Why I Appreciate My Anxiety
I won’t get too depressing (the last thing I want to do is trigger someone else’s anxiety), but mental health is so unnecessarily censored when in reality, it needs to be discussed. Everybody thinks that Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is being a neat freak or washing your hands a billion times, but it’s so much more than that. It’s a cycle fueled by triggers and self-doubt. It’s obsessive thinking and constantly doubting yourself over something you know is irrational. I wish I could explain how exhausting, confusing and terrifying anxiety really is in the moment, but it takes miniscule thoughts or events and catastrophizes them. Now I am finally in a place where I can say I appreciate everything my anxiety has taught me because it’s one of the most significant things that’s made me who I am today. I am tough as hell.
My first episode as far as I can remember was back when I was 10 years old in fifth grade. I had a dream that I was offered cigarettes and became obsessed with the fact that one day I might do drugs. To my dad (bless his heart, he really tries to understand me), this made no sense – just don’t do drugs, then? To anyone that doesn’t have OCD, that is a logical response, yet the possibility of being tempted to do drugs in the future brought on a level of uncertainty and anxiety that I was in no way equipped to handle as a 10-year old. What if one day I wanted to do drugs? I had to go down to the nurse during summer school because I was hyperventilating and needed my dad to come pick me up. I would lock myself in my garage for hours and pace back and forth as the stress wreaked havoc on my stomach. I remember the constant stress and needing to avoid any shows or movies with alcohol, smoking or drugs. I remember the triggers that sent my brain into a spiraling mess of fuzzy, scatterbrained thoughts. Luckily, all through middle school, I can’t remember experiencing anything like this, but then high school came.
Sophomore year of high school was when it came back full swing. But, I was fully functioning; I had a 4.0, hung out with my friends and made more friends in gymnastics. But on the inside, I was so depressed and at war with my brain. I stayed up for nights on end unable to turn my brain off, and would have to wake my dad up because I simply drove myself insane being alone with my thoughts. What if I get addicted to drugs? Do I even like boys? What if I go to prison for something one day? What if I have kids and then get weird intrusive thoughts about them? Why am I trying so hard to counter my thoughts unless they’re actually true? From the minute I woke up, to the minute I went to bed for two years, my brain was in fifth gear.
I was now old enough to recognize that this was not normal behavior and that I was absolutely mentally exhausted. I needed something to change because burying myself in the only coping mechanism I knew – falling asleep to old DCOMs on repeat – was losing its effectiveness. I lifted everyday in school, didn’t isolate myself and I had a great life with so many blessings. Why could I just not be happy? It was so frustrating. My dad tried to help as best as he could but we’ve always butted heads. On top of being an unemotional man, he is Indian and mental illness was simply not a thing that was recognized unless it was severe. So asking to get medications was going to be a tough feat for now and I needed to figure it out on my own. I’d get anxious every day, so I got in the habit of riding it out and just telling myself that after every low means you’re that much closer to feeling better. I tried counseling, though that ended fairly quickly when she told my dad that I was looking for attention. And after every anxiety attack, I’d congratulate myself every time I got back to ‘normal’ faster than I had before. I started listening to sleep hypnosis videos to help me fall asleep, and when my baby sister was born, I found happiness in watching her.
When I wasn’t anxious, I was great but when an attack would inevitably happen, I was in Hell. I was mentally exhausted. I was tired of having to try so hard just to stay afloat. I was tired of having to fight my own brain everyday. I was tired of thinking and tired of being me. After two years of convincing and being miserable, my dad reluctantly agreed to get me on meds because although he hated the idea of using meds (and still isn’t the biggest fan), he understood that I was suffering and nothing else had worked. As cheesy as it sounds, after being on meds, the world just looked different. The sun felt brighter, the grass looked greener and my life was just more vibrant.
Since then, my OCD episodes have come and gone with the worst being three back-to-back-to-back episodes during COVID (who didn’t have anxiety that year, though). But, each time I recover, I look back and am thankful for my experiences. My anxiety has taught me how to persist when everything in me is exhausted. I’ll probably always have anxiety and I will never love it, but it’s made me realize that there’s much worse in life than a bad grade or a bad night and it reminds me to just enjoy where I am. Ironically, my anxiety has taught me how to not take life too seriously and make a comedy out of my situations. I am who I am today because little 10 year old Sim, who didn’t even know what she was going through was anxiety, became this amazing woman who knows her worth. She came out of everything and became stronger than ever, with hope and happiness for the future. Still, nothing I have ever faced has been as difficult as fighting my own brain while it itches to press the self-destruct button.