareness of mental health issues that helps us as we work with children and teens facing those issues. It's easy, then, to get frustrated when someone tells you that there's work to be done. Or when the world is portrayed differently than we want to see it. I remember when the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why came out last spring and watching as nearly every educator I knew got angry at the creators for portraying the adults surrounding a teen's suicide as being clueless at best and willingly useless at worst. And then I think of my own worst experiences - both as a student and as a teacher - and I realize how important that portrayal is as a warning that there still exist environments where adults are clueless, where adults are useless, where adults willingly do nothing. It's a warning that we need to keep working for change.

We need to do something sooner.


It's hard to look at a young child who's dealing with bigger problems than someone so small should have to deal with. Most of my time as an elementary music teacher has been spent with children in grades K-2. I look at their faces and see the innocence of their youth. I see their hope and joy and imagination. But I look at some of my kiddos and see something else. I see them struggle to cope with experiences that seem small to me but are shocking to their systems. I see instantaneous meltdowns over minor slights. I've more than once had young elementary students who almost always came to music saying that everyone hated them and that they hated their life. My heart hurts for these students.
Some of these littles are already surrounded by lack of awareness and stigma. Some are cared for by parents who want to protect them from how the world might see them, parents who fear the labels and paper trails that may follow their children for the rest of their lives. As a teacher, it's hard for me to hear that parents don't want their children evaluated for greater levels of need. Don't these parents understand that we as a school want to provide support for their children? But as someone with one of those labels, I also understand. Because stigma is still real, still harmful. It even exists still in some teachers who, with truly the best of intentions, sometimes write off behavior without seeing or understanding the mental health concerns behind it. I don't want my kiddos to face the stigma either. But another school year down, and their struggles are the same - some are even worse - and I wonder how they will cope as they get older and life gets more complicated.
Then I look at some of my other kiddos - the ones whose parents see them struggling and look for help, either through the school or through medical professionals. The ones whose teachers say "I know they're not going to qualify for special services this year, but what interventions can I use to help them now because I see them struggling and worry that it will only get worse." Many of those kids still struggle, but it's awe-inspiring to see how they've transformed just since the beginning of this school year - to the point that it gives me chills, leaves me speechless, and makes me teary each time I think of how much they've grown. That kind of change only happens when they have adults who are looking out for them - who can see that something isn't quite right and know where to turn to get further assistance when they don't have the expertise themselves. These kids have people who are helping to provide tools for them to cope in the face of their struggles and who are cultivating environments where these kids are still accepted among their peers. They're the lucky kids. All kids should get to be lucky kids.

So we need to do something sooner.

On this Children's Mental Health Awareness Day, I challenge those of you who have children or work with children to be alert no matter what their age. Still watch for those big red-flag warning signs, but keep an eye out for the subtle ones too - things like perfectionism, constant apologies, negative self-talk, people pleasing, self-doubt, an inability to relax, chronic irritability, etc. These traits and actions may seem unimportant when a kid is getting good grades, is involved in lots of activities, is surrounded by a group of friends, is never one to get in trouble and is always an example for their peers - but high functioning doesn't always indicate absence of problems. I would know, I lived it. And I'm trying to make sure that no other child does. But I can't do it on my own.

We need to do something sooner.

We need to watch out for these kids. We need to educate them so that when they realize something is wrong they know that it's real and valid and can be fought. We need to educate their friends so that those who struggle with their mental health can find supportive peers who will stick by their side through the battle. We need to educate their families so that when those families see signs that something isn't right, they can recognize what's going on, know that their concern is valid, and know how to get help. We need to educate their communities so that kids are surrounded by empathy, not stigma. We need to be there for all these groups, and we need to be ready to listen, ready to help when they ask for it - and, in the times when it's necessary, we need to offer them help when we see the problem before they do.

