An Introduction

I have Social Anxiety Disorder, occasionally accompanied by periods of depression in the midst of particularly bad anxiety stretches. Anxiety is not all of me, but it is part of my everyday. It took me a long time, but I've finally managed to sort out what thoughts floating in my head come from the side of me I like to call "Anxiety Brain" - the part of my brain that Social Anxiety Disorder uses to try to control how I view myself, the world, and how I react to those things (or, I can identify it with at least a 75% accuracy rate, most days anyway). Each day is a battle between Anxiety Brain and the rest of me - the rational, the competent, the confident. Some days I win, and some days Anxiety Brain kicks my butt, but the battle rages on no matter what.

It's an internal battle, so people don't usually see the daily fight. This makes it hard for people who don't have an anxiety disorder to understand the battle scars I carry. It also makes it hard for people who do have anxiety disorders to see what's going on under the surface even when I appear calm and put-together on the outside. It's one of my lifelong goals to make mental health disorders more visible in order to break the stigma surrounding them and make it less scary for those of us fighting these battles to get help, both from medical professionals and from the friends and families around us. I spend a lot of time writing about what it's like to live with and try to manage an anxiety disorder in hopes of eliminating the silence that perpetuates stigma.

Recently, I discovered that it's cathartic to write down the conversations I have with anxiety brain. You see, most of these conversations sound ridiculous when you look at them from the view of an outsider. Actually, they're pretty laughable even from inside my brain. It's frustrating realizing that your constant anxieties are absurd and not being able to shake the feelings of worry, stress, and defeat (not to mention nausea, shakiness, panic attacks, and general antsy-ness) that result from a battle you know is completely irrational. Writing it down and seeing the hilarity that results from being an outsider looking in eases some of that frustration, and I wanted to share that feeling. So if you're lucky enough to not live life trying to manage an anxiety disorder, I hope this blog helps give you some insight to the battles I fight with Anxiety Brain each day in order to understand a little bit more how to help support me and others like me. And if you, like me, are fighting a brain that keeps you in a near-constant state of fight-or-flight, I hope that you discover that you are not alone in this real but nuisance of a battle. And either way, I hope that you can laugh along with me at the ridiculousness of Anxiety Brain's lies and the things I have to say to try to fight it.