Interview on Anxiety and Panic Disorder with Emily🌱☁️

At Recharge we believe in order to help relieve and ease those who suffer from mental health, we need to LISTEN firsthand on the affects of poor mental health on an individual, so as a community we can ensure that our help is actually helpful.

We interviewed Emily to hear her perspective on mental health and how she struggles with varying anxieties on a daily basis. Even though there are is a rise in people openly speaking on their mental health struggles, there are still many people who aren't as aware. This interview gives readers a detailed understanding of Anxiety and Panic disorder from Emily's perspective. A massive thank you to Emily for being so brave to speak openly about how her mental health has and still does affect her. Recharge encourages these conversations to raise awareness on mental health as well as to create more options to help those who suffer from mental health.

Interviewer: What mental health illness do you struggle with?

Emily: I have been diagnosed with GAD, social anxiety, health anxiety, and panic disorder. And in the past I have also suffered with depression and still sometimes tend this way but not recently or for long periods of time.

Interviewer: How does this affect your day to day life?

Emily: My anxiety drastically affects my day to day to life so I’m constantly working on it. For me, my health anxiety is the part that affects me most frequently, as with my other health conditions there are triggers present every day. It started in 2018 when I became ill with my physical health, and on a daily basis, I am concerned about various pains in my body and I have to mentally stop myself from thinking about the worst possible outcome. Some days this keeps me from resting at all or it will impact my sleep and I become aware that I become anxious about my health when I do things like check my pulse or I’ll feel a twinge of a headache and so put my sunglasses on. I often try and identify where and why I am in pain rather than just accepting that I have a pain. My health anxiety also makes eating a really conscious process, as well as doing simple things like taking a shower or going outside and there is a constant thought battle with anxiety that I have to overcome.

My social anxiety has been affecting me for a lot longer. Retrospectively it is something that I have been dealing with since the age of 11 in varying degrees but at that age I didn’t have the words for it. As a teenager I would worry daily about things like talking to friends, doing things in public such as going into shops. I remember a couple of situations in my teenage years but one occasion I consciously remember a strong sense of social anxiety was when I was meant to be going to a friend’s house and I felt sick but once I had made the decision that I would not go, I began to feel better. When I was at college, I would often not be able to talk myself into sitting with my friends at lunch times as my brain would tell myself I was boring, or that I would have nothing to say or nothing of interest to other people and therefore I would regularly sit by myself.

Once I started my part time job as a waitress and barista at a local coffee lounge and bookshop I had to consciously work on my social anxiety every shift, as I still wasn’t able to articulate what I felt. There were a few times that my manager and another colleague would tell me to take a few minutes to sit down as they could recognise that I was experiencing symptoms akin to a panic attack, but I was not able to see this at the time. Also, every shift I would spend conscious time trying not to blush from lack of confidence because if I did blush then I would struggle to be present with the customers or make eye contact and I would want to run away from that situation as quickly as possible.

I wasn’t consciously aware of the fact that I was suffering from anxiety until I went to university. I never wanted to admit that I had a mental health problem, and so it wasn’t until my 2nd year that everything was coming to a head that I admitted to myself, and a couple of close friends, that I had anxiety. I was kind of forced to admit this to myself as I had started having regular panic attacks in supermarkets, when waking up, and before going to lectures and seminars, to the point where I didn’t attend lectures.

Now my social anxiety presents itself before and during every single social interaction. For example, I always feel like I have nothing interesting to say and get super anxious about seeing and talking to close friends. I often experience panic attacks when out with a group friends and feel like I have to cover this up. I struggle going too far away from home as home is my safe space, and I rarely go to the supermarket or go shopping but this is something that I am consciously working on at the moment. I am also always exhausted after social interactions and take a while to recover.

I also struggle in a work situation feeling like what I am doing is being constantly watched, even though this is probably not the case as everyone else is getting on with their own work! My anxiety in general affects my sleep and once I am in that anxious circle, I find it especially hard to get back to sleep and when I’m especially tired things circle around and my anxiety gets worse, and therefore affects my sleep further.

Interviewer: What strategies and coping mechanisms do you employ to help manage this?

Emily: Reducing stress – putting on a podcast whilst I do something so that my brain is occupied by the podcast whilst I am still physically occupied by the task I am doing. Especially if the podcast is fun or relaxing, it doesn’t leave much room for thoughts that aren’t helpful and anxious thinking. And then if that doesn’t work, then I put on fun music to sing along to.

Reducing the amount of stuff I do socially – this doesn’t mean avoiding social situations but it just means having a balance of having enough ‘me’ time and not being too busy that I burn out but actually making sure I still see friends within the capacity I have. I have been really open with my friends about my anxiety so that if we have a plan to do something together, there is still always a backup plan so that if I am unable to go out, then the social interaction can be brought to my safe space (home) so that I am not avoiding the social interaction as it is in a more comfortable setting for me on my territory.

Finding positives in a day – I strive to find positives at the end of my day, either individually or with someone else as if I am struggling to find positives myself then another’s perspective can help me to identify positives! Consciously thinking positive things before I go to sleep so that the negative aspects aren’t whirring around as much is also very helpful for enabling me to get to sleep!

