This post is extremely personal,
but I feel like it is important to share. I hope it is enlightening or comforting or both to some of my readers.
The Room
In my mind there is a dim, circular
room completely lined with shelves, wall to wall, beginning at the
floor and climbing high to an unseen ceiling. All of these shelves are
lined with red boxes- like the ones you can get at Neiman Marcus at Christmas. Each box is
an opportunity, challenge or problem that I will eventually encounter in my
life. Usually, I walk into the room and there is the box for today's challenge sitting
on a table, and I open it to assess its contents: the options I have to proceed
through and beyond the challenge. Sometimes the box is filled with options;
these are welcome and easy, and the best one or two courses of action tend to
stand out. Other boxes may only have one option, there in the back corner of
the box, not always appealing but present and something I can take and move
forward with. Sometimes the single option is even welcome assurance that it was my only choice.
I am blessed to have led a life
which for the most part has featured full boxes; the world has been my oyster,
so to speak, and I have had so many opportunities to select whatever path I
desired to pursue. Somewhere along the line, though, I walked into that room
and I opened a box and I found it empty.
I panicked. I felt frozen. I didn’t
know how to move forward, what to do next. Up to that point, I
would go into that room in my mind, find the box labeled with the problem at
hand on the table, open it up and find the next step,
then I would take it out of the box and use my choice. Then the box, the
problem, would go away. For years that was my sanity: walk in, open box, view
options, make choice, take the next step.
After that first empty box, I
slowed down. I still used my room, but I now
knew that there was the possibility I would open a box one day and find nothing
inside. By the second or third empty box, I became wary and anxious of opening
my boxes- then of even entering the room. It manifested itself in my real life
by developing an unreasonable aversion to certain things that almost always
sent me to my room of boxes; I would avoid things that might notify me of a
problem or a choice so that I wouldn’t have to face the boxes piling up on my
table- what if one of them was empty? What if all of them were? (To my family who are reading this, I'll just say Email.)
When I had to deal
with the growing mess in my room of boxes, I reached a point where I would get
panicky just thinking about opening a box- a fear of the unknown. Most of the
time I would open the boxes and find my choices, my next steps, and I would
chastise myself for making so much of nothing- I'd gain some courage to
open another box, and another, knocking out challenge after challenge, relaxing
and building confidence UNTIL
I found myself frozen. The panic
and anxiety was worse than ever. In the real world, I would have a physical
panic attack, with hyperventilating, even crying, and I would go into a brief
state of denial, in my mind I would walk out and close the door to the room and
pretend it didn’t exist, and in reality I would block it out by watching a
stupid show or reading a novel, or cooking. The box wouldn’t go away, and eventually it
would get dealt with, often with a worse outcome for having been put off.
This story is not to showcase my struggles in a bid for attention or sympathy; I do hope that in being transparent, more people can feel comfortable identifying areas in which they need help, and realize that their "issues" do not define them; even the most "together" people have stuff going on they just aren't telling the world about. I hope it helps explain to people who do not deal with Anxiety what it looks like from the perspective
of someone who has experienced it long term.
I also want to share with those of
you who deal with Anxiety in your own lives what has helped me begin to
overcome it. First, I have come to realize that there is no such thing as an
empty box. I still have to remind myself of that before I open a new one, but
truly, when you think about it, there is no such thing as a problem or a
challenge with no next step. The next step might not always be appealing, but
it always exists- for all the boxes I thought were empty, I have never actually
had my entire life come to a halt; it always somehow moves forward. Sometimes the only thing in the box is prayer, but in my experience it is the best option I could hope for, and should be the first next step I take from any box. The second
important thing I have learned (with the help of wise counsel) is
that the boxes generally get less and less full the longer I leave them
unopened. The longer I wait to face my challenges, the less options I will have
for the next step.
If you struggle with anxiety, I
encourage you to share it with someone you trust. They may not understand
initially but I challenge you to take some time to walk them through it; it is
healing to feel like there is someone with you when you encounter particularly
intimidating “boxes”. If you don’t have anyone you feel comfortable processing
with, feel free to email me- I can’t
offer much more than an ear, but sometimes that’s just what you need!
