I'm not really sure how much I've talked to people or wrote about my struggles with anxiety over the last couple of years. I may have mentioned it, as I'm very much a believer in erasing the stigma of mental health struggles and that it's important to share things. However, I've always been that person that has to be always steady and the therapist/rock for others during their struggles, so I find it still hard to shake that "everything has to look okay because everyone expects so much from me" attitude. But I feel compelled to share some stuff, which is easier now because I've almost made it out the other side.
As I sit here struggling to think about the best place to start, I guess it makes the most sense to start with work. I'm not saying that the contributors to my bad anxiety were all work related, but truth be told that's where a lot of it came from. I may have written this before, but I find the transition from school to work was very hard for me as an over-achieving type A perfectionist type, but not how you might think. The hard part is curbing all of those tendencies before they break you. Because in school there are rules and curriculum to ensure you cannot overload yourself. Granted, not everyone can take really hard courses and max out on allowed unit and still rock it. But at least from my experience there are boundaries on what you can load yourself up with in school, and also semesters end and there are breaks to release the tension. But with work, at least with a lot of jobs, there's literally no end to the work you could do. There's always something else, and more work always appears. And while paid time off is a thing, being an over-achieving type A perfectionist type tends to make you shy away from taking time off because there's a fear the work will slip without you.
I realized the last couple of days that I forgot that I used to feel my entire identity was my job. I still had interests - music, reading, video games - but I didn't really do anything that felt more than just filling the alone time between work hours. It's this way of living that created problems. In spending years heads down in a cycle of "get new role, master new role with eyes on the next one" I pushed down and powered through a lot of nonsense. That's another difference between school and work - in school if a teacher or fellow student is making your life miserable, you can drop a class and just walk away. Plus, your school experience is relatively independent. But at work you don't always have control over who you work with and for, and teamwork is a big thing at a lot of places. Having to work in an environment where not everyone values integrity, hard work, and doing a good job can really weigh a person down. Right now my work environment is the best it's ever been, and I get to work with an amazing team of people in a role I worked my ass off and played the long game on to get. I appreciate it a lot. But I'm also tired and feeling the consequences of not properly dealing with the stress of past stuff.
I tell people that I started taking improv classes because I needed some work life balance. It was something I could say I committed to so I could leave the office at least some evenings without feeling guilty I wasn't working long hours. But I realized suddenly the balance wasn't just for the time, but for my identity as well.
I was talking with my coworker and good friend last week about how I feel like my work self and my personal life self are two different people. She disagreed and made an excellent point of how she sees much more of my personal life side of me in the office. Thinking about it, I realized it's true. I really feel like I bring a lot more of my personal life self into the office, but I also realized I try to hide or downplay a lot of my office life in my personal life. Granted, my job can be kind of hard to explain to people who don't get it. But honestly I feel a large part of me likes the freedom of not being that go to person who everyone expects to know everything and is hyper aware of everything to help anticipate people's needs. It feels nice not to worry about being intimidating, or feeling a lot of expectations. Obviously, when I do personal life stuff it's still apparent that I'm smart, but it's easier to hide all the other hyper-organized focused career driven bad ass stuff and just have fun and be silly.
Let's shift gears. I feel like I've strayed from the path of where I wanted to go, but this is my stream of consciousness writing so it goes where it goes. One of the biggest effects with my bad anxiety times is I felt like I lost a lot of my identity. Activities and things I loved a lot became really difficult for me. As an introvert, my alone time is where I restore energy. However, when my anxiety spiraled out of control the most, my alone time was when the anxiety kicked in the worst, so I feel like I lost my sanctuary. I had to stop listening to a lot of artist and songs I loved because a lot of my music triggered my anxiety. I love scary movies and video games but had to stay away because instead of the fun tension of being fake scared, they really triggered things that made me anxious. I almost quit my personal activities because my anxiety told me I wasn't good enough, but I stuck stuff out because objectively I knew I'd be disappointed if I quit even if emotionally I felt terrible. A lot of the healing I've done over these last 15 months is tackling the anxiety and then finding myself again.
