Be Still, Anxious Heart

Shannon is a 27 year old girl boss in social media consultancy. Writing is her muse; blogging, poetry and song lyrics. Alongside that, she likes to dabble in crafts, going on adventures w friends and loving on all of the animals.

So here I am, winging a what could have been beautiful poetic number, but instead an impromptu piece straight from my somewhat aberrant thoughts to paper (or in this case, desktop or mobile device). Disclaimer: See here, I still didn’t know what I was going to be writing about.

Trying to describe anxiety to someone who hasn’t a clue what it feels like is often a tricky thing to articulate. So let me try and attempt an already impenetrable affair of what it truly feels like to live with anxiety.

I used this analogy a while ago which one of my dear friends also used in her spoken word poem, and it goes something along the lines of this:

“Anxiety is like your drowning; you can’t swim, you can’t come up for air, but you can’t die either. It’s an all consuming feeling of distress, an array of hopelessness and a negatively loud mind.”

To me anxiety can affect me in different ways but most of the time – it’s tightness in my chest, a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach and my breathing becomes a whole lot harder. Cue the drowning part. It’s that feeling of hopelessness, where your tired mind wont stop thinking about all of the negative things that have been said and done. You feel as though your drowning in your own thoughts. You cant swim.

When you can’t come up for air, that’s when the hyperventilating and shaking starts (or in other words, panic attacks). It’s overwhelming, all consuming and hard to control. NB: this may not happen to me all the time, but when it’s really bad, it will come uninvited.

You want it to stop, you want to be at peace – but you just cant. Hence the analogy, you can’t die either. It’s hard to find rest when you’re panicking under water.

This is why mental health is so important. I want people to know how hard mental illness can be for others, I want people to be supportive of those with a mental illness, even if they don’t understand it themselves. I know it’s not easy sometimes, but just know we’re doing the best we can. So take heart and be kind, always.

I do want to note that every individual is different and this is my way of describing it, others may portray it in a completely different light. Everyone may also have different symptoms, triggers and coping methods.

A piece of advice I will leave with you is this, if you have a friend, family member or partner who struggles with anxiety; know their triggers. Know what words or actions make them anxious and do the opposite. Or if it’s beyond your control, always support, love and adore them and ask if there’s anything you can do to help. Knowing what helps them when they’re feeling anxious is good too; whether it’s a walk, space or fresh air etc.

Just be there.

Be Present.

And reassure them that their anxiety doesn’t define them, and you do this by loving them where they’re at. Beautiful souls, often struggling to ride the wave of life that leads them safely back to shore.