Floops – Anxiety and Coping with it.
*Warning – Lengthy Post, Anxiety and Coping With It.*
I was recently signed off work for a few weeks. I’d been getting so wound up at work. It had been building for a few months. I didn’t think it was that big a thing. For years when I’ve started to need a holiday, I begin to get increasingly irritable, I start to compose blunt responses to emails, my tolerance of interruptions and I find it harder and harder to deal with people. This time was different.
It began the same way, except two or three months ago, I started feeling that I didn’t want to go to work, that feeling slowly began to grow. I worked from home one day, I was so much happier, no people around to distract or annoy me. Yes I could still get annoying emails, but I felt much more chilled, but something still wasn’t quite right. Normally when I was alone in my office, I was fine, I’d whack some tunes on and close the door and crack on with work and feel like I achieved a lot. Not now, on my own in my office I felt more under pressure to do work. During this time though I started to over think. I would feel anxious and feel I needed out of work. I was also worrying I wasn’t achieving enough at work, and I’d somehow be “found out”.
There had been an office meeting, where the use of headphones had been banned and a dress code laid out. In my head I took this really to heart, and quite badly. I’m always using my headphones, I usually wore wear jeans (albeit black ones) every day and did my own unofficial jeans (usually dark blue) and t-shirt dress down Friday. The removal of casual Friday didn’t bother me, I became more wound up because no one had come to me and had a polite word. I started worrying because some of my work wear wasn’t jeans but might look like them. I strangely felt both angry and scared at the possibility of getting into trouble. I would react on feeling to events and people rather than assessing them for what they were.
The headphones issue really wound me up, I listened to music and podcasts every day while working on things when I needed to block out the world and crack on, now I’m being told I wasn’t allowed to do so. In reality, my work hadn’t wanted to single people out so did it as a group, the problem had never been me. It had been the receptionist who sat with her headphones in all the time. A public facing role, and they had not been behaving appropriately, her manager didn’t want to confront her directly so had used this office meeting as a means of getting her member of staff to behave without coming across as ‘the bad person.’
While I’m looking at it rationally now, at the time I wasn’t. I was withdrawing into myself more and more, I was avoiding people, I didn’t stick my head in offices to say hello and catch up. I hid at my desk and didn’t want to go out.
At home I was withdrawing more, without realising, one of my friends had noticed and mentioned it to me the day I went to the doctors. I seemed far quieter and less like myself and was concerned. It was actually four months previously that signs that something wasn’t right with me raised their head. It was during the summer holidays, towards the end of a week’s holiday that I had the only argument I’ve ever had with my wife in nearly 5 years. The week before I’d bluntly replied to an email of someone I was tired of constantly telling the same thing. This resulted in my manager talking me to the pub for lunch and we had a friendly and constructive chat about how I’d been lately, I apologised and put it down to needing a holiday.
Fast forward to a month ago, I’d had a really bad Monday and Tuesday, I’d been narky and feeling really low, I was off on holiday at the end of the week, so I was focusing on that. The project we’d been working on wasn’t moving forward, I felt it was my responsibility it hadn’t. In reality there was nothing I could do to speed it up, and no one was holding me responsible at all.
I’d had a few odd moments where I felt quite emotional, almost tearful a couple of times. I started to acknowledge there was something wrong, because I only get like that when I’m getting emotionally hammered for whatever reason. I talked to my wife about how I was feeling again I felt I needed a holiday. At lunchtime on Wednesday when my manager went off to his conference, he’d tried to help me by telling me not to let myself get so wound up by people while he was away. I said I’d felt miserable this week and he tried to say positive thinking it was me just needing a holiday.
After he left, I went for a long walk at lunchtime, my brain wouldn’t stop thinking. I was anxious, stressed, run down and I couldn’t shake the low feeling I had. I started thinking about something unpleasant, images came into my head. What if I put a carrier bag on my head? The vivid scene of a bright orange Sainsbury’s thin carrier bag held tightly over a head, you would see contours of the face. The carrier bag moving in and out of the mouth with each breath. I had to get back to work get through the next couple days, the finishing line was in sight, get to Friday 5pm and I’m on holiday. The plastic bag image scared the living shit out of me. I would never do it, but the thought that I could easily pass out and die quietly, seemed almost comforting. I headed back to work.
I’d been in about 5 minutes and was sat at my desk trying to get my head together and assemble my thoughts, feeling horribly emotional holding back tears, needing to be alone to pull myself back together. At this point, the HR director sticks her head around the door to check on me setting something up in the next hour and realised something was wrong. I broke down. I talked about the anxiety and stress I’d been under for well over a year since my old manager got put in the ejector seat. I said nothing about the carrier bag. I said I’d see the doctor next day.
That night at home I felt fine, and everything that had happened seemed like a dream. I thought I’d been a complete idiot, then my wife walked through to the kitchen, I was on my own and I started feeling weird, a little low, but definitely not right.
It takes three weeks to get an appointment at my doctor’s surgery, so the only way to get one quicker is to phone up at 8am and make an emergency appointment. The receptionist put me through to a nurse, to screen the call to see if it was worthy of an appointment. I felt stupid calling up, like I was wasting time, like I was going to be talking an appointment off someone more deserving or more in need than me. It was when I had to describe my issue to the nurse, it hit me again, I knew I was not right, and the nurse made an appointment for me.
Again when I left the house to go to the doctor I started feeling like I was wasting someone’s time, then when I spoke to the doctor, again I realised I was not wasting their time. I had a long and constructive talk with the doctor, who signed off me work for ‘Anxiety with depression’ and gave me a prescription for Fluoxetine. I said to the doctor I wanted some counselling out of this as well. Why not treat the root cause as well as the symptom? Dealing with my irrational fears. The only people I told about the plastic bag were the nurse, the doctor and my wife.