I wish I had known sooner - and I can't help but think that there are still kids out there like me, wondering what's wrong, fighting a battle against an unknown enemy, grasping at all the wrong tools because they're the only tools to be found. I don't want there to be more kids like me. I want them to know what they're fighting and how to fight it. I want them to know that it's not their fault that they're fighting the battle. I want them to know that people won't desert them because they're fighting this battle, and especially not when they feel like they're losing it. I want a world where kids can find happiness and health even when they have mental health battles to fight. And isn't that what we all want for our future generations? So dare to step up and join me, to be part of the change. One more kid like me who slips through the cracks is one too many. We need to do something sooner. We can do something sooner - so let's start doing it, together.

Anxiety, Friendship, & Adulting

A few years ago when I was on unemployment following a medical leave, I decided to participate in a one-day career exploration workshop. I think half the reason is that I like things like personality tests (the other half may have been to convince the unemployment people that I was actually seeking employment at the time, because I definitely didn't feel quite ready to go back to work yet).  Two of the evaluations we completed that day were the ever-popular Myers-Briggs and the less-common-but-still-familiar Holland Code. Unsurprisingly, my Myers-Briggs came out ISFJ (introverted, sensing, feeling, judging), with my strongest trait being introversion at over a 90% preference compared to extroversion. My Holland Code came up as SAI (social, artistic, investigative), with my strongest trait being social. As the lady leading the seminar started making a point that people whose top Holland trait was social are extroverts, I shared my own result, having to further explain that not only was I a social introvert, but my introversion score was extremely high. The seminar leader looked at me like I was an alien and quickly changed the topic. I think she was flustered by my existence.
I've long described myself as a social introvert - I love being around people, but they wear me out. Throw in some Social Anxiety Disorder, and you have the perfect paradox of a person. Recently that paradox has grown even more complex as I've come to accept the number one tool in my anxiety management: surrounding myself with people. I mean, not just any people - they have to be the type of people by whom I feel loved and accepted enough to dare to take off my masks of perfection long enough to relax and simply be myself. And when I say "surround myself" with such a group of people, I mean this fairly literally - not that they have to physically surround me 24/7, but they have to be people that I see on a regular basis. I've always had people in my life who have cared about me, but when location or incompatible schedules keep up from seeing each other or talking (as in real, semi-lengthy conversations), their love and encouragement often doesn't help as much as I wish it would.
It actually kind of makes sense that the best way to manage my anxiety is to surround myself with a solid support system of people. Having Social Anxiety Disorder is less a fear of people themselves and more a fear of their rejection (and the possible repercussions of that rejection). Anxiety brain is all too good at convincing me that I'm worthless and unlovable; it's also a horrible judge of whether people in the rest of the world have any positive view of me. I spend large chunks of each day telling anxiety brain to shut up (literally - on the list of things heard yelled in my kitchen last weekend were "Anxiety brain, shut up!"). If my voice and rational brain's voice are the only ones I hear fighting back, and, at least according to anxiety brain, the whole world is saying the opposite, my own positive and hopeful voices get drowned out. I need to hear others express that I'm valued and loved and worthwhile; their voices do a much better job of drowning out anxiety brain. It's not that I'm that self-centered and attention-seeking - it's that I literally can't fight anxiety brain alone. I've tried. Many times. I've failed. Many times.
What remains is how to make sure I'm continually surrounded by those people. I was pretty lucky growing up. I had a solid group of friends from childhood all the way through high school, with some additions and subtractions along the way. During much of that time, my anxiety remained highly functioning. In college it was harder to make friends, and anxiety got worse, particularly through each of the two occasions where my friend groups of the time exploded. Then I became an adult - which seems to complicate the friend-making process even more - and anxiety symptoms took a turn from highly functional to "I'm just trying to survive the next minute." As an adult, the peaks and valleys of my anxiety management can be mapped pretty clearly with how strong of a support system I have among people that I see on a regular basis. Initially, seeing as I was a new teacher, the workaholic in me relied on my colleagues for this. Turns out, it was very hit-or-miss, and it made for some particularly rocky situations during the times that I've spent in toxic work environments. So now work colleagues don't get to join my support system until after they've proven trustworthy over a long period of time. I needed to find friends outside of work.
