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| My experience was never like this... |
Before I start reeling off the examples where anxiety has hindered me, I appreciate that I am still a very lucky person, when put into the perspective of not just a global population but even a UK one. I don't live in poverty, I have great friends and a supportive family and my physical health is as good as one could hope. I can't pretend to imagine what it must be like for a person who cannot say that they have one or more of these factors; living with anxiety in these cases must be incredibly hard and I'm sure, in many cases, insurmountable. With the recession in particular, more and more people in this country have had to suffer with the consequences of job cuts and difficulty keeping their heads above water, itself a cause of anxiety. People with long term health problems need incredible strength to keep themselves together, but again anxiety - and other mental health problems - can occur if you're stuck with a particular condition for so long. And I will not patronise any further by pretending what this must be like, and honestly, hope I never have to find out.
I have grown up in a world where most people I know have also been lucky, in the same respect I have. Materialism is quite high on most people's agenda, something I personally hate, possibly because I've had the experience to enable me to cherish the less material things in life. But this isn't to say it would have been nice to do certain things that other people I know and have grown up around have (mostly all) done. Or if they haven't done it, it's because they have chosen not to. A few example follow:
- Learning to drive. I did actually have many driving lessons back in 2004-5. I must admit it felt like I was frogmarched by my father to the post office to collect my provisional licence; it was literally on my 17th birthday. My mum doesn't drive, so I think my dad was keen for me to as he has seen the minor hindrances that not being able to drive has given to my mum. However, I didn't feel ready but back then I had little confidence or power to argue. Goodness knows how many lessons I had, but each one was a living hell. The last year of sixth form was the best year of my entire school career, but this driving lark spoilt it. The lessons were all that was in my mind. As one lesson ended, my mind starting thinking of the next one. I would basically have a panic attack before, during and after each lesson, everytime without fail. My mum even bought me some weird tablet things (can't remember what they were - not beta blockers!) that were supposed to calm me down at the peak of distress - they had no effect. My instructor was horrific as well; very blunt and not very patient or encouraging. Why on earth I persisted with this for so long - and indeed why my parents let me persist with it - is still beyond me, but I got so far as to take a test. Now, I knew I wasn't competent enough to pass a test, but even if I was, the anxiety and panic I was experiencing rendered driving adequately impossible anyway. The world's best driver wouldn't have been able to pass a test in the state I was in. It was after this test, in June 2005, that I knew I had to stop and perhaps unsurprisingly I have never stepped foot inside the drivers seat of a car again. Even to this day, ten years later, the very thought isn't one I wish to contemplate. So far, not being able to drive has been an inconvenience at worst, and I actually enjoy catching buses. I'd catch the train to work even if I could drive, and because my line of work is environmental sustainability, I kind of have a handy ready-made excuse for why I don't drive. But this isn't to say it won't be more of an issue in future and even now I'm not sure I could face it again.
- Holidays. I've been on many holidays with my parents in the past, but because of an incident back in 1996, this kind of lay the foundations for holidays to generally be difficult in years to come. From 1999, one of my best mates came on holiday with me and my parents to try and alleviate the problems I'd previously faced, which largely worked. I could relax more and my mate offered the appropriate amount of distraction. However, discounting Guernsey and Ireland, my only venture abroad has been to Barcelona, and this was for my final year undergrad Geography fieldtrip in 2008. I'm not sure how, but I managed to survive the majority of this trip panic-free, possibly due to the amount of work and sheer number of people we were with. My main issues with holidays are 1) like driving, bad experiences linger. 2) the fear of being in isolation and away from safety; if something went wrong e.g. a panic attack, having no-one 'safe' there to help me feels like a very daunting prospect. 3) Food - sounds daft, but my various issues with food in the past, which has been exacerbated by trips away before, is something I need to take seriously. Only in the past year has eating out with friends become more comfortable again, and I still feel that a holiday could reverse this trend, as it has in the past. Unusual food and pressure to eat, I suppose. These days, I usually go away for a few days with another good friend of mine; we usually rent a caravan or cheap self-catering property. This is fine; it's with a good friend, within this country and we control what we eat and when. I can look forward to these trips, by and large. But the thought of 'going travelling' or going on holiday abroad, as all my other friends have done, doesn't fill me with anything other than nervousness. I'd love to travel to certain places and I do think that going somewhere for a week in the next few years is more likely than me getting in the driver's seat of a car. Holidaying may be easier if...
- Relationships. I don't want to dwell on this for too long and it would be wrong of me to say that anxiety is the only reason that relationships for me have been - to say the least - hard to come by. But my confidence in certain situations has been slaughtered by having had anxiety for so long. I have social anxiety although this has improved in the last couple of years, the aforementioned ability to eat out being one reason for this. But I still struggle in certain social situation (e.g. with people I don't know or who are quite confident) and struggle even more to break the ice with someone I like. In fact, change 'struggle even more' to 'almost impossible.' There is a mental block in me that refuses to budge, despite being more anxiety free now than I was a couple of years ago. There have been many periods in my life where I couldn't have even considered a relationship because I was in no fit state to look after myself, let alone be with somebody else. But now I am, making that step has become no easier, and I do, at least in part, put this down to a crippled confidence as a result of anxiety. Unfortunately, it also feels to me like we're also living in an ever increasing confident society. As it happens, some of my friends haven't had too many successful relationships either, but some have, and in the days of social media, every other day it seems like people I know are getting married or engaged, which does nothing to improve my hope or self-esteem around this issue.
So there are three of the biggest examples (there are others too) I can give to you where I feel that anxiety has been a real problem. Going through the pain of panic and intrusions is enough in itself, but the longer-term hindrances that it has also, at best, contributed to is another thing entirely. This is the shape of my whole life we're talking about, things that people who went to the same school as me and grew up in similar backgrounds take for granted. I appreciate I generalise - I won't be the only one - but being surrounded in general by a society who are happy with their relationships, go on holiday and who's only driving concern is how much their insurance is, does not make these things any easier - quite the opposite, in fact.
I can't predict where I'll be in five years. If you'd have said to me this time last year that I'd be back living in shared accommodation which was actually going very well, and that I'd have a different job, I wouldn't have believed you. So who knows what is round the next corner. But the reality is, years of anxiety has rendered many life-defining things extremely difficult that many other people I know don't even have to work at.
Best wishes
Al
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