Looking forward to anxious times
In this new blog, Rhys and Mark will be delving into the world of anxiety. It'll be a dark place sometimes, but also somewhere full of surprises and funny moments. Here's Part One.
This looks fun! – said no anxious person, ever. Image courtesy of NIH News in Health
MARK: So, Rhys, here is our first blog about Anxiety – what it is, what it feels like to live with, and what we can ALL do to make living with it easier.
As it says at the top of the page, I don’t suffer from the condition. This means I am likely to say lots of dumb things that people dumbly say to people with anxiety. How about you tell me what the main Dumb Things are so I can avoid them?
I am guessing saying ‘cheer up, mate, it might never happen!’ is one of them.
RHYS: I very rarely get comments about my anxiety, other than asking WHY I'm feeling anxious that day. I simply don't have an answer a lot of the time. So, when people sometimes say ‘Oh, just don't let it bother you’ they don’t know what ‘it’ is because I don’t either!
I tend to not draw attention to myself at times like these. Then you get anxious about what people are saying behind your back. I have a very good friend who suffers, and they blame a lot of their unsociable behaviour on feeling anxious. They get a lot of stick , which is what we're trying to help people avoid here.
RHYS - ANY ‘DUMB THINGS’ TO ADD?
MARK: We are all hard-wired to find an explanation for everything, aren’t we? Does not knowing why you are anxious make you anxious? Or maybe it is something you come to accept and not interrogate too hard.
RHYS: I remember my first anxiety attack which was for a really stupid reason which I won't go into, but it was after a long shift at work, and I was exhausted enough. Then I felt these weird symptoms. Normally, it's shortness of breath, heart racing, sudden high temperature. It was a very weird and horrible sensation and I didn't know what caused it.
These sensations would come and go day in, day out for maybe a year, maybe more. It got to the stage I'd get so frustrated that I couldn't get through a shift at work or any social situation without feeling like I've had the wind knocked out of me.
Now I know what it is, so when those sensations start to come around again I'm a lot more prepared and I will power through. I can finally give it a name, and that helps.
MARK: That’s clearly very different to the non-specific and non-physical feeling of uneasiness we all get sometimes. There’s a lovely old English word which describes it perfectly: the mubblefubbles, defined by Susie Dent as a vague, non-specific feeling of malaise or melancholy.
Sounds like a new CBBC series, doesn’t it – The Mubblefubbles. There’s something onomatopoeic about it. C S Lewis had a character in Narnia called Puddleglum, another word you have to say in a glum, ‘oh, mustn’t grumble’ kind of way.
Do you know when it’s the mubblefubbles or real anxiety?
Tom Baker as Puddleglum in an BBC adaptation of The Silver Chair
RHYS: The term I’d use is malaise – that is something I'm definitely familiar with as a feeling of discomfort. It’s not melancholy so much, as there is usually a reason why I feel sad. This is where my social anxiety starts to kick in as I just feel incredibly uncomfortable both physically and mentally. Physically, where I can't relax or keep still, mentally, where I just want to recluse – stick to my own company. That desire to excuse myself from any social situation is really burning.
MARK: About your friend. I guess when someone is accusing you (verbally or otherwise) of not being sociable, you can’t keep on saying ‘sorry, it’s my anxiety… you wouldn’t understand’?
RHYS: It’s very easy to blame everything on your anxiety. There's no shame in that if it makes you feel better, I still do it sometimes but I've stopped giving my anxiety the satisfaction of knowing that it's the reason I feel like this. I just acknowledge that it's there – and that's it.
MARK: What do we want to achieve in this blog?
RHYS: I want to raise as much awareness as possible about how it feels to be anxious, ranging from the tiniest headache to a full-on anxiety/panic attack. And of the different kinds of Anxiety: mine is a Social Anxiety, which I'm sure we'll get into later in the blog. But overall, we'll hopefully just let people know that they're not alone, and that it's okay to not be okay and admit that you’re not doing so well.
MARK: That’s a very good goal. Mine is to help non-sufferers understand more and maybe, ultimately, make life easier for everyone.
Let’s not wait to hear about Social Anxiety. Can you introduce us to that condition now?
RHYS: There are a lot of components: worrying about everyday activities like starting conversations, especially with people you don't know…working a shift….going shopping…eating in company.
What else? Finding it hard to do things when others are watching, especially if you feel you're being judged or criticised. That can lead to you avoiding eye contact or having low self-esteem.
