The first topics I want to address very deliberately are mental health topics: bipolar, last week, and today anxiety. Across these posts I’ll also be sharing some examples of how my mental illness has influenced my songwriting. Why write this here? (you may be wondering.) This seems to be a blog situation, not a journal. Well, (I answer,) I have multiple goals. I want to share honestly what it can be like living with mental illness for people who don’t, and for people who do but maybe feel like they’re alone in it. And I want to do what I can to fight the stigma of talking openly about something that can seem like a secret we have to keep lest we be Judged.
My anxiety definitely predates my lithium prescription, although I’m not sure by how much exactly. I have some childhood memories that could possibly be considered signs of anxiety-to-come. By high school it was definitely affecting me. It mostly coincided with my episodes of depression, for perhaps obvious reasons, but I can recall, sometimes, a sort of sick feeling when I was in the grip of hypomania and someone didn’t respond the way I expected they would to something I said or did. But once medication started to get the bipolar disorder under control, the anxiety started to rise. And rise. And… well. I think it would be fair to say that my life today is more heavily influenced by anxiety than it ever was before I went on lithium. But when I compare the things I said and did before with the weight of anxiety now, there is no very little contest. I definitely almost certainly wouldn’t go back.
I’ve not found it super-useful to focus too intently on diagnosis in this area. I know I am anxiety-laden. And that my symptoms seem to fit across a range of anxiety/anxiety-related disorders. I have heard the argument that the Generalized Anxiety Disorder subsumes the other symptoms, so I don’t need to talk about them separately, which I don’t think is quite how the DSM works, but there you go. What is important, to me, is the range of symptoms I experience (there are several) and the treatments that help (although even the idea of “treatments that help” is a bit iffy). In any case, here are a few of the facets of my anxiety and anxiety-related thoughts and behaviours.
The Hand Tremors
This is a weird one to start with because it does not, in fact, start with anxiety. It starts with the lithium I take for my bipolar management. Lithium sometimes (and certainly in my case) causes hand tremors. Most of the time it’s a mild irritant, but when I’m outside my comfort zone, especially when I’m performing, it’s like there’s a psychological reinforcement of the effect and the shaking can become more than a little eye-catching. Interestingly, and I’m not sure what it means, apparently when I actually hold a microphone it reduces the tremors somewhat.
Talking to “Strangers”
In this paragraph, I’m going to say “strangers” when I really mean “people I don’t talk to at least once a week.” Some of them are strangers, but a lot of them are just people whose ways of speaking I’m not 100% adjusted to these days. Some of them are very important people to me, just very important people I’m not in really close contact with at present. So, a few things. When I speak to such a “stranger,” I focus too much on what I’m saying and how I’m saying it. I may miss the things they say because I’m trying so hard to appear normal. I end up coming across as extra awkward. Talking to “strangers,” and especially the more remote acquaintances and actual strangers, can leave me very tense and full of regret for hours or days. Things I’ve said previously can even haunt me for years.
Got no words for the frozen moment when
-me, Mistakes
I’m thinking about the mistakes in my past again
My chest aches and my lungs won’t expand
Thinking about the mistakes in my past again
The people who’ve walked out of my life
Don’t want me coming ’round to say “here’s why
I deserve a second chance”
I wish I had a second chance
Worry
I worry, okay? A lot. About the past, especially, though also the present or future… results of that past. No, okay, I worry about what might happen too, such as the dog’s harness not being on properly, resulting in her escaping and running into traffic and dying (this is not a thing that has happened, just a thing that could). A lot of my present/future worrying centres around death. But my favourite thing to worry about is things I’ve said or done in the past and the ways in which they might, or perhaps already have, come back to haunt me. The opinions people must have of me over things I said ten or fifteen years ago. These things keep me awake at night. They keep me from focusing on daily tasks.
Overwhelmed
I always have this sense that I’m forgetting something I have to be concerned about. I feel like I have to know exactly where all my worries are, like I’m juggling them and dropping one could have disastrous consequences. Or perhaps like I’m juggling them and I don’t know where they all are, I just have to hope they show up when it’s their turn to be dealt with instead of crashing to the ground. I often feel completely overwhelmed by all the things I’m anxious about, by trying not to be anxious about them, by trying to remember what I’m supposed to do to deal with the anxiety, and especially by the anxiety itself. This may distract me from things like household tasks, or leave me too exhausted mentally or physically to do the things I know I should be doing.
What I wouldn’t give for a rest from what goes on inside my head
-me, A Little Quiet
For a little peace and quiet
I may be alone but the sound of my thoughts is echoing instead
The volume’s up so high it hurts
All I need is just a minute
All I need is a break from me
I need a break from me
A little quiet please
Intrusive Thoughts
Here is the etc. of the post. Obsessive-compulsive tendencies, manifesting primarily as intrusive thoughts. They may be violent or inappropriately sexual in nature, and they suck. I know, to the deepest core of my being, that I’m not going to reach out and grab someone inappropriately, for example, or deliberately injure myself with a pencil, and yet part of my horrified brain demands, “What if you did?” There is no wink or nudge there, no suggestion that it might be a good idea, just this terror that I might not be able to stop myself from doing it.
A long time ago, a psychologist introduced me to the term “Pure O,” and I thought that was what I had until I read this (https://www.ocduk.org/ocd/pure-o/), which I found very helpful in understanding what was going on in my brain. Of course, my mental rituals likely only reinforce the power of these highly unlikely thoughts, but I’m not in a place right now to work on that. It’s not Priority 1.
Anyway, that’s all I have to share about my anxiety issues at the moment. See you next week with something a little less personal!