A day in the life of anxiety

Before I get into this I feel I should give a slight trigger warning. If you’re anything like me, reading about anxiety triggers can actually trigger your own anxiety. While I don’t discuss anything particularly bad in this post I do advise to proceed with caution if that does apply to you!

Right, let’s get to it then…

You open your eyelids to a haze of what now’s and what ifs. Your stomach sinking further and further into the mattress, clawing and clinging, yearning to just go back to sleep.

Have you ever experienced something that intense and immovable? It’s what every day can be like when you have anxiety.

It’s a monster sitting in your stomach, your heart and your mind, drawing you away from things you once loved. It takes your dreams and your ambitions and just crushes them to dust. And facing that monster becomes more and more impossible each and every day.

I’ve struggled with anxiety since the age of 13. That’s nearly 14 years now. I’ve lived longer with it than I have without it. It’s shaken up my life in so many ways, and I would give anything to just be free of it.

It’s taken a lot of hard work to get to where I am today. For the most part, my anxiety is manageable, and I can now do many of the things I used to find completely impossible. But it’s not easy, and on the inside it is a daily battle.

Every time I speak, every time I go outside, every time I meet up with friends, every time I do anything I am fighting with this monster that is trying to knock me down. It’s exhausting.

On the outside it does look like I’m fine. I don’t think anyone would really know that I’m dealing with it if I didn’t tell them. Part of learning to manage it was learning to be more open about it.

But the problem with anxiety is that the only way to really deal with it is to face it. That takes a lot of strength, which you often just don’t have.

Then there’s the fact that so many people who haven’t experienced anxiety just don’t understand it. I mean how could they, when it’s just so easy to get up and go out without thinking about it.

So as a way of addressing this, I thought I would describe some of the things that normally cause me anxiety on a daily basis. This is what it’s like for someone who has somehow found a way to function with anxiety, so you can only imagine how difficult it is for someone who is still struggling to get to this point.

(If that’s you I stand with you in solidarity. I know it seems impossible now, and it feels very unfair, but you can get through it and you can find your way back. I promise you. And I am here for you.)

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A day in the life of anxiety.

Getting to work.

For the most part, it’s okay for me to get up in the mornings now, but this has only been the last 6 months or so. Every now and then I will get the pang of ‘you can’t do this today, you need to go back to bed’.

It’s not a normal feeling of just not wanting to get out of bed, it’s a physiological reaction to the act of waking up. It makes your heart beat faster, making you feel a bit dizzy, and it can make your stomach feel very uneasy. I don’t eat anything in the morning, and it’s for this reason.

It can take a lot of psyching myself up in those moments. ‘You CAN do this. You’ve done it before and you can do it again.’ Repeat, repeat, repeat.

I don’t spend a lot of time getting ready in the morning because the longer I am in my flat, the more time anxiety has to completely undermine my affirmations and force me to stay home. It usually ends in a horrendous panic attack, especially when I actually have to call into work to tell them I’m ill.

The only way to comfort myself after this is to wrap up in my duvet completely and try to forget I even exist. It does work for a while. But, it’s not long before the anxiety is back, berating me for being a terrible employee. Another day wasted.

So, instead, my morning routine is: get up, shower, clean teeth, get dressed, pack bag, leave. It takes 30-45 minutes and I am out of the door before my anxiety has been had a chance to wake up.

There’s always the worry about what I’m going to wear (I do miss uniforms sometimes) but I just try to pick something comfy, and warm, and just get myself out of the house. 1-0 to me.

The panic generally sets in for my journey to work. Even though I make sure I’m early every time, and the buses are every 10 minutes, I always worry I’m going to miss my bus, or have to run to get it on time which I really do not like doing. I walk pretty briskly to get to the bus stop in enough time, which is also tiring and NOT what I need in the morning. But it gets me there.

But it doesn’t stop there. Even though I get the same bus every day, there’s always the ‘am I at the right stop’ and ‘am I on the right bus’ worries that people often joke about but it is a real issue for people like me, and it’s not fun.

Or, the bus is late. And I’m stuck fighting the sinking feeling in my stomach that tells me it’s just never going to come and never getting to work.

Talking to people.

There are multiple times a day that I say something, and then obsess over the fact that I maybe shouldn’t have said it or that people may take it the wrong way. It’s never anything controversial or offensive, but I get stressed about it anyway.

It’s very unpredictable as to when this will happen or what will set off the anxiety in a conversation. I could be talking perfectly normally with someone for ten minutes and then all of a sudden have this pang in my mind that triggers overwhelming worry that what I just said might be offensive.

It happens at least 5 times a day, if not more. I just have to try and convince myself that if it really was bad then someone would have said something.

