For as long as I can remember, I have had something called Generalized Anxiety Disorder. To keep things simple, we’ll call it by it’s abbreviation, GAD.
GAD is a mental disorder in which anxiety digs its way into everyday life. Picture this, your friend has asked you if you’d like to go on a getaway for the weekend with her, you think about it for a moment, ‘I don’t know… A new place seems like a lot…but hey, I’m not doing anything and I trust her.’
You agree to go, with that you feel pretty proud of yourself and a bit excited, then the worst possible thing happens:
“Great! I can’t wait for you to meet my friends! They’re tagging along too!”
Suddenly all that excitement is drained, you’re no longer proud of stepping out of your comfort zone. You have a whole new problem bubbling up, your heart picks up its pace, your vision becomes severely fuzzy, it’s hard for you to breath.
You’ve stopped paying attention to what your friend is saying, your focus is solely on your body and panic.
You notice she stopped talking, so you suck it up for a moment and pretend it’s alright. “Yeah…. I can’t wait.” Before hanging up.
‘What have you done?!? Are you out of your mind?!?’ your inner voice screams. You’re terrified, you don’t know most of the group you’re going with, only your one friend. You tense so hard your muscles start to ache, you’re sweating profusely but you pay no attention. Your attention is now on every possibility of what can go wrong.
‘What if everyone ends up hating me? What if I make a fool out of myself? What if my friend stops liking me?’
These thoughts race through your mind for the rest of the night. It made it to hard to sleep, so now here you sit on your bed getting ready to text your friend “Something came up, I can’t go on the trip.”
You let out a deep sigh and hit send. Relief washes over you. You notice your muscles start to loosen, you can breathe more freely, and those thoughts are finally quieting themselves. There’s a moment of peace.
That is, until you realize what you’ve just done. You just abandoned your friend, she wanted to spend time with you but you turned your back on her. Your body tenses again. ‘What if she never wants to talk to me again?’ and the cycle repeats.
It’s a cruel thing indeed, a monster that knows no bounds, a terrible beast that seemingly can never be defeated. How could we ever get past this?
GAD is a very common condition that affects many people. This disorder knows no bounds and is non-discriminatory. Anyone can be affected and suffer the symptoms of this terrible illness. In fact, about 6-7 million people in the United States alone are affected by GAD and unfortunately most of them are not seeking treatment.
“But why don’t you just get treatment? What’s the big deal?”
What I don’t think a lot of people realize is how much stigma anxiety alone has. People constantly judge others for having mental illnesses or don’t believe they exist. I can’t even count how many times someone told me to “Just get over it, it’s not a real illness.” It’s invalidating and it makes people doubt themselves. Personally, I found myself questioning everything. Why couldn’t I just be better? Why couldn’t I just not be anxious? Why am I like this?
It didn’t feel good and because of this I felt it would be better to just hide it from the world. After all ‘it wasn’t a real illness’.
It can be extremely difficult to accept that you have GAD, you may not even want to believe it and that’s okay! This is completely normal, no person wants to be ‘different’. I know I didn’t, that’s why I hid it for so long, but let me just say, acknowledging it was one of the best feelings I’ve ever had and it was the first step to managing GAD. When you accept you have an issue, it means you’re ready to fix it. Denying it will only shield you from the remedy.
Alright I’ll hit you with some good news! There is a way to manage GAD! Although it does require a bit of work which can be hard given change isn’t something we naturally go to.I personally developed the skills I needed to manage my GAD from others. Of course, there are tons of ways to hone these skills and not everyway works for everyone, and that’s okay! We’re all unique individuals and that means we don’t think the same, so our solutions can never be the exact same. It’s up to you to fine tune your recovery, but don’t worry, this webpage was created just for this purpose. No one should ever have to recover alone and hopefully with the skills, education, and personal experiences, you’ll be able to create and use your own self-help program.
