I am writing this when I should be finishing a paper. A paper that I have been "finishing" for about 8 days now.
I really hate having an anxiety disorder. I hate being anxious all the time but honestly I'm learning to cope with that. (Joining an anxiety support group has really helped.) But more than that I hate not being able to really explain my disability to others. It goes like this (for me): we all get anxious sometimes, are nervous, have task we don't like to do. What makes you special? Why should you get special treatment for something EVERYBODY deals with ALL THE TIME.
It doesn't help that (if I were in a different mood I totally wouldn't talk about this in this way, but this is the mood that I'm in) I am often seen as a high functioning person. I am a leader, I get shit done. People don't often see (and I'm intentional about not showing them) all of the work that goes into me performing from day to day. So when I have melt downs (high stress triggers for my anxiety that cause me to just kind of--stop) it seems to come out of the blue. Or at least I think it does. This makes me feel like a flake. It's not good for my depression.
I don't really know a lot of people who struggle *openly* with anxiety/depression and most of those I do know seem to function better than i do. Maybe this isn't true. Maybe they just have good walls up. I'm very uneasy about the end of my anxiety group which is coming up soon (limited space so I can re-enroll) because its the only place i've ever been able to talk explicitly about my anxiety and have people understand how well debilitating it can be. Seeing other people and hearing their stories about such and such 'run of the mill' task (sorry for confidentiality I won't reveal details that I've heard) being terrifying for them makes me feel better when I can't get on the bus in the morning (I have a lot of fear around riding buses, I do it now because I don't have a functioning car.) Or when I cancel a meet up with friends because the thought of having to be outdoors after dark scares the shit out of me.
Being anxious is not an easy thing to do while being a STRONG Black woman. It's near impossible (I think many Black women might also have issues with anxiety that go untreated/undiscussed because of this mentality.) In my better days I think of myself as strong because I'm willing to face the anxiety head on (I still get on the bus) but that mindset means that days when I don't/can't deal and just hole up inside myself I am often very down on myself of being "weak" or submitting to the anxiety. And if there is one thing I hate...it's feeling weak. This just causes me to double the bad (add to the bad situation) by harranging myself over things that often are often not that big a deal.
Ultimately, part of the problem lies in how much I am affected by others acknowledgement. Because people cannot see (unless you get behind close doors and see the sweats and crying and etc) my disabilities, I fear they won't "believe" in them. If people don't believe in them then they think I'm faking, taking the easy route, avoiding (well I do do that), and a whole host of other terms that mean I don't have a real problem. I want to get to a place where I don't need other people's validation of my disability to feel comfortable having an off day and I am less functional than my usual level. (When I'm on I could care less what people think about my disabilities.) I try to remember that my function level is not a constant (nor is anyone elses) the reasons for the shifts in function level are different for everyone and no one reason is more valid than the other (and the inverse none are invalid).
All that to say I wish it was as easy to write this fucking paper as it is to type this post.
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