Sienna Seychell

What to do when one feels so foreign to one’s own body. Itching to get out. Clenching of the jaw, nails to the palm trying to escape our skin. Anxiety so crippling you can’t leave the house, surrendered to the frame of your own bed. Calling out for work with no reasonable explanation, “I’m not feeling well” because if you say you’re anxious you won’t be taken seriously, you won’t be heard.

You’re told anxiety affects everyone differently, but question why you face the worst symptoms, nearly fainting, can’t eat, hurling into the bin beside your bed whilst you shake in dismay at the feeling you’ve surrendered your body to.

Therapy helps but doesn’t remove the physical symptoms, change the thoughts in your head, or make them disappear. Medication assists but is a journey within itself. The feelings just get worse first before they get better. Popping my Lexapro every evening to feel mindless about the flooding thoughts filling up in my mind.

Lexapro, an antidepressant used to treat anxiety, classed as an SSRI that helps to restore serotonin in the brain. It’s side effects can be gut-wrenching, taking over your mind and body more than generalised anxiety disorder does at times. It takes four to six weeks for the meds to start working their magic, but the waiting is painful. The high success rate gets you through, thinking about the light at the end of your long and painful ride out of this miserable tunnel.

You want to escape your problems, so that is exactly what you do. Vacationing in Europe over the Australian summer keeps you distracted. With flare-ups along the way, you make it through the trip. Still not knowing how to cope, you land yourself back in the position you were in before you left—feeling slightly better but taking days off because your heart is reaching for the stars, and you can’t manage to capture your breath.

It is something still so new, so raw. You feel unrecognisable when you look into the mirror, a mirror of endless stories, worries, and cries for help. Not knowing who you are with this anxiety, the feeling that it now defines who you are and what your future will look like. You change as a person, and your view of the world is not the same. The fear of being unable to leave your house again haunts you at night.

Skipping caffeine, avoiding alcohol, watching what or when you eat because if you make the wrong move, you may just end up feeling helpless and put myself back into my room again. Staying awake at night, avoiding friends and family, crying alone in your room over nothingness and everything all at once. All the intrusive, inevitable thoughts are thrown like rapid-fire through your head, not feeling alone at any moment. Your anxiety becomes your best friend; you live with her, you’re comforted by her, and now you are her.