You and Your Anxiety Are Not Alone.
By: Lori Maney Lentini
Tags: Compassion, Life, Anxiety, Mental Health, Philosophy

You got this! We all have mental health. On your mark, get set, go.

Inspirational stories of people living with anxiety and depression show you the way.

Meet Wendy

I’ve heard people say “things run in the family”, like the bad knees and nearsightedness I inherited from my mom. Anxiety walks, not runs, through my family. It’s not in a rush. It doesn’t begin with the bang of a starting gun and a “on your mark, get set, go!” It doesn’t give you a pre-warning it’s coming for you and it doesn’t notify you when it’s arrived.

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment it entered my life, the moment it began to influence me, or even the cumulative effect it’s had on my choices over the years. But like an old friend, anxiety has always been there. Not only for me, but also, for almost everyone around me.

I’ve seen its effects first-hand in my paternal grandmother, my father, his sister, my sister, her children, my daughter, and my grandchildren. Not exactly what I would choose to pass on in my gene pool. Although it affects almost all of us, it does so in different ways. Its effects are subtly entangled in our genetics, our personalities, our experiences, and our interactions with each other.

Previous generations didn’t talk about these things — anxiety and mental illness.

They hid them. Or they called them “eccentricities” and shrugged them off. Those in my generation talk about it and share the ways we’ve found to help deal with it. There isn’t one thing that helps all of us. We each experience anxiety differently. But having people that, on some level, understand us and don’t judge us makes all the difference in being able to cope with this affliction.

My sister is agoraphobic. Thankfully, it is not so extreme she can’t leave her home at all. She’s pretty comfortable in her small town or out in the company of others whom she trusts. Although she knows how to drive and has a driver’s license, she avoids it because it triggers anxiety attacks. This puts her at the mercy of others to get around and limits her independence…on a good day. On a bad day, it can take situations that a “normal” person would find stressful and escalate them to a crisis-level.

Once, she was sure her husband was having a heart attack. She lived less than two miles from the hospital. No one else was home. She felt she had no choice but to drive him to the emergency room herself, which of course, caused her an incredible amount of panic and quickly clouded her judgment, preventing her from being able to think or plan clearly.

Less than two blocks from home she spotted an acquaintance walking down Main Street. She actually stopped the car and tried to convince the poor man, who knew nothing of her fears of driving and had a suspended license himself, to take over driving for her and get them to the hospital.

Her husband, lying across the back seat and still having severe chest pains, managed to coax her to keep driving. Very cautiously. What should have been a two-minute drive down 55 mph back roads to the hospital became a twenty-minute odyssey of absolute terror and panic for them both. To top it off, her husband was indeed, having a heart attack.

They got to the hospital in time. The hospital staff were able to help and diffuse a situation that had began as “my husband is having some chest pain and we’re worried it may be a heart attack” at home, but morphed into a screaming woman on the knife’s edge of a panic attack by the time they finally arrived at the hospital.

Everything worked out. Her husband is fine. She hasn’t yet been in another situation in which she felt like her safety or her loved one’s safety was dependent upon her ability to drive. But the experience hasn’t done much to decrease her fear of driving or of being in unfamiliar settings. Many of us also share and validate these fears.

I am deathly afraid to drive in snowstorms or high winds, and white-knuckle it the whole way if I find myself having to drive home in a storm. My grandson doesn’t even want to learn to drive, my daughter can’t handle driving in the rain or snow, and my granddaughter is a very, very careful driver. That, in all honesty, seems like self-preservation to me. To all of us.

That’s one thing with my family. We’re all high-strung. We can easily tell you what the worst-case outcome would be in any given situation. We’re also pretty sure that the worst is what is about to happen.

From the moment I hear the words “chest pain” out of your mouth, you are 100 percent already dead to me. You are having a heart attack and it will kill you. Probably today. If not, maybe after a long and painful hospital stay. Either way, I am going to keep worrying and keep imagining progressively more horrifying ways that this will play out until either: You actually die, or I’ve convinced myself that since all six medical personnel I’ve questioned so far seem to agree that you’re fine, and you’re sitting up in bed telling me you’re fine, and the hospital wants to send you home; that it seems unlikely that you will suddenly drop dead now. You’ll probably live until your next heart attack, at least. I’m sure there will be another.

Since I spent all this time between the “chest pain” and the point when I’m convinced, you’re not actually dying right this second preparing for the worst, I am acutely aware of all of the possible things that could go wrong at any given time. I’ve been watching, waiting, considering, catastrophizing. I’ve made decisions. I’d call your sister to tell her first. I’d rather she calls your mom than me. I think she’d rather hear it from her. I’d stay in the house right now, but come next winter, I might prefer something smaller without snow to shovel. I should probably move somewhere with more reliable public transportation anyways without you around to drive me.

This kind of endlessly and obsessively planning for the worst may be a valuable survival skill the 1 percent of the time the worst actually does happen. The problem is the other 99 percent of the time. The ninety-nine times when it’s not your heart. When we’re released from the hospital four hours later with some antacid. It would have been a stressful day for anyone, I guess, but I’m falling over exhausted. And none of it is from anything that actually happened.

