I sometimes wonder (between anxious thoughts) if anxiety is too difficult to explain to someone or its too difficult for someone thats not anxious to understand! Or maybe it's both? It's really difficult to explain to someone that when you are convinced you have a brain tumor that you 100% believe that you have a brain tumor, you're not just being dramatic or whatever you can feel genuine symptoms of a brain tumor. Ok its not always a brain tumor, maybe its some other illness but my point is it feels so real at the time and once Anxious Annie has let that teeny tiny thought pop into your head it consumes your whole life. You start thinking about it the second you open your eyes in the morning and its still there when eventually manage to fall asleep at night.
What made me wonder this is I have a really up and down relationship with my dad, he's a proper stiff upper lip type, pull yourself together etc. Because of this it took me a really long time to tell him about my anxiety, and when i did i tried to play down how bad it is, until the fathers day card incident anyway! When he took offence that i had posted his card, i tried to explain to him that when i'm feeling really panicky i find it really difficult to leave the house and that the stress of making plans to see people is a real trigger for anxiety for me. So he came to see me at the weekend, first time i've seen him in 3 months and first time he's been to our house in 6 months and first thing he said to me in his best patrionising voice was 'how's the attack things then' meaning my panic attacks. So then i wonder is this how everyone that knows me views my anxiety, like its a joke or its something i'm putting on? But how do i explain it to them? Will they think i'm going mad if i tell them all the things that i worry about? Will the men in white coats be knocking on my door if i tell them i literally worry every second of the day?
I don't think i can come to any conclusion whether anxiety is too hard to explain to someone or whether it's just too hard to understand. I certainly think it's misunderstood as with alot of other mental health issues, maybe more publicity for anxiety would mean less ignorance towards it. More people have a better understanding of depression over the last 5 years at least because its become ok to talk about it, its on tv, its in newspapers etc. But I still can't say to people that i suffer with anxiety because i'm just not sure that people will understand.
