So, what's up then?

I thought I would get this particular blog out the way, however, it may be the most important for readers to get to grips with.  This post isn't designed to assess my current situation or to disclose how things are, how anxiety has affected my life or how the symptoms have changed over time, but it will just set out the 'conditions' that I have been 'diagnosed' with over the years.  Obviously those who have experienced similar feelings will be more drawn to this than others and if I'm honest I don't really want that to happen, but it would be foolish for me not to detail my more precise experiences so as to  set the scene for future blogs.

Let's bring an unnecessary level of academia to proceedings and do it in the form of a list:

Health Anxiety (aka Hypochondriasis)
In non-official non-diagnosis terms, this is a belief that a physical symptom, pain, or discomfort will become something life threatening.  A good example that I have persistently experienced is regarding the heart; any change in heart rate or pains in the chest or left arm automatically raises the panic alarm and the thought that "I'm going to have a heart attack" manifests.  (Key note: 'the thought that.'  More on this in future.)  From what I understand, people with health anxiety can have preoccupations about one specific health problem, such as contracting cancer, or a multitude of problems or 'assumptions.'  Whilst some symptoms produce more anxiety than others, I generally fall into the latter category.  For me, HA can also be triggered by reading about health problems or other people talking about them.  It's damn inconvenient, especially when you start taking phrases like 'pain in the arse' all too literally.

Panic Disorder
Again unofficially, this is effectively having a fear of having a panic attack.  I have suffered from many panic attacks in my life and at times it has got to the point where I'm so scared of having a panic attack that I have a panic attack.  It has meant that I have found it exceptionally difficult to go out into the public domain for fear of panic attack, and such a condition could result in the onset of agoraphobia.  Again this is inconvenient, because it can dramatically affect all parts of your life.  It is intrinsically linked with health anxiety; for example, if I get a pain whilst out of my 'comfort zone,' I then fear that I will have a panic attack because of the pain, which triggers the panic disorder, which then intensifies the pain... which leads to an actual panic attack.  This, of course, is the worst case scenario but shows how each of these anxieties all work with each other. 

Social Anxiety
I wouldn't say my social anxiety is severe, far from it.  However I do have elements of it; eating out is the main thing, I have always found it very difficult.  The more 'formal' the meal is the more difficult it becomes, although it also depends on who I'm with, where I am, how many people are there, what the atmosphere is like, how tight my trousers are... and so on.  This, again, is inconvenient, particularly when eating so slowly results in you choking and subsequently you start panicking... you get the idea.

Obviously, and particularly given how each of these links together, it is far more complex in reality than it appears here.  These complexities will no doubt be drawn out in future blogs, particularly those that detail some of my real life situations, but this is just to give you a broad overview of my anxious past.  Anxious about what, exactly?  No idea. 

My intention was to paste the official definitions of these conditions next to my garble, but unfortunately, the Anxiety UK website currently has errors on its page.  Apparently it is 'unable to modify the parent container element before the child element is closed.'  It's enough to cause anxiety. 

This will be the most difficult blog to write, I hope, and also the most difficult one to read.  I'm anticipating plenty of positivity and optimism in future blogs so please stick with it. I might start by telling you a little about me.  And I don't include anxiety in that. 

Best wishes
Al

PS: You'd think that this particular website's spell checker would recognise the word 'blog'. 

Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself

Good evening everyone, my name is Alan Carr. 

There, that's enough to cause anxiety in anyone.  I share the name with a comedian who you may or may not be a fan of.  It can get quite annoying in certain situations, for example, introducing yourself to people.  Many people seem to think that they are the first person to realise that I have the same name as the comedian by saying something like 'as in the comedian.'  They then have a sudden realisation and quickly say 'you must get that all the time.'  Yes, ALL the time. 

If I have to deliver a presentation, I say "Hi everyone, now, apologies if you looked at the list of speakers on your agenda and thought 'great, we get a performance from our favourite comedian to come later,' because clearly, I am not the comedian."  That usually generates a few laughs which is somewhat ironic, considering I've just declared myself to not be a comedian.

Anyway,

My name IS Alan Carr and I'm nearly 25 years old.  I live and work in Stafford, a small and fairly ageing town in the Midlands somewhere between Birmingham and Manchester and often confused with Stoke by people who don't live in the area.  The main point of this introduction is to disclose the fact that I have chronic anxiety and have done so for the vast majority of my life so far.  I suppose it wasn't chronic when it first started as whether something becomes chronic, I assume, is at least in part determined by the longevity of it. 

This blog will ramble like this for the most part, but with the main aim to simply share my experiences about living with anxiety in a world that pretends not to be anxious in the slightest.  It is not meant to act as a form of therapy of course, but what I have found is that talking to people or listening to people who have had anxiety is one of the best things you can do.  It's all very well professionals saying 'there are thousands of people who feel the same as you.'  Yes fine, small crumb of comfort maybe, but you don't necessarily know any of these thousands of people. 

But there is no excuse now; the age of social networking is upon us and another aim of this blog is for it to become a piece of information that can be shared and edited by numerous sources, with a hope to prompt others to share their experiences too.  I will start by giving an overview of my anxiety conditions so as to set the scene, and will probably disclose more about myself as I go along.  A flurry of blogs in the early days will probably follow, so brace yourselves. 

My email address is on my profile so please feel free to drop me one (so to speak) or leave a comment.

Best wishes
Al