“I feel a blinding shaft of terror, which I tell myself to ignore, as my brain will often try to send me messages that are untrue and I do not have to listen to them. This is lesson one at St. John’s: your brain is an idiot.”
– Sophie Kinsella, Finding Audrey
It didn’t make sense. The sensations, symptoms and feelings that would flare up in the most non-threatening situations did not make sense. They didn’t make sense to me and I was convinced they certainly wouldn’t make sense to anyone else. Then, of course, I’d feel ashamed which only led to more unpleasant sensations, symptoms and feelings of anxiety.
What normal person can’t go to dinner with their family without feeling anxious? What normal person panics when someone comes to talk to them at their desk at work? What normal person needs to take an Ativan just to get through a 10 minute conversation with their boss?
What is wrong with me?
That thought would be the hardest one to break.
I was like a frightened bird. You know the ones, they fly into a house or a mall by mistake and even though there are open windows and doors all around, they panic. They fly around, banging into things, searching for an escape when really, there’s no need to panic. They can just fly out exactly the way they flew in. They think they’re in a cage, but they’re not.
So it goes with anxiety. I remember sitting in my boss’s office, my hand shaking so hard, I could barely write, my vision blurring, my thoughts a tornado of “I cant’s” & “what if’s”.
There was a small voice inside my head trying to be rational, saying, “hey, it’s ok, you’re not in any danger”, but it was very quiet, almost inaudible over the other voice, the one screaming, “ALERT, ALERT, GET OUT.”
I somehow made it through the meeting. I ran to the bathroom, gasping for air. Tears of frustration would stream down my face. Then, I’d dry my eyes and quietly go back to my desk to continue on with my work. I’d jump or startle when someone came to talk to me and I’d start to feel like that trapped bird again. Sometimes I’d talk myself out of the panic attack, but sometimes I’d make an excuse, like, “oh, excuse me, I have something in my eye”, or, “I’m getting a call, excuse me.”
And I’d walk away feeling like a complete idiot, berating myself, thinking, “it will always be like this”, convinced everyone else knew I was an anxious mess.
These moments happened fairly regularly. I became phobic around certain people. Some days were good, some days were bad. I always kept Ativan on hand for the bad days. I was functioning in the sense that I was going to work, attending the events I needed to, getting by, but I was frustrated. I was stuck, discouraged and depressed. My anxiety had morphed and was definitely more socially triggered than it was originally, but, if I look back on my life as a whole, I think social anxiety was always simmering under the surface for me.
For years, social anxiety was my cage. Maybe not everyone knew, and that was part of the anxiety too. I didn’t want anyone to know I was uncomfortable, that I was seconds away from bolting from the room and locking myself in the bathroom. I didn’t want anyone to know I had taken an Ativan just to sit through a meeting. And the thing is, you know it’s irrational, but in the moment, it doesn’t matter. In the moment, it feels like the walls are going to cave in on you, like you’re in a nightmare and you just want to escape or hide. Even as I write this, I have to fight feelings of shame and embarrassment.
I recently read a book by Sophie Kinsella called, Finding Audrey, about a teenage girl battling intense social anxiety. Do you know what I felt when I was reading it? Many things, but I mostly felt compassion, but not in an, “oh, poor thing”, kind of way, but in an understanding, relatable way. She wasn’t crazy and neither was I. Our brains were just overly responsive to certain sets of stimuli. They were reacting to things that weren’t actually threats, and the cool thing about our brains is, we can teach them to think about things in a different way (hooray for neuroplasticity), and, just like I didn’t look down on Audrey for her social anxiety, other people most likely aren’t going to look down on me for mine, and if they do, that says more about them than it does about me.
I know I don’t always have to look like I have it all together but I still struggle with this. I don’t want to admit I’m anxious. I want to appear capable and confident and in control, even though inside, I feel anything but.
When you have social anxiety, the thought of embarrassment can make you want to die. Embarrassment isn’t fun for anyone, but for someone with social anxiety it’s tied into all sorts of other fears. You’re convinced there is something wrong with you and you’re quite certain that everyone else is on the cusp of discovering that as well. Once they find out, they’ll judge you and reject you and you’ll never recover.
That is the cage that is social anxiety. The fear of being found out. The fear of being judged and/or rejected.
After years of prayer, therapy, hard work, and eventually, a daily SSRI, the fog of social anxiety (as well as other anxiety labels) finally lifted. I was able to face triggering scenarios without the panic and anxiety that would have normally caused me to lose sleep. I don’t rely on Ativan anymore, because I don’t have intense panic attacks.
In Finding Audrey, at one point a character in the book points out to Audrey, when she’s feeling particularly low and stuck, that, “It won’t be forever. You’ll be in the dark for as long as it takes and then you’ll come out.”
I loved the book, by the way. Can you tell? So many good quotes.
“It won’t be forever. You’ll be in the dark for as long as it takes and then you’ll come out.”
Sophie Kinsella, Finding Audrey
Social anxiety may feel like a cage but I’m grateful to have found a way to unlock mine. It took years and lots of one step forward, two steps back. There were days I didn’t think I’d ever get better, days that felt hopeless, but healing is possible. So, if you’re in that cage right now, that anxiety cage, whatever the anxiety disorder might be (OCD, panic, phobias, GAD, health anxiety, etc.), have hope. Things may feel dark and it may take a long time, and your journey might not be linear, and it might be a lot of trial and error, but my prayer is that you eventually will be able to step out into the light.
Because just like that bird, flitting about, panicking and feeling trapped, crashing into closed windows, eventually and maybe with a little help and coaxing, that bird finds the open window, the one that was open all along, and flies through it, out into freedom and light and fresh air.
I was that bird inside and now I am out. Years and years of up and down and some improvement and then back to square one, and lots of darkness and lots of lessons and lots of hard work and a little bit of faith and a lot of prayer and a lot of therapy and a little medication and finally, finally freedom.
The Hope Antidote 