If there were a class called "Adulting 101," one of the topics on the syllabus would be "How do I make grown-up friends?" Any time that I talk to my childhood and college friends (who are spread across the country), we talk about the same types of struggles in trying to form friendships with people we see on a regular basis. The number one method to making grown-up friends seems to be joining an activity that you love because doing so allows you to find people who have something in common with you. It took me a few years into adulthood before I let myself focus less on work and take some time to involve myself in other activities. And eventually through activities, I started building new friendships.
Here's the question that no one ever answers, though: What do you do when the activity comes to an end? How are the friendships sustainable when you no longer see those people on a regular basis?
These questions feel more complex to me as I battle anxiety brain - at almost 29 years old, I have yet to figure out the difference between anxiety brain and reality when it comes to trying to build and sustain new friendships. Clearly, friendship is a two-way street that takes an effort to maintain - but what if I become a nuisance? What if my internal desperation to stay connected to people I value surfaces and I come off as needy and clingy? When is someone an acquaintance whose company I can enjoy within the bounds of a structured activity, and when are they a friend that I can invite to grab coffee or a meal or just hang out with? When there exists an age difference, who is a friend, and who is a mentor, and what are those boundaries when we're both adults? And, while we're at it, how does an extreme introvert who doesn't know how to do small talk but loves meaningful conversation try to build friendships with extroverts without scaring them off by doing something like sitting down and saying "So, what's your life story?" (Which I've stopped myself from doing so many times in the last year - scratch that, month - it's ridiculous, but then conversation falls flat and fizzles and goes nowhere because small talk has always seemed to meaningless to me that I never learned how to do it). What are the questions I'm allowed to ask to get to know someone better, and which ones are prying too much? To top it all off, which of these questions are anxiety brain, which ones are part of being a clueless Millennial, and which ones are a normal part of the growing up process?
When I'm not in an anxiety-induced isolation mode, I actually really like spending time with people, even if they do wear me out. One of my favorite activities in life is learning about people and their stories - and it's so much more fun when it's real people standing in front of me than it is when it's fictional characters, celebrities, or historical figures. I want to spend time with people, want to get to know them, and will probably remember more about them than they'd like me to sometimes - but only because they matter to me.
Lately I struggle with something I haven't for a long time, and don't generally experience as an introvert: loneliness. I've been burned enough times at work, and have had a transient enough career, that I find little connection there; I mean, I love my students and care about them deeply, but they're no replacement for grown-up friends. The older I get, the more it seems that most people around me go home to their families and established circles of friends. I, on the other hand, go home to my dog (who is great company but not so great for conversation). And anxiety brain can't figure out who is a good enough friend or friend-in-the-making that I'm allowed to text or call or ask if they want to hang out without being an intrusion into their life at best (and a total creeper at worst). On the good days, this leaves me feeling lonely. On the bad days, I feel paralyzed by anxiety, knowing that I'm in desperate need of immediate support system interference with no clue who I'm allowed to reach out to, including the people who keep telling me to reach out. On both types of days, I wind up sitting at home, too afraid to make the wrong move, and proceed to get way too excited about every Facebook notification that rolls through and count down the days to my next scheduled social event.
Unfortunately, with my school year activity wrapping up its final gatherings and my summer activity cancelled, I'm quickly running out of structured social gatherings to look forward to. It makes me panic a little bit - enough so that I, who feel really uncomfortable being the center of attention, almost considered planning a birthday gathering for myself as an excuse to spend time with people (until I realized that the Lynx have a home game that night, and as a season ticket holder, that's hard to skip). But I need to figure something out soon, because I've done the summer-of-loneliness while job hunting thing before, and it wasn't pretty, and I would really rather not do it again. So here's hoping that I manage to figure out this whole friendship aspect of adulting thing without anxiety getting in the way. Because as much as I can laugh at myself in good humor for all of the ridiculous-sounding questions above, right now would be a good time to start finding the answers to some of them.

