If you or someone you know has anxiety of any kind, you know what confusion is like. I can say that because I have social anxiety, and it's a part of my daily struggle. We are confusing people. We're painfully aware of that truth, believe me. That's why I want to help.
Believe it or not, helping someone with anxiety is simple. It all comes down to helping us train our brains. That sounds weird, I know. But conditioning an anxiety brain to know it's safe when you're near is the secret to a calm, happy anxiety friend.
Before I go into that, though, it's important that you see life through our very specific set of eyes.
Here's what a typical day looks like with an anxiety brain...
I just woke up. My neck, shoulders, and back are sore. It was a stressful day yesterday, and I must have been tensing up again. (Sometimes we can go a whole day with constantly tensed up muscles and not even know it. It's our normal.)
I know I should eat breakfast, but I'm too nervous. There's too much to get done. I need to make sure I succeed today, or I'll start spiraling. I have to mentally prepare before I call about setting up my routine dental appointment today, I don't want to say something idiotic and mess up. I'll just grab a granola bar and call it good. (It's different for everyone, but for social anxiety phone calls are usually the absolute worst. If an anxiety brain can talk on the phone with you and feel comfortable, congratulations, you have been accepted into the circle! I think I can name about 7 people I can talk on the phone to without having to psych myself up first. My parents, my siblings, and one of my cousins.)
Then I'm meeting with a friend later, so I need to think through a mental list of conversation topics. I don't want to leave things silent for too long or they'll think I'm awkward. I also need to think through every possible scenario of what could go wrong so I can prepare accordingly. I don't want to seem lonely, but I still want them to know I want to be there. I don't want to seem clingy, but I don't want to be distant either. I also don't want to offend them by accident. I've been hurt, and I don't ever want to be the source of someone else's pain. I'll have to be super careful. (This is often why people with anxiety are introverts. It takes a lot of energy and effort to talk to people. Especially for social anxiety.)
I finished my phone call, and I didn't mess up. Mental high five! Now I'm at the grocery store. All the self checkouts are closed, so I have to use a normal lane. I hope I don't say something stupid to the cashier. I'll say only what I absolutely have to, and then leave. Hopefully there's a self checkout open next time. (I pretty much only use self checkouts when the option is available. And no, it's not because I'm trying to put cashiers out of a job, so stop bringing that up, please.)
As I'm looking at my to do list for the day, I see my email list, and notice that there are several emails piled up in my work account. There are also several messages on facebook that I haven't had time to answer, and I should start somewhere so people don't think I'm ignoring them. Oh no... I shouldn't have opened my emails. I forgot about that project I was supposed to submit yesterday. They must think I'm an awful person. I feel terrible. I don't want to be bad at my job. It's too much... I failed. I won't get it all done. Why do I even try when I always mess up? (At this point I can feel my heart rate increasing. Something so simple, and yet my brain has just told my body it's in danger. Fight or flight is activated, and adrenaline is released into my body. My thoughts become blurred and unclear. My chest simultaneously feels like there is a balloon full of moths on the inside, and a boulder on the outside. If it's really bad, and I've had a hard enough week, I might starting having shallower and more sporadic breathing.)
I need to calm down. I need to calm down. How do I calm down? I can't. I can't. I can't. I'm by myself. Just focus...focus... You can't do this right now, you need to drive home so your ice cream doesn't melt. Focus on that. No melty ice cream. That's the goal. (It might sound ridiculous, but oftentimes having a simplified, single goal to focus on in an anxiety attack is the very thing that helps us function through it. Someone once told me to start praying for a friend when this happens as well, and that helps a lot to distract and center the racing thought process of Fight Or Flight mode. Sometimes I'll recite Psalm 139 to myself. Using focus techniques to stop an anxiety attack is called "grounding," and the best thing for grounding is Jesus.)
Okay, I made it home. I should eat something, and then I'll stretch or watch a show for a while. I'll make some green tea. Maybe I'll read. I can't answer my emails now. I'm too frazzled and I might make a mistake. I'll do it later. (Believe it or not, procrastination is a sign of anxiety. We put things off because we feel we can never live up to the perfection we hope for the project to achieve, or we worry that we'll never be satisfied with it ourselves, so it's really hard for us to start or truly finish anything. That's why I'm a perfectionist personality who almost always has a messy room. I have to clean it all in one day, or it's not worth it.)
I messaged my friend to ask if we were still getting together today. I also asked how their struggles with their family have been going. They saw my message, but they're not replying. Should I have not asked? Did I say something wrong? Maybe they don't even want to see me today. They're probably just tolerating me. Or maybe they only get together with me because they don't have any other options for friends. I know I worry about things a lot, so maybe that's why? I wish I knew what they were thinking. Why won't they text back? Why am I like this? I shouldn't think about things this way. I don't blame them if they hate me... (This sounds extreme, but it's not. This is my thought process. My anxiety is sourced from rejection and abandonment situations with friendships and relationships that happened when I was in middle and high school. Situations where people I got really, deeply close to left me behind without telling me why. They just stopped communicating with me, avoided talking to me in person, and wouldn't tell me what happened when I asked. So I tend to associate silence with abandonment. Even if that's far from the truth, and I know that, that's just what my brain does.)