We sat in a hospital waiting room and watched TV for three hours. There’s nothing inherently exhausting about that. But planning exactly how I would handle every aspect of my husband’s untimely death? Mentally living those next weeks over and over again until I felt like I had the best possible plan to handle it? That’s a big task for an afternoon.

I’ve thought about it a lot and believe my particular breed of anxiety is from both my gene pool and childhood trauma and abuse. A nature/nurture double whammy.

When I was three, we moved closer to family. Molestation and sexual abuse at the hands of my “bad grandfather” began and continued for years. I believe this long-term trauma was the start of my lifelong struggle to be safe, feel safe and have self-worth instead of self-blame. Fear for my safety (and the safety of loved ones) has fueled anxiety that has kept me from making choices and taking chances to achieve my goals and dreams. I have always felt I was not good enough, and struggled with low self-esteem. I am terrified when anything good happens, as it often seems like something equally bad or worse will happen next, which negates the positive.

As I got a bit older, I lived in a diverse neighborhood and the kids played outside together, weather permitting. It was like that then. Your mother kicked you out to play, ride your bike and get fresh air all day. We got along pretty well on the block no matter the ethnicity. Starting school was a whole different thing, however. Most of the kids from the block went to Catholic school, but I went to public school. I was one of a small minority of white kids there and was largely unaccepted and picked on.

I excelled at schoolwork but was pretty socially inept. School tensions continued to drive my anxiety and feelings of being unsafe. I learned to put on a stone face and not show my feelings. I escaped into books; the library was a haven for me. I loved to read and finished up the children’s section at a young age. One librarian let me take out books from the adult section after permission from my mother. I also began a pattern of eating for comfort. Fatty, tasty foods seemed to dull painful thoughts and jittery nerves.

Junior high school and high school were rough; there were riots and violence and you had to be on your guard all the time. Being constantly alert made sense and self-protection was necessary. Anxiety seemed to be an asset. I learned to size up situations quickly and to use humor to diffuse tension. This carefully honed skill set of always being on guard and always preparing for the worst hasn’t served me as well since then.

Once I graduated from high school, I secured a state job and began taking bookkeeping classes at night. This was a great opportunity for my career. Unfortunately, I had to take the subway to class at night and fears over my safety made it impossible to continue and despite my disappointment in myself, I quit the class.

I was offered a job with a radio station that sounded like a fun and interesting job with growth potential, but I was afraid I wasn’t good enough and I would fail. I was frozen with fear and did not even try it. I wanted to be an inventor, but I haven’t yet been able to convince myself that I could possibly have any idea that is good enough to succeed. I am afraid I will fail before I try. I am extremely critical of myself and self-sabotage all the time.

I love to read and write. When I was asked to share my viewpoint, I was excited, and I really wanted to contribute. I thought about wanting to do it, but did nothing, again paralyzed by anxious thoughts: I can’t do it well, my ideas are not good enough, my story doesn’t matter, it won’t help or make sense to others.

This is what happens in my mind all day, every day. It continues to be a struggle for me.

In the real world, I have a good job in human resources working for a human services agency with the goal of helping people lead rewarding lives. Working here gives me the opportunity to support those employees; some of them are therapists and other mental health professionals, who understand and help people with mental illnesses. I feel like I am making a positive difference in our employee’s lives, helping and supporting them, so they can help our clients.

Being around co-workers who understand anxiety issues are common and treatable gave me the realization and courage to go and get professional help for myself. I went to see a psychiatrist and was diagnosed with major depressive and anxiety disorder and prescribed a medication. Since I have been reflecting and refocusing on my life story, I realize the positive impact therapy has had on my life and I also clearly see I still have work to do. Unhealthy habits, like eating comfort foods to dull my senses, are still challenging, but I’m making progress.

I also find engaging in activities that take me away from my thoughts of being unsafe and unworthy are good ways to find relief, such as reading and solving Sudoku puzzles. Sometimes, doing physical things where my brain goes on autopilot seems to help, like doing the dishes (which has double benefits) while listening to music.

I will never know how much I missed in life due to circumstances and how much was due to my anxiety. They’re so entangled. I don’t think it’s even possible to really know what my life would look like without anxiety.

I have struggled with depression and anxiety for as far back as I can remember. I am proud that I am a survivor and I’ll keep working at making each day one where I feel a little less anxious and a little better about myself.

Anxiety, for me, is just a fact of life. If the subject comes up in conversation now, I just smile and say, “I was born that way.”

If you are interested in joining our team of Worry Warriors by sharing your story in this series to increase education, understanding, share your coping strategies and help end the stigma of mental health, Please email me at lorimaneylentini@gmail.com. We can set up a phone interview and explore ways we can collaborate.

Anxiety Insights: What Gets to Us and What Gets Us Through is available on Amazon Books.

If you enjoyed this article, check out my website at https://www.lorimaneylentini.com/ .