I’m Through with Anxiety – High Functioning Does Not Mean Normal
I’m frustrated today. I had one simple thing to do today, see my professor about my thesis. It’s nerve wracking. I couldn’t eat properly this morning, and I began to experience all my symptoms of moderately severe anxiety. First I couldn’t eat and my stomach and bowels wouldn’t work properly. So I just miserably drank coffee as breakfast. And as the time approached it just got worse and worse. I had a pain in my gut and a light headedness developing. All sorts of thoughts ran through my head about what he would say, about how critical he would be, and how much of a disappointment I must be. Then, the catatonia began to set in. All my limbs became increasingly heavy and I couldn’t move very fast. I didn’t want to go anywhere or do anything, I just wanted to shrink and disappear. Klonopin helped with that, it gave me a little kick and got me going.
The meeting itself didn’t go so badly. I still think that he disapproves of me, since I feel that he was expecting more from me. But at the same time he approved of the direction that I was proceeding in. It wasn’t one that he himself had ever considered and it seems that others have not considered as well. Kudos to me? I also seemed to hold my own against him, though he isn’t the greatest listener so some of the points didn’t really get through. Over all it went fine. But now I’m sitting here after passing out from klonopin. And that’s what’s frustrating me. For those 60 minutes of lucidity, I went through two hours of hell beforehand and then passing out for an hour and a half afterwards.
I’ve tried other mindfulness exercises to help with anxiety, I tried everything this morning, but my mind just can’t focus when it’s that tense. Nothing seems to help when I have my anxiety build to that point. All I can do is take a drug that pretty much uses up 3 hours of my life for 1 hour of gain. Normal people don’t go through that, do they? Anxiety is the most irritating part of my entire diagnosis. It stops me from being outspoken in classrooms, from talking openly to people, any circumstance where I have to put myself out there, it reigns in. And because of that, I’m through with anxiety. I’d take the entire rollercoaster of moods instead of it just so I could function again.
Honestly, there is nothing positive that I can say about anxiety. With mania and depression, there are good things that come from those states in addition to the bad. Mania makes me creative, fun, I have a good time while manic. Depression makes me read and intensely analytical. I can pick apart arguments like nothing else when depressed because my mind has nothing else to do. But anxiety, it just sends me into an isolating catatonia where I want to crawl up and do nothing. I hate it.
What strikes me as even more ironic is that I’m supposed to be high functioning. I waste hours over a little meeting trying to combat my moods and that’s high functioning? What is this high functioning anyways? Out of the Fog provides a nice definition, it’s that someone who is high functioning can conceal it in public circumstances. Natasha Tracy seems to agree on this as well. And that’s me, one public appearance preceded and followed by hours of symptoms.ilify This is mildly crushing because I was hoping that abwould help more with this than it has. It’s taken the edges off, but my anxiety is still there, taunting me. Regardless of whether I’m high functioning or not, high functioning is not normal, it just means that I can hide it from everyone else that I’m a ball of knots inside that will unravel as soon as I get home.
Like this:
Posted on September 21, 2011, in Mental Health and tagged abilify, anxiety, bipolar, bipolar disorder, mental health, mental illness, personal, thesis. Bookmark the permalink. 6 Comments.
I’m “high functioning” as well and while it allows me to maintain a job and attend school, it doesn’t make my brain shut up or make my anxiety go away. It just means I can plaster a smile on my face and probably cause a tumor straining so hard to hide my actual emotions from people. If I’m really bad I can fake like I have a cold long enough to get out the door or something and not tell people I’m hallucinating. I can play it all off when I know I have to. I guess it’s nice that I’m high functioning ’cause, you know, I like to work and all, but it’s frustrating in some sense to be labeled “high functioning” as if somehow my illness is better when clearly it’s not.
I completely agree with you. High-functioning seems to give the impression and expectation in others that I’m normal, when I’m far from it. Nor does it mean that I don’t need medication. Rather the opposite, medication has gotten me to the high functioning state, but more in the way that I can just keep going and going without stopping rather than actually feeling better. I thank lamictal for that, just a constant lack of fatigue from whatever emotions bombard me.
I totally get where you are coming from – I wrote something similar here: http://cyclothymiaandme.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/crazy-is-as-crazy-does/
I felt bad writing it as I feel that I should be grateful to be able to function but it is such a double edged sword.
x
I absolutely understand what you are going through. I keep an extra hidden stash of Xanax on my person at all times. I don’t really feel as if I’m using it as a crutch though. I’ve had very successful days at work because I’ve been able to function on Xanax. I have a daily regimine of 3 mg, but I don’t take that much. If I take a half before I go to work on a bad anxiety day, then I do a lot better. It’s a little hard to be anxious when you’re a teacher!
Many people assert that the exercises don’t work. I don’t know if you do or don’t, but believe me, you have to believe in them and believe in yourself to make them work. Did I tell you about the mantras yet? I have mantras when I go into freak out mode. If I’m anxious, I just keep reminding breathe. Breathe, just breathe. I really think that if I can keep myself breathing evenly that it will tackle the physical sensations of anxiety and be rid of it. And, it provides a distraction from it.
And, I do engage in exposure therapy – on my own. I put myself into a situation and just go with it. If I have something to say, I say it. Remember, when you’re in the limelight, there will always statistically be the bell curve where there are a few people that think you’re fantastic, most of them will think it’s OK, and there will be those few people that don’t like it. But those few people are total Trolls and Haters. Don’t let it get to you because they are negative people who hate everything.
I also have a stash of xanax on me at all times. It’s there in case of emergencies or if I start to feel the panic coming on. I’ve gotten really good at telling when it’ll come and when I need something to stop it cold. As for exercises, I find that they work if I use them right at the beginning. So if I know that I’m going into a stressful situation, I can use them to calm myself down quite a bit. It may sound corny, but I find old kung fu movie mantras really calming. Maybe it’s because I’ve attached so much affection for the lines.
I also do some exposure work. To get over test anxiety, I often go and sit in the rooms way before hand if possible. Just taking in the surroundings and getting comfortable there is a great way to minimize the stress. I do homework in the class rooms and even watch a little tv just so I feel safe in there. Then, when the test comes, it’s closer to taking a test at home where I feel safe than in some bizarre surroundings that I’m not comfortable in.
I just still get nervous around my professor, especially my thesis advisor because he isn’t the greatest listener and is toweringly intelligent. He’s destroyed my ideas that I’ve worked on for weeks in a matter of minutes. I still go back every time and am getting better at taking devastating criticism, but it’s a learned skill to take criticism like that.
The Eastern cultures know their stuff. I have a problem with high cholesterol (in my late 20′s. No, I’m not overweight, I don’t eat terribly, and I’m active. Genetics suck.), and I take Beni Cogi, which is technically a natural statin. We’ll see how my numbers come out in Jan, but my blood pressure hasn’t been this low since I was in my teens.
I guess I do the same thing with that part of exposure therapy. I never realized it before. I’m always early for everything and I try to hang out at work as much as I can. I thought of it as a primal urge to claim my territory. I’ve been interested in anxiety as a primal function that is really no longer necessary. Social anxiety is the primal and once necessary fear of strangers. Now that our world is less dangerous, it’s now considered dysfunction.
I personally hold the belief that more intelligent humans run into problems with mental health. Why? Because we are not content to stand in the herd, blindly unaware of the slaughter that awaits. We learn quickly and are still very much in touch with our primal urges, but consciously so. We aren’t programmed to live in the society that the “norms” created and enforced.
So, I guess I’ll gulp down the Xanax and cope.