Someone once told me, “It’s all in your head”, and after hearing those words, I thought about it and it actually made a lot of sense.
It is in the head, yes. It’s a mental illness, but that doesn’t make it not real.
You can never see with the naked eye, from the outside of a person, how they suffer with illnesses. You cannot see asthma until that person is gasping for air.
We can’t tell what this person is dealing with by just looking at them.
I suffer from severe GED (generalised anxiety disorder).
This entails having sweaty palms, a racing heart and constantly worrying about unrealistic things.
But more than anything, anxiety is caring, never wanting to hurt someone’s feelings, so you try too hard sometimes.
Anxiety is the fear of failure and striving for perfection but then beating yourself up when you fall short.
With this comes the lack of confidence in yourself and self-doubt. It’s thinking too much. All of these are irrational fears.
To be hyper-aware of everything and everyone, so much so that you can tell if there’s a shift in someone merely by their tone or word choice.
While texting someone, one retypes and rethinks of better ways to word things. Then comes the agony of waiting for a reply.
While the unanswered text kills you inside, the scenario plays in your head.
I am a runner and I always find myself fighting these mind games in my head, telling me how weak I am, how slow I am.
Even though I am as fit as a fiddle, it is that “self-doubt” I mentioned above.
When I walk, I think constantly, “What do people think when driving past me?” She’s weak? She failed?
To end it well, not all illnesses can be fixed with a bandage, but we have medication that helps us heal, so that being said, no one can be judged by their prescription.
We are all the same at the end of the day,
We are just wearing our bandages differently!
Yours could be next
You could be our next guest columnist by submitting a column, of no more than 400 words, on any topic except religion or politics.
The editor reserves the right to edit columns for length and clarity and may withhold submissions.
Email your column in a word document to the Springs Advertiser editor, Samantha Keogh, at samk@caxton.co.za, along with your name, surname, a photo of yourself (at least 1mb JPEG) and your contact details.
No columns submitted by fax or hand delivered will be published and the editor’s decision of which columns to publish is final.