We've already touched on the symptoms, but you may also experience sweating, trembling or heart palpitations.
MARK: Everyday life, then. The things we do as humans, things which should be a source of pleasure become a source of stress.
Rhys, on a beach
Mark, up a mountain
They are anxious too…
We’re glad to contribute in small way to the big opening-up that’s happening about mental health in general and Anxiety specifically. That’s been no doubt aided by the very public experiences of celebrities, sports stars and even royals.
But in this regular slot, we’ll look just as much at the growing number of articles, books and, indeed, blogs by ordinary people like us on the subject.
MARK: I saw this piece by Daisy Buchanan in The Guardian. What do you think?
RHYS: I found it very interesting how they describe their coping mechanisms. How they achieve at least one goal a day: that can be very daunting, especially after a long day at work to even think about doing the simplest task.
The article also touches on being reliant on your smartphone/social media and how it can affect your mental health, I am super guilty of this. Apart from when I'm at work, I'm always on my phone. But if I come home after a very anxious day, my brain is fuzzy and I've got a huge stress headache, I tend to keep away from my phone for at least the first hour until my head has calmed down.
MARK: And does that work? How easy is it to detox in that way?
RHYS: It's not easy. It doesn't always work and will ruin my entire evening. But usually, giving myself time to be in my own head before replying to that message or email, or making that phonecall does help. I sometimes use breathing exercises as a way to slow my heart rate down and just rationalise . But, yeah, like I said it isn't easy.
I decided that I was a dog, my anxiety was fireworks, and every night was Bonfire Night
Daisy Buchanan
A sad story with a hopeful message
MARK: Bristol University was found guilty under the Equality Act after a student suffering from extreme social anxiety killed herself ahead of an oral examination.
This story really made me think about how even intelligent and qualified people, and people who are presumably trained in safeguarding, just don’t get it sometimes. And if they – we – take that on board and maybe be very careful using terms like ‘snowflake’, we might make some progress.
“Expecting Natasha to take part in oral assessments was like expecting a student in a wheelchair to take an exam in a room at the top of a long flight of stairs.”
Natasha’s father, Robert Abrahart.
RIP Natasha: ‘She would have hated all this attention,’ said her Mum
This week’s A.R.M.*
Frank Turner
*ARM = Anxiety Role Model
RHYS: The first A.R.M. is the great Frank Turner, a punk-folk singer I've been listening to since 2010.
Like most punk songs, his are filled with angst. There’s also heartbreak and the sheer stress of getting through the day. But it's only with his most recent album that he's heavily featured living with Anxiety as he confronts his past drug abuse and how it's affected his mind.
He has managed to turn it around, get married to his lovely wife, Jess Guise (also a musician). And most of all, how he's managed to turn his life around and thrive.
He released a DVD a few years ago called Get Better, a documentary on the progression of his career, and bits about his personal life. The 3rd act of the documentary focuses heavily on his drug abuse, based on how he let it get to the point where he very nearly died. He relied on these substances to make himself numb so he would hardly notice his anxiety/depression.
I've always hated drugs and this documentary made me hate them even more. When I watched this documentary Anxiety was VERY new to me, I couldn't help thinking, ‘Holy shit, I cannot allow myself to let it get that bad’.
The main takeaway from this is he overcame it, he has managed to accept that his Anxiety is a part of him, he even sings about it in multiple venues/arenas and that's something I can never imagine doing… So good on him.
MARK: Now choose one of his songs.
RHYS: The most obvious choice would be I Haven't Been Doing So Well. If you just listen to the lyrics you can tell these are the ramblings of an anxious person. There's a part that leads up to one of the choruses where he talks/sings faster and faster describing how he's feeling, which I love:
‘Cause I've been messed up, stressed out, talking to myself again
Locked up, left out, terrified of everything
Wound up, found out, waiting 'round for something to give
Don't you ever wake up and suspect
That you were simply never cut out to be
The kind of person they expect
The person you intended to be?
And I keep it all in with my idiot grin
And I'm doing my best but there's very little left
So cut me some slack if I crawl back into my shell
I haven't been doing so well.
Thanks so much for creating this blog. I found myself nodding in agreement to much of what you had to say and found it very comforting.
Well done both on such informative a sensitive blog.
You are not alone Rhys - even those who appear cool, calm and capable can find most social situations tedious at best and completely exhausting at worst. I do understand ;)
Love from Annie