I've been staring at my phone, waiting for a reply that probably won't come, because they must hate me for some unknown reason. Suddenly I become aware of a deep soreness in my neck, shoulders, and jaw. I had been clenching my teeth together for the past hour, and I hadn't even noticed. I have to force my jaw to relax. It really aches, now, but that's normal. (This happens so much. I'm never truly relaxed. I find myself clenching my jaw a lot when I'm having a bad anxiety day.)
My thoughts are spinning. Everyone hates me. I can't get my work in on time. I can't even go to the grocery store without feeling overwhelmed. And now I'm spiraling. I know I'm spiraling. I know these thoughts aren't true. But what if they are? Isn't it better to be aware and in pain than to be happily oblivious? Why do I do this to myself? (Oftentimes, anxiety isn't triggered by one event. It's usually triggered by many compiled thoughts, which is why it's harder to predict when an anxiety attack is going to take place than a panic attack, which are more pointed and situation based.)
Now a family member is speaking to me. They're asking me if I completed that small task that they asked me to do earlier. I snap at them that I hadn't gotten the chance yet. I don't know why I'm angry. My mistakes are not their fault. Adrenaline is still in my system, so I have energy that has nowhere to go. I can feel that energy building in my chest. My heart rate increases again. They're surprised at my outburst and get frustrated, since they were only asking a simple question. I should apologize, and tell them about my day, but I'm embarrassed about how little overwhelms me, and I don't want to admit it. So I get mad. I don't know what I'm mad about, I just am. The build up of tension releases, and I explode. This sparks an argument that could have been easily defused if I would have just told the truth earlier, but I don't want to burden anyone with my struggles. (90% of the time, when I get mad it's because of something going on behind the scenes, and not because of the situation directly in front of me. I'm not good at owning up to the things that are bothering me, especially because anxiety makes me feel so small.)
Once the argument is over, I isolate myself for an hour or so, just until I can calm down. Then I feel terrible. That argument was ridiculous. I just ruined someone else's day. I'm so selfish. Why am I so selfish? I shouldn't be this way. I shouldn't. So why am I? I go to the family member and apologize. We hug, and things are fine again. I complete the task they asked me about in the first place. (Explosions and arguments often happen when I don't get the chance to calm down after an anxiety attack. I need to get better at communicating this to people, but it's hard. I don't like owning up to the problem.)
Meanwhile, my friend has replied to my message. They're excited to get together, and tell me they can't wait. They had been in an area without phone service, which is why it took them a while to reply. We plan where we're going to meet. I go through "socialization protocol" in my head one more time before I go to meet them. We end up having an amazing time. When I get home, I think through everything I said with my friend. The only sentences that come to mind are ones that I thought might have sounded dumb. I dwell on these sentences for several days, maybe weeks, and sometimes even apologize for them. Usually the friend doesn't even remember me saying the thing that I was dwelling on. (I still lay awake in the middle of the night thinking of dumb things I said when I was in elementary school. It's ridiculous, I know, but it's my reality.)
Well... There you go...
There's a taste of what our day typically looks like. Now, this is a more extreme scenario. Having all of these examples take place on the same day would be considered a really bad anxiety day. And this day would be the result of me not taking care of myself, or not taking my usual precautions. When I eat regular meals, sleep right, and take proper care of my mental and emotional health my anxiety tends to be a lot better. That's a daily process, though. I also have certain breathing techniques, supplements, and other tricks that help keep my anxiety under control. Before I realized I had social anxiety, though, days like this happened often.
I'm planning to write a part two to this post about how to best help the anxiety brain you know. Once I write that, the link will go here...
How To Help Your Friendly Neighborhood Anxiety Brain
For now, though, I hope you found this helpful in itself! Anxiety is nothing to be afraid of or shy away from in a friendship. In fact, some of the most loving, considerate, big-hearted people I know are people with anxiety. We know what it's like to be alone, so we go out of our way to make sure people never feel that way.
I didn't at first, but over the years I've come to see my anxiety as a superpower. Without it, I don't think I would appreciate the friends I have as much. Anytime someone shows me deep unconditional love, I'm pleasantly surprised and eternally impacted by their willingness to stick around. People leaving is normal. People staying is beautiful.
Without anxiety, I never would have started writing. The worlds, and characters, and stories I've had the blessing to create because of this illness are a greater gift than I can even comprehend. And it's because of that writing that I was able to start creating original plays and skits, which is something I still do to this day. I even got to watch one of those plays come to life last fall.
I still pray that God will take my anxiety from me. Mostly because I notice how it negatively impacts those around me. But I also understand if he doesn't. Some of the most beautiful stories are woven with pain and struggle, but they have hope as well.
As Jesus said in the garden before he was arrested, "Father, take this cup from me. Yet not my will but yours be done."
Sometimes God purposefully allows pain to remain in our lives. And it's because of love that he does this. Only he can see the ending. He wrote it. And he knows exactly what plot points will help us accomplish his beautiful, unique, blessed plan for us.
Anxiety is hard, frustrating, and exhausting, but it's led me through green pastures. It's placed me beside still waters. It's a tool that God has used to restore and refresh my soul on multiple occasions. It's also helped me reach out and relate to others who feel alone, and that's worth it's weight in gold.
Do you struggle with anxiety? How has God used it in your life, and the lives of others?
