To Everyone Who Has Anxiety, Me Too.

I'd like to share an article I wrote about my experience with anxiety. As a freelance writer and in an effort to raise awareness of mental illness and the mental health community, I decided to publish it here in hopes that it will speak to others.  You are not alone!

"To Everyone Who Has Anxiety, Me Too."
Written by Hannah Miller on 12/27/16

I know what it's like to live with anxiety.

Now that I know what it's like, and what it actually is, I can see where it had shown up throughout my life. I see the many different moments of anxiety I have experienced throughout childhood, teenage years, and into adulthood.  At the time, I just thought it was how everyone felt in those situations. 

Crippled by fear, frozen in one place while your mind paces endlessly, stomach nerves raging, heart rate rising and hands shaking. The more you try to fight it, the more aggressive it strikes. It is a full on body-trembling, soul-twisting voice of panic and fear. It makes you question your own reality, sanity, and identity. It makes you feel out of body, out of mind, and out of control.

It's the feeling you get in your belly, the jolt of shock, when you step off the side of a curb that you didn't know was there. Only it is constant, and coursing through your whole body like waves of debilitating pain and adrenaline.

This was just a normal stress response, I thought. 

I didn't know to reach out, didn't know that I could. For so long I thought I was just insecure and didn't know how to cope.

But that could not be further away from the truth.  The reality is that I didn't know it was because of a chemical imbalance in my brain.  I didn't know it was because of a learned response of behavior from my environment.  I didn't know parts of this illness can be genetic.  I didn't know anything. Most importantly, I didn't know it was not my fault, that it was not a character or personality flaw, and that it should be taken as seriously as a physical illness should. 

After suffering with chronic illness for 4 years and many different life events, my anxiety had soon become a living nightmare.  Others talk of taking it day by day, but I soon had to take it moment by moment, breath by breath. Sometimes, doing even just that seemed so impossible. When those feelings became so devastating that I could barely function, sleep, or eat, I knew I needed help.

It wasn't until I was 24 years old that I called it by its name and began the process of learning how to lovingly navigate this life with mental illness.

Now I know it's not a character flaw.  It's not that I can't cope.  Anxiety is NOT who I am, but something I live with and learn to navigate.  It does not mean I am out of control.

I know what it's like to live with anxiety, and I know now that I can still love myself deeply despite the insecurities, doubts, and fear that the voice of anxiety brings to my life.

I know what it's like to feel alone, like you are the only one who has to be strong, the only one who gets it. 

I know what it's like to search, and yearn, and struggle to find the empathy you know that you deserve from those around you. Just someone, anyone, who can love you through your despair and authentically understand what you're going through. Someone who at least would not judge you for the anxiety you experience and how that makes you different than those who don't know what it's like.

I know what it's like to feel lost, afraid of the anxiety, wondering and worrying if it can get any scarier, any worse, if you can feel any more defeated, small, and insecure than you do right now.

I know what it's like to live with anxiety.

I am here to tell you, me too. 

Hearing "me too" from others during my roughest years of panic attacks and anxiety was what I needed and what truly got me through the darkest of days. While I have worked on many years of self care, with counseling, psychiatry, medication, massage and yoga, meditation, and a huge toolbox of self care activities, nothing has helped me as much as a loving voice of empathy letting me know I'm not alone.

Hearing "me too" from another person suffering from mental illness means more to the heart than just two words at face value. 

Hearing "me too" means you're not alone. It means there are others out there like you.  It means you're not going crazy with irrational fear or worry, but instead you're a freaking warrior battling an all out mind-war and rallying to make a decision every day to choose loving yourself over believing the lies that anxiety feeds you. It means that even when you feel like you fail, you are not a failure.

You are not your anxiety.

Hearing "me too" means that while you feel like you're drowning in a sea of anxiety, there is someone who has been there and can inspire you to dig deep and find the skills to swim better than you ever have. Hearing "me too" can be the difference between feeling defeated and being victorious.

Ever since I have heard the words "me too", I've felt empowered to not suffer in silence, but to instead suffer together with others who have a mental illness so that we, together, can be warriors. Together, we can be the mighty warriors that help each other to remember who we are, and how to distinguish the difference between our own voices and anxiety's, even when we've forgotten.

To everyone who has experienced that unending dreadful nervousness in the pits of their stomachs...

To everyone who knows what it's like to feel like it takes every ounce of your being to pull yourself out of a panic attack...

To everyone who has ever felt alone, scared, judged, threatened, or anxious...

Me too.  And you are not alone.