The Masks I Still Wear

I felt my breathing quicken and the tears well in my eyes. My whole body was tense, every muscle ready to run. After fighting it for five minutes or so, I made my escape. Walking quickly, I made a bee-line for the bathroom, locked myself in a stall, and released the panic attack that had been building up. It was going to happen no matter what, it may as well not happen in front of other people. My brain was swirling in an opposing mix of anxiety about not wanting anyone to see me at my worse and a longing to not feel as isolated as I did that moment, hoping that someone would walk in and be there to help.
A Friday night after a long week, I was at our variety show banquet which I'd been looking forward to since the show had closed nearly two weeks earlier. That year, after spending a winter isolating myself from people in general, I had finally found friends in this group, many of whom had been around for all three years that I'd been in the show, but it took until this year for them to turn from acquaintances and castmates into friends (going from 2 to 22 Facebook official friendships). When the show closed after its one-weekend run, my social interaction level fell off a cliff, and I was on the struggle bus trying to deal. Banquet night was supposed to be a time to reconnect with many of them. But then I got there early and didn't want to grab a table all by myself, then as people I knew trickled in, all of their tables seemed suddenly full, and I didn't know where there was room for me but was too afraid to ask for fear of imposing or being rejected, and on top of it all, after showing up in a nicer but casual outfit involving denim capris the year before and feeling severely underdressed compared to everyone else, I showed up in a casual dress and leggings to discover that this year most people were in jeans and felt incredibly overdressed, and just as I had started feeling like I fit in, I suddenly felt like I ceased to belong. (And in that crazy-long, run-on sentence, welcome to my brain on a panic attack).
In the bigger picture, that panic attack was really the result of a spiral that had started the previous Monday with a day that had been, by all rational standards, a pretty fantastic day outside of being plagued by physical anxiety symptoms for literally no darn reason. When physical anxiety symptoms stick around for too long, anxiety brain likes to find reasons for its existence. By the end of the day on Monday, then, the questions started swimming in my head: What had I done during the day's professional development sessions to make a fool of myself in front of my colleagues (especially as I try to get rehired in the district, hopefully for something much closer to full time than I am now)? Had I said too many negative or idiotic things out at dinner with recent acquaintances-turned-friends that would make them reconsider wanting to spend time with me again? Was there something I'd done wrong at the volunteer event I'd worked at that evening that would somehow destroy any of the work that we'd gotten done? The questions running through my head started coloring all my memories from the day with doubt and insecurity.
I'd tried to spend that day ignoring all of my physical anxiety symptoms, tried to enjoy all the great moments that had happened, tried to convince myself that I was fine even though I didn't feel that way. I'd spent my whole day attempting to cling to the positive - but I wasn't doing it for myself. I was doing it because it's what I felt was expected of me. More than I was trying to help myself be okay, I was trying to convince everyone around me that I was okay.
After many years of hard work, I've finally managed to convince myself that I'm still valuable and lovable even as a person who struggles with an anxiety disorder (which, when it gets bad, also leads to stretches of depression) - but somewhere along the line I also developed the belief that I'm only worthy of that value and love if I'm successfully managing my anxiety disorder. If I'm falling apart? If I can't manage to pull my life together no matter how hard I try? If no matter what I do, the anxiety gets worse to a point where I give up trying to get better? I'm worthless. I'm unlovable. I should expect to be abandoned and shunned.
Because I'm pretty open about my anxiety (except at work), I like to think that I've put away most of my masks of perfection. But when it gets bad, I start to put new masks on - not ones of perfection, but ones of successfully managing my mental health disorders. I'd been doing it all winter. I put on the mask of stress management in the face of ever-increasing stressors and anxiety-triggers at home and at work when I felt overwhelmed to a point of drowning. I put on the mask of cautious optimism in the face of yet another year of job insecurity when internally I was convinced that I was a failure of a teacher who wouldn't ever get hired again. I put on the mask of attempting to be a functional human being when really I was cutting out all non-essential pieces of my hygiene routine, eating junk or nothing at all, and not getting my dog outside beyond the small front lawn to do his business. I put on the mask of a faith still standing when panic attacks had kept me out of church for months and ignoring God's existence half the time because it was too painful to acknowledge Him in my life when it still brought me no hope, no comfort.
That fantastic-but-anxious Monday that had started my week? I'd had a chance during an afternoon professional development session to reconnect with an instructor I had for the one graduate-level course I took a couple of years ago who's very aware of my anxiety struggles. Before her presentation, she asked how I was doing, and I talked about liking my job and wanting to start working toward my Master's Degree in her specialty area as soon as life's timing allows. After her presentation, she more pointedly asked how I was doing with my health and if I was taking care of myself; I admitted some of the struggles but tried to put a positive spin on it. I didn't to disappoint her by sharing just how bad this winter was and how much I've really struggled to take care of myself through it all and how after a couple of weeks of successfully managing my anxiety, at that moment in time I was at a jumping-out-of-my-skin level of anxiety. Later that evening out at dinner with friends from the show, one of them turned to me to ask a little about my anxiety struggles, and after I shared a little bit, she followed up with the question "But you're turning a corner now, right?" I attempted to answer with something positive because I was afraid to disappoint her and the rest of the group by sharing that I was having a crappy anxiety day. The full truth was that I'd felt really great during show week and the week that followed, but at that moment, that evening, anxiety brain was fighting to take over. While rational brain was saying "I'm so happy to be here with this group of people," anxiety brain was screaming "I hope I don't do anything stupid that will make these people never want to hang out with me again." So I put on the "I have an anxiety disorder but I can totally handle managing it" mask.

