As a writer, I have a lot of notebooks because sometimes I get an idea and start scribbling. Like in the waiting room at an appointment or in the car (not while I’m driving of course!) or a thought pops into my head and I jot something down to expand on later. I usually have one by my bed, one in my purse, and others scattered around the house. Not because I’m organized, but because that’s just where they land.
Well, a few weeks ago I had this revelation and started furiously writing (and my writing is so chicken scratch that only I’d be able to decipher it — no beautifully penned journals for me) and now I can’t find it. I’ve looked through all the notebooks I can find at the moment and the recent notes on my phone and it’s not in any of those places. Oh well, I’ll just reconstruct it from memory. Extreme editing.
I read/follow this theologian (I was resisting calling her a “woman theologian” because we should all be theologians, but for context, it helps to understand that she is a woman in her late 20s early 30s) and she was teaching on the subject of anxiety and how to fight it spiritually.
She said she had a lot of experience with anxiety and to bolster her claims she shared that her husband lost his job when she was 7 months pregnant and she didn’t know what they would do and how she has battled a reoccurring autoimmune disease, and fear that it would get worse . . . and more, but you get the idea.
And I suddenly had a jolt and laughed out loud like, “of course you’d be anxious over those things!! Those are real life stressors that anyone would find tough to deal with. And then the dawning realization that my anxiety was not normal and that is what makes it mental illness, not just anxiety.
So when I was paralyzed by fear because I found a swelling on my arm that looked like a bug bite or sting and my mind decided that it must be something I was allergic to and I was certain my throat was going to close up at any moment — not normal.
Or when I seriously considered walking up and down 37 stories with a baby on my hip all weekend to avoid getting in an elevator — not normal. Taking my pregnant self on a solo 2 day train trip across 10 states to avoid getting on an airplane — completely abnormal.
Being unable to walk to the corner of our street because I was afraid I might suddenly pass out and collapse from some unknown physical weakness — nutcase central. Throwing up in the bushes before getting in the car to go to church on Sunday mornings because I was petrified to leave the house — crazy town. Begging my husband to come home from work in the middle of the day because I was scared to be alone with the kids for some reason that I couldn’t put my finger on — total loony.
I’ve always known it wasn’t normal, and it’s why I take medication now and talk about it to whoever cares or is curious, but I it dawned on me that when I say anxiety and a normal person says anxiety, we mean completely different things. My anxiety was all consuming and full of intrusive thoughts and what ifs like “what if I couldn’t control my body and suddenly swerved this car off the side of the road and over the cliff?”
I forgot that when normal people say they are anxious they generally mean about things that we all agree would be stress inducing — like having a child with special needs or a husband who is an addict. Whereas in my case, I was panicked that I had to ride as a passenger in the car for 30 minutes and it felt like the world was going to close in on me and I couldn’t breathe. Not normal at all.
So yeah, I laughed when she shared that she was anxious about her husband losing his job because that fear sounds perfectly reasonable to me. And like it says in Philippians, do not be anxious and take those requests to God for the peace of God, which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. And I tried, but it didn’t work for me because I wasn’t anxious, I was sick.
Medically, what I ended up being diagnosed with was panic disorder with agoraphobia, but because it started small it seemed like anxiety that had just grown out of control. Looking back there were signs that I was sick from as early as 1st grade, when I spent the entire year hiding from the crossing guards, afraid that they were going to come and catch me and get me in trouble because I crossed the street one time when they weren’t there. Or as an 8 year old, waking up in February and sitting in the bathroom by myself in the middle of the night, crying because I was panicked about swim lessons in August. And lots more, but you get the idea. Irrational, consuming fears.
So I need to find a new phrase to describe what I am/was because saying “I struggled with anxiety” is definitely not it when that’s the term normal people use to describe their experience with worry. And as a Christian, when you’re told “do not be anxious about anything,” and you don’t have peace, it causes you to question your faith and think there’s something wrong with you spiritually as well as physically. Thankfully, I’m confident that I did all I could spiritually and also thank God that medically I was able to be healed/fixed/cured/still a work in progress.
And on an unrelated, but related note. That I’m able to go to CrossFit and do strength training is a miracle considering that I couldn’t run or do any type of physical exertion for a long time because of my mental illness. Exercise creates the same physical response as a panic attack — fast heart rate, breathlessness, sweating and feeling pushed to your limit — and it took a long time to get to a place where I could experience those things and not think I was dying.
So I’m proud of what my body can do now and appreciate it on 2 levels. Not only does it make my body strong, but it’s exercising my mind and reminding it that my limit is further than I think it is and fatigue isn’t weakness or something to be afraid of.