Last week I was thinking about when did I become that person that likes scary things. When I couldn't engage with anything scary during my bad anxiety I really felt like I'd lost a large part of myself, but didn't really get why and frankly it felt kind of silly to think so. I thought through when did I really start liking scary things. I think it started with loving to read Goosebumps books as a kid, and then I graduated to R. L. Stine's teen horror series when I got older - I especially loved the ones that took place in the old timey past. Oddly enough, with my being an avid reader, that's where my scary book phase ended. But I always loved scary movies. And I picked up my scary video game love in my late teens. It was totally one of those first tastes and now I'm hooked moments. The first scary game I ever played was American McGee's Alice. (Side note, I literally just learned today after like 18 years that that is some dudes actual name and not the name of a company. Oops). Anyway, I'm a HUGE Alice in Wonderland fan, so the idea of a game where Alice has gone insane and Wonderland is all scary and murdery sounded just up my alley! I moved on to scary console games after that and scary shit is like half my video game collection - the other half is sweet and adorable! ;^) When my anxiety got much better, it felt weird after many, many months having to ease myself back into an activity I adored so long. I did find it helpful getting back into the games that around that time I found out someone I know also loves the same kind of games so being able to share about it helped rev back up the excited of playing.
I did have the really weird epiphany today about just how impactful that Alice game really was on my life. Like not only did it lead me down the path of loving scary video games, it played a big role in my mental health journey. I struggled the worst of my life in college. And I was severely less open about it than I am about things recently. So to process my feelings - because talking about them wasn't really going to happen - I asked myself what would my own personal Wonderland look like if it had stuff from my imagination and was impacted by my mental health issues. For years I thought through that and made metaphors using fantasy imagery, and was really able to work through stuff. And all of that (plus some other later stuff) eventually became a book that I wrote, and I now have to stop being a chicken about getting published. It's this crazy weird series of events that is pretty thought provoking looking back.
Anyway, different train of thought now. I find for the most part reconnecting with myself has been good. I get to remember things about myself I haven't thought about in years, and I get to rediscover things that bring me joy. I have however rediscovered some negatives that I forgot. It's interesting what day to day negatives fall by the wayside when chest tightening, mind racing, existence shattering anxiety takes hold. I have a tendency to isolate myself when I'm struggling. So when I don't go around people it's easy to forget a lot of the low self-esteem problems I've always had going on in the background. But not that I've pieced myself back together, I should probably deal with these lesser, more chronic issues, especially now, as I'm sitting here thinking about what I want to work towards next in my life. I don't really worry about work related future endeavors because I have a proven track record with my career path, so I am confident I can learn and do the hard work needed to move in whatever next direction my career might take me. I'm more worried about the personal life stuff, whether it's artistic endeavors or interpersonal relationships. There are opportunities that I want to put energy into. The problem is this little voice in the back of my head that says I'm not worth it to invest in, and that why should I be chosen when there's so many others way more worthy. And I find it infuriatingly contradictory that I feel so much pressure to be perfect and good at everything, yet I also don't have enough to offer and I suck at everything. And I hate that with all of the stuff I've worked through and accomplished, and for all my strength and talents, I can't get over that stupid little voice.
To bring it back to a positive note, I do enjoy that I am socializing a lot more. I feel like I am making up for all the times I ditched out on things because my anxiety was always so bad. I am also feeling the most open I've ever been in my life with other people. Don't get me wrong, I'm still super private with an unwarranted air of mystery because I keep the deep layers to myself. But it's nice spending time with people and making connections. I know that I will probably socialize less as I find balance again. I do find I am still struggling with alone time. I feel right now like a lot of alone time is just wasted time I could be doing something to impact the future, even though I'm not 100% committed to anything yet. But if I spend time socializing, then I'm out there making bonds and memories, which is valuable. I do sometimes feel awkward these days while socializing. I attribute it partly to being naturally socially awkward/anxious, partly from being out of practice with lingering general anxiety, and sometimes because I drink and then can't keep my mouth shut. I did however learn a very important lesson recently. I'm going to do things that I feel embarrassed or awkward about, and worry that people I did them in front of aren't going to like me anymore. But they are possibly going to do embarrassing things around me that they worry I might respond negatively about. And if I was really more like "hahaha, that was kind of funny even if awkward and embarrassing, and please still talk to me, you're great" then people can totally feel the same way about me. Or they could have also not even noticed. Who knows.
Needless to say, I'm spending a lot of time getting reacquainted with myself. Sometimes it feels like I don't know how to behave because I'm no longer used to certain situations or I'm nervous about being normal again. But I do know that the learning after the struggle is what causes growth. I think of times much harder than this where I came out pretty bad ass, so I look forward to seeing how this turns out.
