I have a mental illness.
It’s called generalised anxiety disorder and it affects millions – if not billions – of people the world over. The NHS estimates that about 5% of the UK population suffer from it. The earliest memories I have of mine are from primary school.
Anxiety is a full-time job. There’s no holiday, no fixed working hours, and certainly no quitting. You also don’t get paid.
It manifests itself differently in everyone and has a greater or lesser impact on everyday life depending on the individual. Maybe I’m lucky that mine doesn’t generally affect the really crucial things – my work and education – though my high-functionality also lets me pretend there’s nothing wrong 99% of the time which isn’t always healthy in the long-run.
But these are things I should probably save for a counsellor.
I realise I don’t sound very on the fence about this one. I clearly have a deep personal investment in it and surely there’s no argument for the benefits of being psychologically unwell.
What I am on the fence about is the way mental illness is discussed.
I’ll stick mostly to anxiety with brief reference to depression; “mental illness” is such a huge, abstract umbrella term that it’s not much use for actually understanding anything. What I say here might well apply very differently to bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, ADHD, and so on. Whenever I do use the term, it’ll be for the sake of making the sentence read better.
The first thing to note is the fact that anxiety is being discussed in the first place.
Going (but not gone) are the days of men suffering in silence and women being dismissed as hysterics. Online communities are particularly vocal: suddenly people have a platform that doesn’t involve face-to-face interaction; something my anxious brethren and I don’t always find easy.
These communities can be great at providing support and reassurance that you’re not alone, but they’re also partly responsible for the romanticization of mental illness.
This doesn’t mean anyone is claiming mental illness is enjoyable; romanticization means implying there’s a sort of glamour in suffering.
This is especially true of the self-harm and depression “aesthetics” you can find on sites like tumblr.
I can see how turning anxiety into something more beautiful or palatable – something other than an ugly, toxic reality – could make it easier to cope with as well as easier to talk about.
The difference between removing stigma and glamourizing can be a difficult one but it’s crucial for promoting healthy discussion.
This is a lot of the reason I’ve never spoken about my problem with 90% of my friends and family (besides just being a fairly private, reserved person). I don’t know where the line is either. If anyone ever voiced misconceptions about anxiety around me I like to think I’d correct them, but I don’t want to talk about it all the time any more than other people want to hear about it all the time.
Books, TV, film and other media – especially of the young adult variety – are also perpetuators of romanticization. Mental illnesses can be used by authors as shortcuts in writing quirky or outsider-type characters, and might miss the difference between creating figures for mentally ill people to identify with and idolising the illness.
I’m not saying scores of people are downright faking anxiety to be part of a crowd; often romanticization is about people who are ill but, in a strange passive sort of way, don’t want to feel better.
I realise how bizarre that will sound to anyone who hasn’t experienced it and I honestly don’t know how to explain it.
What it comes down to, I think, is selfishness.
By that, I mean when I’m having a bad day or week, anxiety turns me inwards so completely that everything is me. I’m so utterly absorbed in micro-managing my body and being hyper-alert to exactly what I’m feeling, I can only see the larger damage it’s doing in an abstract sort of way.
This leads me to my second point.
There’s a lot of “your friends and family should support you no matter what!!!” flying around in mental illness communities, and generally I believe this is good and right. I wouldn’t be where I am now without the infinite patience, kindness and understanding of a few key individuals.
The problem is this:
Imagine that you have anxiety and you also have a boy- or girlfriend. Maybe your anxiety makes you worry about the state of your relationship with them. Maybe you need to check up on where they are or what they’re doing regularly through the day – so you know they’re okay. Maybe you need constant reassurance that they still care about and are faithful to you. Maybe you look through their phone or check their browsing history sometimes – just to be sure.
None of these things are really your fault, right? You can’t help the way you feel.
But take mental illness out of the equation and you end up with something that seems… well – an awful lot like an abusive relationship.
I can see how it might become a cycle of not wanting (or not feeling able) to be with the person anymore but feeling too guilty to leave. And no one should ever feel too guilty to leave.
This isn’t always how dating someone with anxiety goes, of course, but I don’t know that I’ve ever heard this perspective being discussed before.
What it boils down to is this: can we separate the person from the illness?
Can we say, I’m sorry I keep doing X or being Y even though it upsets you; it’s not who I am, it’s just my anxiety?
In my experience, no.
While the fact that these things are a symptom of anxiety makes them a little more understandable, it by no means makes them excusable.
But here’s the rub:
To have anxiety is to be caught between trying not to let it control you and knowing that if it didn’t control you, it wouldn’t be a problem.
I know getting better isn’t a linear journey towards complete recovery. I know there isn’t a miracle cure. I know this is something I’ll probably have, on and off, for the rest of my life.
But I also know my behaviour has the potential to hurt people and, while it might be incredibly difficult for me to change, that’s not an excuse to stop trying.
I’ve come out the other side of two or three particularly bad bouts of anxiety in my lifetime, but if you asked me exactly how I did it I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I certainly didn’t sit myself down and decide to get better, it just happened. I dragged myself through bad days, weeks and months until – slowly and imperceptibly and for a thousand different reasons – the bad bits weren’t as bad.
Ultimately, anxiety is hard. It’s hard for me and often it’s hard for the people around me.
I’m glad this fact is being brought to wider attention, and I’m immeasurably grateful that I live in a time and place where my doctor won’t recommend strapping me to a bed and loading me with drugs.
There’s still work to be done tackling the stigma by talking honestly and openly, without sugar-coating, and I hope I’ve contributed in my own small way.
Today has been an average anxiety day.
Maybe tomorrow will be better. Maybe it won’t.
Regardless, to quote the excellent singer-songwriters twentyonepilots: the sun will rise and we will try again.
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