That old familiar feeling came creeping back. The tightness in my chest, the dull headache, the feeling that im almost numb, floating through my day.
Anxiety.
The smallest of things can set me off, a missing item or a spelling mistake. My anxiety can hold onto virtually anything and feast off of it.
I havent had a full on panic attack for a while now and that’s something I am bloody proud of, but the mild ones are still there.
The ones where I spiral down into a deep train of thought that is self-deprecating, dispiriting and disbelieving that anything, including myself, is worth it.
The ‘why bothers’, the ‘whats the points‘, the ‘I should just give ups‘ always feature in these ‘mild’ panic attacks.
After that this wave of immense pressure hits. Pressure to be better, do more, work harder.
Yes I agree they are totally conflicting, try telling my anxiety that. It doesn’t care about contradictions or common sense.
The mild attacks are almost worse than the ones that leave you a sobbing, over heating, scratching mess because these….these have no outwardly symptoms.
None that are noticeable at least!
I can sit laughing or chatting to a group of people, all the while I’m fighting this internal battle.
My small tell tale signs are repetitive motions with my hands. I’ll rub them or make squeezing motions. It varies from person to person, however generally these tell tales are difficult to notice because with high functioning anxiety, we get very good at hiding it.
Its been an exhausting week, a week where I have been fighting this feeling daily.
But I havent fallen apart completely, I haven’t hidden away, I haven’t let it win and control what I do.
Some things have slipped, like the gym, but a bath with some relaxing bubbles, oils and Netflix sounds much better to me right now.
As I have always said, we all have our down days (or weeks), this is just one of mine!