I’m also terrible at talking when I’m in a large group, particularly when I am addressing all of the members of that group (as opposed to having a sub conversation with one of two members of the group).

I have a home group from my church that meets every week, there’s about 11 of us in total if everyone is there. I really struggle in this environment.

Every member of the group is a close friend, and I’d be perfectly fine having a one on one conversation with any one of them. But as soon as I start to talk to them all, I can feel my pulse in my brain and I start to shake. It’s awful.

Meeting up with people alone.

I really find going to meet people hard, because there’s a massive fear of the unknown. If they’re late I’m left waiting on my own wondering if they will even turn up (or if I’m in the right place). If they get there first I then have to find them in the place we are meeting, and look awkward or weird.

I can’t really win.

Sometimes after work on Friday I’ll go and meet my other half in the pub with his work colleagues to have a drink. This means entering a busy bar on my own on a Friday night, with no idea where in the pub they are or who is going to be there with him.

It feels awful. Up until the moment I’m sat down with my drink I am in complete panic. I do try and text beforehand to at least find out where they’re sat, but he doesn’t often see it because he’s being a normal person and not staring at his phone the whole time.

Next day anxiety.

Most of my days end with a mixture of relief, and panic about the next day. I’m always so glad to have made it through the day, because my days just don’t feel easy and they are exhausting. But I know I’ve got to do it all again tomorrow. And that’s scary.

I do a lot at night to try and quiet my mind. I don’t want to be worrying about something that hasn’t even happened yet. And, if on top of all of that, if I then struggle to sleep I get more anxious about the fact that I’m going to be tired as well. (Well, more tired. I’m never not tired).

This is the reason I like to sleep with the TV on. It’s really not good for sleep, and it’s not recommended, but it helps me drown out the noise from my mind.

If I worry or stress too much while I’m in bed I start to get dizzy and I have to keep my eyes open. So, I put on a film or a tv show that I’ve seen hundreds of times, and listen to it to distract my brain from the worries of the past day, and the future.

Post-nap anxiety.

Now this one I cannot explain. If any of you out there are experts on the topic and can shed some light please hit me up because I get confused every time.

Because of my M.E I nap a lot. Most of my weekends are spent napping to compensate for all the energy I use during the week. But I need a good hour to come around after a nap because I’m so anxious when I wake up.

My heart pounds, my vision is blurry and I just feel sick, as soon as I wake up. I have to just lie there until it subsides otherwise it continues and starts to creep into other parts of my day.

Anxiety that comes from a known cause is one thing, but when you don’t know the reason it is hard to deal with.

What’s especially weird about it is I don’t feel this way when I wake up in the morning, not the second I wake up any way. It’s only when I’ve had a nap during the day.

General anxiety

There are so many things that I could describe to you when I talk about what gives me anxiety. If I listed them all out you’d be reading for days.

I get anxious when I have to make a decision, even if it’s simple ones like what to eat or what to watch, because I’m scared I’ll make the wrong choice.

I get anxious when people don’t reply to my messages right away because I’m convinced I’ve offended them. And I will feel that way until they’ve replied to me.

I get anxious when my other half is grumpy, because I am convinced he’s mad at me. He never is, he’s usually just tired from his day, but because he’s not happy and smiley I think I’ve done something wrong. He has to actually tell me I haven’t for me to believe him, and even then I’m not convinced.

I get anxious and extremely paranoid when people near me are having a conversation I can’t hear. I am always convinced it’s about me, and I just can’t persuade myself otherwise. It could be strangers on a bus, or my manager and colleagues sat next to me. It really freaks me out, and I wish I could stop it.

Anxiety isn’t just worry.

You may read this and think ‘yeah, I get worried about that too, what’s the big deal?’

Well, while worry and stress are symptoms of anxiety, they are not the whole story. When I say I worry or stress about something, I mean it consumes me. I ruminate on it, I obsess over it, and I can’t stop until there is some sort of resolution.

It’s also accompanied by other physical symptoms like sweating, shaking, or heart palpitations.

So, whenever one of those above things comes along, this is how I feel. And it is exhausting. I somehow manage to find the strength to push through each one, and continue my day as if they weren’t happening, but that doesn’t mean I’m not struggling.

Every one is different

The things I’ve written about here are some of the things personal to me that trigger my anxiety. Every one experiences it differently though. We all have different bodies and minds, with different triggers and different reactions.

You may read this and think none of these things cause you anxiety, but that doesn’t make your anxiety any less valid.

I do hope this has been helpful! Even if it’s just to remind you that you are not alone in your battle with anxiety, and there is light on the other end. Trust me.

Are there any other things you would add to this list? Feel free to comment below!

If you liked this one, you may also want to check out my simple grounding techniques for panic attacks.