During my time off I realised how much pressure I’d put on myself, partly. For months I was always on the go, always have to achieve something, always trying to make sure whatever I was doing felt worthwhile. I was able to stop. Simply stop. There was no pressure on myself to do something. I was able to walk away from an issue. I could let it drop.
I learned I operated on fear every day I was worrying about ridiculous things. What would I get in trouble for? Irrational thoughts that were indoctrinated in childhood, a fear of getting into trouble. Fear of getting things wrong, desperate to avoid being told off, that would result in me “not feeling good enough” and that I couldn’t do anything right. These things feeding into how I’d felt since late summer 2014, all of this constantly feeding my insecurities, slowly piling up, day on day.
Always feeling I was responsible and had to make things at home and work run smoothly, not expressing my own opinions, for fear of upsetting other people, except in anger, this feeding the anxiety and stress because there was no outlet. Reacting to events, and being wound up but not know why I felt so strongly, and why I couldn’t control why I felt like that. Not being able to let anything drop. Everything slowly eating away at me. My mind constantly presenting me with these things and I couldn’t get away from it, I couldn’t just “not think about it.” It might get peace from myself for a few hours, but then something that annoyed me would make it’s way back up to the top of the pile and dance around.
Then there’s obsessive behaviour, imagine never being able to take a step back from a situation to look at it from another perspective? That’s how I was, caught in a sinking spiral. I felt I had no control over my own life, so irrationally I tried to control things in my life that I felt I should be able to. This was causing me to be grumpy and irrational at work and wanting to withdraw from being around certain people.
Out of this, I became fully aware that for at least 20 odd years I’ve had low level anxiety lurking in the background, it’s raised it’s ugly head a few times and has many time influenced decisions I’ve made and how I’ve behaved and I’ve hated it.
The tablets have helped massively, far more than I thought they would. They’ve enabled me to take a step back and chill out and look at things from a different perspective. Where I once even on good days always be worried, that maybe people might think less of me, or someone might judge me over something less than trivial. Perhaps thinking I recognised someone, but don’t want to say hello in case it’s not them. Talking to someone on the phone on the train and being concious that the passengers around you can hear you and judge you, never being able to feel comfortable in such situations. All of that is gone. That’s when I realised I’d been like this for years.
What’s left behind is habitual. I can see that now. I recognise how I would act before in a situation and can choose to do something else rather than do what I would out of habit. It’s only been possible because the anxiety has been removed.
In the past few months I developed an obsession for collecting KLF vinyl. I had to buy these, I was compelled to get them and I had a few perfect opportunities to get some rare stuff, which even if I was fine I still would have taken. However the drive to get stuff has fallen away, I still am collecting things, but the sense of urgency and pressure to do it all “now” has gone. I wish I could accurately convey how it feels to have those feelings fall away. This and other obsessions when thoughts wouldn’t leave me alone have all been tied to this anxiety. It’s been bad when either disagreed with choices people have made or if I’ve thought someone is a dick due to their behaviour and been unable to let it go. It’s a horrible place to be because you don’t want to be an arsehole, but at the same time, you can’t let go of something, and it takes far longer than it should (a few months rather than a few days) to get around to being able to drop something.
The best way I can try and describe how I feel without the anxiety is, imagine you go somewhere, the pub, a party or where ever and you have a few drinks. You feel more relaxed chilled and you feel more like the person you want to be all of the time. You don’t worry, you feel more confident that usual, not too much to be an arse, but enough to be the person you want to see yourself as.That’s how I now feel, so much less bothered by the world, I’m a bit less focused and more on autopilot for some things.
I am now feel more in control over my own life. I don’t feel as compelled as I used to, where I always felt I had to be doing something. I can stay in bed until lunchtime on Saturday, rather than being compelled to be out the door at half 9 to go round the supermarket and planning the day out in advance in my head. I can switch off, I seem to tire more easily and am possibly a bit lazier. However I feel far happier, there is no weight on my shoulders. I’m repeating myself saying the same things in different ways, it’s only because I clearly express how different I now feel.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that I’ve stopped blurting things out, and been more diplomatic. I felt the need to say too much. Rather than, “Right, I’ll do that” I’d mention something related that would then cause some office politics and I’d sit through someone having an annoyed rant about something I didn’t give a toss about.
I’ve written a couple iterations of this post, partly to get it out my head, partly because I want to tell people and partly because I don’t want to keep recounting it to people. I thought this would be a more coherant, thought out sensible version rather than me telling it and forgetting bits. I didn’t know if I should share this as a post of keep it private, but I’ve nothing to hide, I have friends I am comfortable discussing what’s happened with, so why not?
I talked to people all the way along, yet I and they still didn’t realise how serious things were. I was lucky I realised and got help. There are people out there, who don’t talk, don’t realise and don’t get help. Never feel bad asking for help, it’s easier to say than do, and like me you might try and dissuade yourself. Just ask, it’s hard, but try.
I talked to people all the way along, yet I and they still didn’t realise how serious things were. I was lucky I realised and got help. There are people out there, who don’t talk, don’t realise and don’t get help. Never feel bad asking for help, it’s easier to say than do, and like me you might try and dissuade yourself. Just ask, it’s hard, but try.
How I am now, is this what passes for normal? Who knows, but If anyone has a non-bootleg copy of Pure Trance 5 – Last Train To Trancentral (KLF 008R) they want to sell me, let me know 🙂
