Jessica Burkhart - Life Inside My Mind: 31 Authors Share Their Personal Struggles

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This collection is dedicated to any readers who

have ever dealt with any form of mental illness.

May you find comfort and strength through

the experiences shared in these pages.

by Maureen Johnson

I have had anxiety. I suffered a serious bout of it a few years ago. It hit me like a bolt out of the blue and stuck with me for a while.

If you have anxiety, you may know that reading about anxiety usually makes more anxiety. When I had anxiety, I could not read about anxiety without getting anxiety, and yet I read about it pretty compulsively, looking for answers. I was looking for something that told me there was a light at the end of the tunnel. I am letting you know that this essay has that light. It has a sunrise. I know that matters. Trust me. Hold my hand as we go, if you want to go with me.

Anxiety bouts can end. They end all the time. Never give up hope that yours can and will end. I am not a mental health professional, and if you are suffering from severe anxiety, I strongly, strongly suggest seeing one. You may already be doing so. Also, what I write about here is what happened to me. We are all different, and your mileage may vary. Anxiety has a lot of causes and pathways. There is no one way to deal with itwhich is good. There are a LOT of ways. Millionsbillions?of people deal with anxiety. Almost all of us deal with some form of mental infirmity at one point or another in our lives. Youre not only not aloneyoure in the majority.

I want you to know that people can have it and do lots of stuff and actually be happy. I want you to know that exists.

I want you to know it is not all bad. I swear I am not making this up. I want you to know the bout of anxiety that I thought would crush me may have been one of the very best things that ever happened to me. It can be useful.

Now Ill just tell you my story, and if it is of use to you, thats good.

So what happened was that things were going pretty well for me when the anxiety hit. Before then, I thought I knew what anxiety was. I thought it was that feeling Id had before tests, or in certain situations. I thought it was just that nervous feeling. I soon learned that anxiety was a very weird beast.

It came on first as some strange sensationspounding in the chest, things that felt like electrical shocks going down my arms. At the time, I was working a lot. I thought nothing of sitting at my desk until midnight or later, pounding away. My brain was going and going like a train, and then these shocks would come on. It really felt like I had been hit with a bolt of juice right out of a power outlet. Then came the panic attacks in the night, when I would wake up with my heart racing, feeling like I couldnt breathe. They got more and more frequent. Then I was often up at five a.m., pacing around. And then one day I had one of those that didnt shut off when I woke up. My body was racing. What was most disturbing was that suddenly I didnt feel like I was in control of my thoughts. It was like I had always been in the drivers seat of my brain, and then one morning it was hijacked. I was shoved to the passengers seat. I could see where we were going, but I couldnt steer. Almost as if I was watching myself think. I was filled with dread and energy, and I had no idea why. My brain was veering around all over the place.

This all happened on a beautiful summers day. I was supposed to meet two friends to write. I got myself dressed and went out. I called my mother (who is a nurse) and spoke to her. I was teary and shaking. I tried to work, but the words were moving around on the page in front of me. I told my friends what was going on, and they were very helpful. I felt like I had to walk. They walked with me for a few hours, and then one of them got in a cab with me and took me to the doctor. (The doctor had already checked me over for the symptoms Id been having. He had concluded I had anxiety.)

I was given Ativan that night. My mother came up to stay with meI was in that much of a state of distress. I took the pill. My system slowed down a bit for the night and kicked up again the next day. This was the start of months of this. I wont go through the bad stuff and all the thoughts I had, because you probably already know them if you have been through it. I did wonder a lot about how I was going to do anything, how I was going to live my life and do my job. I wondered how I was going to go to bed, and then what would happen when I woke up. These are the kinds of fun times anxiety gives you. Its a jerk. During that summer, writing was hard. I couldnt focus very well. Then I got angry, and I attacked the anxiety. I attacked it with EVERYTHING I COULD FIND. I said, I have decided this anxiety is a signal that I need to do something, so I am going to do it.

Let me tell you what I learned and WHAT I DID ABOUT IT, because that is what matters.

First, the anxiety is not you. Its drifting around you, but its not you. I like to imagine anxiety as the big red monster from Bugs Bunny. (Google this if you want the visual.) It sits outside you. Its kind of ridiculous-looking. The anxiety may be with you now, but it can just as easily go away. It is not a permanent part of you, no matter how it seems.

Second thing: You know how depression lies? Well, anxiety is stupid. I did not just say people with anxiety are stupid. No, no. I mean that anxiety itself is stupid. If you asked anxiety what two plus two is, anxiety will think very hard and then say triangle or a bag of Fritos or a commemorative stamp. Because anxiety doesnt know what anything is. It will try to convince you that things that are totally fine are worthy of dread. That summer, when it was bad, it didnt matter what I looked at or engaged in at first; the anxiety monster was scared of it. It was scared of busy situations, accidents, spiders, sleeping, being awake, my sneakers, the wall... I caught on to the stupidity thing the day I broke down and watched the most boring nature show I could possibly find, just to slow my mind down. It was just pretty pictures of mountains and trees. An anxiety attack came on as I was watching, and I said to it, You are totally stupid. Nothing this stupid can defeat me. Youre going down, you idiotic monster. I AM RULER HERE!

Another helpful visual: I started to think of anxiety as being very, very small, like a child in an oversize lab coat who was trying to order me around. Youre adorable, kid, I said. Now lets go find your parents. Or maybe put you in an orphanage.

With that realization, anxiety was genuinely put on notice.

Third: I looked around at my life and situation. I saw a few things clearly for the first time. For a start, I had no boundaries between work and life. I had no time limits. I would stay online until all hours and let my brain drink in the electricity. There is a lot of research (so much I cant just link here) that indicates this is not super good for our brains. I started to set limits. I stopped work at certain hours, no matter what. If the anxiety had made it hard to write during the day, I didnt try again at night. I stopped.