Exercising – going for a walk often really helps me get out of my head, especially if it is in nature.

Prioritising eating well – if I have a couple of days of not eating healthily then this has a negative impact on my health anxiety and general anxiety

External processing – I don’t necessarily need someone else to give me a solution but talking out my brain helps to get it out of my brain and also sometimes trivialises something that has been such a big worry in my head. There is a self-realisation once the thought has been released from the confines of my brain.

Not being hard on myself – when I beat myself up in my head about suffering with mental health problems, this doesn’t make it easier. But when I am kind to myself, which I don’t find easy, it helps me to manage my own expectations of myself better and therefore helps me to be less anxious.

I don’t do these things all the time and I do really struggle with them! My natural instinct as someone with anxiety is avoidance! I have learnt through CBT and other people’s wisdom that this will not help me in the long term (it may temporarily help me in the short-term but never in the long term!)

Interviewer: What positives do you see in you struggles with your mental health?

Emily: As a leader and just in life generally, I consciously try to be more empathetic and aware of

other people and their struggles both in their life and with their mental health and that is because of my own experiences with my mental health. This (hopefully) means that I don’t place expectations or burdens on people without providing them the opportunity to say no and also allows them to see that I am there to listen to them!

My honesty with my struggles with mental health helps other people, for example friends - to open up about their struggles and feel less alone, because it can feel like a very weird place and I know what it is like to feel so alone and I never want anyone else to feel that way! I sometimes find it difficult to listen to other people talking about their mental health struggles as due to my empathy this arises emotions within me about my own struggles, but I try, as much as I have capacity to listen and be there.

Interviewer: How does having a community and supportive network impact your mental health - do you find community positive or negative?

Emily: So firstly, my church community and network provide support, especially my Small Group (a group of about 10 people journeying through life together on a weekly basis). This definitely has a positive impact on my mental health; being part of a loving community of people with lots of different life experiences of their own. Having a bunch of different people I can talk to who will be able to either just listen or to provide pearls of help and wisdom where I would like it is such a benefit to me. Small Group is a consistent weekly thing and therefore there is a consistent support. It’s also lovely to have a group of people like this around you who know your struggles, but you don’t have to talk about it! You can just talk about normal things and have a lot of fun together too!! I always feel refreshed after chatting with people at church and people from my Small Group.

Another example is an online community of people called YOU’VE GUT THIS! This is a group of people just like me who deal with chronic gut conditions on a daily basis, and also deal with the daily mental impacts of that too. It’s such a supportive place to share how you are doing; just having people there who know and are going through exactly what you are going through; people who aren’t judgmental and just get it and provide positive suggestions of what worked for them! It really makes me feel heard, validated, and so much less alone in how I am feeling. Being able to have a laugh and joke together about our physical and mental health is really cathartic and helps to break the tension around what we are going through.

Interviewer: How has Coronavirus impacted your mental-wellbeing?

Emily: Just before Covid-19 hit, I had finally gone to access the mental health service near where I live which is called Birmingham Healthy Minds. This is where they put words to my mental health struggles for the first time. After being diagnosed with GAD alongside the other anxiety’s, I was referred for online CBT. (It was recommended that as my anxiety was so bad that I should have face to face CBT, however this heightened my social anxiety and so I opted for the online version).

Shortly after I started my monthly CBT sessions, Covid-19 hit, so the steps I was trying to implement from the CBT sessions into my daily life couldn’t be implemented properly! Especially the social anxiety side of it. So this halted my progress. This has meant that throughout the past year, I haven’t seen a huge improvement in my mental health from March 2020 to May 2021, as whilst being locked down and not going anywhere was helpful for my short-term mental health, this wasn’t a solution to my social anxiety, as was almost like a forced social avoidance. It is only now that we are emerging from the latest lockdown that I am realising that these triggers still exist as we return to more normality, and therefore I am having to work through and face them again.

Interviewer: Do you find playing games with others helpful, this could be online or physically?

Emily: Yes!! I'm not really an online gamer at all, but I love playing board games and doing puzzles and quizzes. I find these really relaxing and help keep my brain active and occupied. In terms of a social situation – playing with people outside my home is a much more relaxing way to socialise with people than socialising with just conversation. There’s a focus to the socialising and therefore the onus isn’t on me to come up with conversation, and so I am less likely to have a panic, or initially worry about having a panic which when leads to having a panic.

Again a huge thank you to Emily for sitting down with Recharge and being so honest, it is truly admirable. If you are someone/or know someone who is currently struggling with their mental health, below are some helpful links:

- Every Mind Matters: http://dearlife.org.uk/

- Northern Healthcare: https://www.northernhealthcare.org.uk

- Mind Charity: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/guides-to-support-and-services/seeking-help-for-a-mental-health-problem/where-to-start/

- Samaritans: https://www.samaritans.org

- Rethink: https://www.rethink.org/aboutus/what-we-do/advice-and-information-service/

- SHOUT: https://www.giveusashout.org

#MENTALHEALTH #ANXIETY