#2 The problem with being easy

Why do we continue to strive for chill when we all know it’s a facade?

When I turned 20 I started feeling really sick. It was a sick I’d never felt before.

At first, it came on as dizzy spells. Sitting in a lecture or walking down the supermarket aisle, my heart would start thudding, fast. The space would feel too crowded and hot, my palms and underarms became sweaty. I’d be convinced I was going to faint unless I made it to the exit.

At some point, I can’t timestamp when, the spells became more pervasive. A light-headed feeling would seep in as soon as I opened my eyes in the morning and it would stay with me for the entire day.

I became consumed by the feeling, spending hours worrying about what it could be and willing it to stop. I think I’m sick, I’d say to my friends and family. I feel weak and hungry all the time and get faint if I’m not eating.

Then I lost control of my hands. One day I was having coffee with a friend and my hands were shaking so uncontrollably that I couldn’t take a sip of my latte in front of her. It was so rattling that I started avoiding all situations involving drinks. When it was unavoidable, I implemented a calculated strategy of only taking sips when my company wasn’t looking. The thought of spilling my drink and someone noticing was unbearable.

Something was seriously wrong with me. A chronic condition that nothing – iron supplements, two litres of water a day, yoga, digestive probiotics – was fixing. Then a close friend finally gave me an answer.

My mum has an overactive thyroid and she went through the exact same thing. You’re more likely to get it if it’s in your family. Another symptom is foggy head. What are your symptoms?

Yeah I definitely get that. I’m hungry all the time and get a dizzy feeling constantly if I’m not eating food. It’s been really bad this week.

That was her all over, she said.

The next day I asked my GP about overactive thyroids. I explained to her how everything my friend had said fitted with what I was going through. She went along with it all, without much interrogation. But when the results came back saying I was perfectly healthy, her body language softened and the volume of her voice dropped.

Have you considered this could be mental health related? Have you heard of a condition called anxiety?

As she explained what a mental health plan was, my inner world, my identity, was collapsing.

I don’t have mental health problems. It’s not me. My sister is the one with issues. She gets anxious about fainting. She had an eating disorder in high school.  My brain is good and right and healthy. Nothing is wrong with me. But what if there is something wrong with me. I have anxiety. I don’t want anyone to know. I need to fix it. I need to be normal.

My first therapist was on a similar wavelength.

You have an anxiety disorder, she concluded. It had been one of the hardest hours of my life. Her eyes kept glancing at her watch, a jarring reminder that our moments together were finite and conditional on me paying $280. The clinic, with its whiteboard and tissues and waiting room, reminded me of being back at the doctor’s surgery. I guess it was fitting, I was sick and this place would make me better.

I asked how long it would take until I felt normal again. She said it was hard to say but I could expect anywhere from six weeks to five years. I clung to the former estimate, the figures imprinting on my brain as a motivating new goal.

I went home with a stack of worksheets, my homework, and that night I stayed up late reading all I could about the flight, fight, freeze or fawn response. I pored over various cartoon diagrams, trying to learn about the interconnectedness between my thoughts and feelings and behaviours. If there’s one thing I knew, it was how to study and memorise. I just needed to change my thoughts and I’d feel back to normal.

But despite a determined recovery campaign – led by a harsh inner voice telling me to think this and not that, and breathe this way and love myself that way – my anxiety persisted.

It was only after finding a different kind of therapist two years later that I began to relate to my anxiety in a completely different way. I began to see that nothing was ever wrong with me at all.

In fact, despite feeling insane and dark and weird in my own mind, no thought or feeling I uttered in that room phased her. She didn’t talk about disorders or symptoms that needed to be removed. Instead, we focussed on understanding and listening to these anxious parts of myself to see what they might be trying to tell me. She reassured me that these were very normal and human experiences to have. I wasn’t as unique as I believed. My parents and siblings and teachers and bosses and friends experienced the same thing in one form or another, even if it wasn’t spoken out loud.

As I became more open and aware of these messages from my body, I noticed it in others too. My dad’s mysterious face swelling whenever something came up at work, and the unexplained plague of irritable bowel syndrome spreading across my friendship group, started to make more sense.

The body is a sophisticated alarm system. For me, my anxiety was signalling a severe and growing disconnect between my true self and the version I was performing to the world. A seemingly chill person who was avoiding feeling all her emotions and speaking her truth because no one around me was really modelling how.

At the same time, I’d been consistently rewarded for being the easy, low-maintenance, mature one, in comparison to my sister, whose emotions have always sat closer to the surface, who was labelled as the sensitive, moody, difficult one. In my mind, love and acceptance were conditional on swallowing my feelings. I’d done well at maintaining that facade, but at 20 – dealing with moving out of home, a new relationship and a job – this way of being was no longer serving me.

I recently listened to an episode of the Finding Our Way podcast, where author Sonya Renee Taylor speaks about the ladder of hierarchy that exists between us. A system of comparison, reinforced through dialogue and media, that provides a concrete way to determine if we are greater than or less than other humans. She framed the conversation around instances of body shame – fat vs skinny, young vs old – but I’ve been thinking about how the hierarchy extends to our minds, too. Emotional vs rational. Anxious vs easy. Happy vs sad. The thing that makes this ladder real, she says, is our attempts to continue to climb it.

The other day, a friend called my sister a highly anxious person. It was said in a light-hearted way, as it so often is, but it didn’t feel funny.

A younger version of me would have laughed along, desperate to hold onto my chill facade and distance myself from the anxious label as far as I could. Even if it was at my sister’s expense. But the authentic version of me, a work in progress, pushed back on the familiar fear that told me to act normal and not upset anyone around me. With my heart thudding, I reminded her that we all get anxiety, me included.

My friend laughed apologetically and said of course. The conversation continued and I doubt anyone has thought twice about my big moment of bravery. I'm not the first person to talk about the omnipresence of anxiety or what it takes to live with it. But for me, it was important not to ‘other’ my sister, in the way that I was ‘othered’ when I first got that diagnosis. It was a moment I could practise being a more authentic version of myself – and this is what really continues to make all the difference in my mental health journey.

If you’re back for round two, thank you. Your feedback has been so kind and encouraging. I acknowledge that a large portion of my subscribers are blood relatives and that is a beautiful thing. If you’re new here, welcome! After I published my first piece last month, the excitement and ideas for future articles came rushing. But when I started my next draft, attempting to tackle some BIG concepts, it didn’t feel like me – “nebulous” even. Mental note: don’t seek feedback on first drafts from Dad. And so, I came back to what I know – my experience. I’d love to hear your feedback and reflections. Please like, comment, dm, share with a friend, chat with me in person etc.

Emma/Pooch x