It seems as though everyone is talking about anxiety these days. Youtube stars such as Zoella and Tanya Burr often discuss the issue with their millions of followers. Writer and actor Lena Dunham opens up about her battle with anxiety in her book Not That Kind of Girl and universities and government are finally beginning to make it a priority to discuss the pressing issue of mental health.
For so long anxiety
and mental health has been a topic that people shy away from, a topic that gets
pushed under the carpet or discussed in a whisper. As a result, people who
suffer, and they do suffer; feel ashamed and embarrassed by the fact that
they’re somehow weak, somehow different, and somehow crazy.
But they’re not. We’re
not. We’re not any weaker, any different or any crazier than the average person
on the street; if anything we’re stronger. We get on with life, even when it
seems almost impossible to get out of bed. We turn up to work, lectures, and
lessons without missing a beat; we turn up to life when we feel sick with worry
and dread. We pluck up the courage to speak to people, even friends, when life
feels like its been engulfed by fog.
I say ‘we’ because
since the age of 17 I have been living with anxiety; the type of anxiety that
never really leaves. I have never and I hope I will not ever suffer from
depression, but anxiety has been a little devil sitting on my shoulder, like
millions of others, for almost four years. It questions everything I do,
criticises the way I look, prevents me from sleeping and sometimes makes me
feel as if I am genuinely dying. It makes me feel as though my throat is
closing, as if I’m having a heart attack and as if my head is going to explode.
All in all, it is not very fun.
However, what I have
learnt over the last four years is that you have to control it because
otherwise it will control you. When you feel as though you can’t, you must.
When you feel as if you’re dying you have to tell the devil on your shoulder to
find something else to do with its day because you simply do not have time to
deal with his crap today, or ever. I know that this is so much easier said than
done. The amount of hours I have spent on the phone to my mum worried about
life, worried about my health, worried about every little silly thing that a
person could be worried about is probably quite obscene but that is one of the
ways in which I can calm myself down and put life into perspective.
The last three years
of university has been at times the best three years of my life but also the
hardest. University is marketed to young people as ‘the best three years of
your life’ but what they don’t tell you is that it also can be the hardest. The
pressure of deadlines, living on your own for the first time, dealing with
money, or the lack thereof, meeting new people and trying to have the
‘best-time-ever’ are all ingredients that can produce anxiety. But, you have to
take control of it. Don’t be afraid of it. Do not allow it to beat you.
When things get tough,
especially at this time of year when deadlines have to be met, dissertations
have to be written and exams have to be revised for, do not overexert yourself.
If it gets a bit too much, step away. Take a walk, go for a run, just step away
from work and let your mind rest. Drink water, eat your fruit and vegetables
and maybe practice some yoga. What I’m saying is, look after your body and
mind; fuel it with nutrition and rest.
Don’t think that life
is always going to be this hard because it isn’t. You are better and stronger
than your anxiety and you are strong, stronger than you think, despite it
sometimes feeling as if you are not.
So, put on You’ve Got Mail, read Mindy Kaling’s Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? and
eat some peanut butter covered banana. Ok, these are just a few things that I
do when I just want to relax but whatever relaxes you, utilise it and take a
few minutes out of your day for yourself, collect your thoughts, write down
your fears but also your aims and power on, because you can. You can do this.
No seriously, you CAN do
this.
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