"Being aware of your crap and actually overcoming your crap are two very different things." ~ Christina Yang, Grey's Anatomy (Season 4, Episode 6)

I spent most of Monday telling myself I was thinking positively and optimistically about the anxiety struggles of the day. That night when I got home, felt like isolating myself, and started crying the moment I made it to my room, I realized that all my positivity was driven less by a desire to be healthy and more by a desire to not let other people down. Anxiety had run my day, and I had let it.
I spent the rest of the week trying to strike a balance between being real about how I was struggling and trying to find the bright side. Because maybe finding a bright side would eventually be more about trying to be healthy instead of trying to live up to other people's expectations for me. But I wasn't going to let anxiety run my life either, and that meant forcing myself to start taking off the masks and risk letting people see all of me in the rough moments and days the same way I did on the good ones.
The Facebook responses from my new show friends through the week were positive and supportive, but dealing with the face-to-face possibilities at Friday's banquet helped to push me over the edge, and I had a panic attack at a time that I really didn't want to have one. The good news is, this story has an actual bright side. Once I'd made it past the big panic attack and at least made my way out of the bathroom stall to where the sinks were, one of those new friends happened to walk into the bathroom, expressed a calm, helpful, non-suffocating amount of concern, and when I shared that one of the things that had set me off (and was keeping me in the bathroom) was the fear of finding a place to sit at one of the tables, she offered to help me out with that. A couple of minutes later, I talked myself into finally leaving my bathroom hiding spot and wound up at a spot next to her at a table full of people that I generally have a pretty strong comfort level with, and the night got better. The night was still a rollercoaster of emotions with no rhyme or reason, where I'd slip between feeling great and having fun to holding back tears in an instant for no real reason. But the night felt good overall by the end. I didn't leave. I didn't have another panic attack. I didn't burst into tears in front of people. And, after my anxiety dipping to panic attack levels, I was supported and not abandoned.
So I'll add the memory of this night to the others I've built over the past few weeks. One more reason to take off the masks. One more reason to believe more in myself and less in what anxiety brain tells me. One more weapon in the battle to believe that the bright sides of the bad days are real and lasting and worth holding on to.