Anxiety sucks. It's such a sneaky brat. You know your internal voice? It's that little narrator that gets really curious about weird shit right before you go to sleep. You tend to trust that voice above all others, which means that voice can say increasingly wild thoughts that you won't find increasingly wild. I think it's a safe assumption that most of us kind of accept our brains as is and then find out later maybe we shouldn't.

For example, I thought everyone worried about every possible outcome from every single one of their interactions and were just more motivated. While it's true that a decent amount of people are actually more motivated than me, it also turns out it that not everyone brain is like mine. I don't mean some sort of obnoxious “my brain is special”, I'm talking about how brains change and response to anxiety, depression and ptsd, like mine has.

Discovering that I have anxiety actually made less anxious, because the universe has a weird sense of humor. Also because it helped me to know that my internal narrator screaming like a tornado warning at the thought of initiating conversation was perhaps, a bit more extreme than the situation called for. Intellectual knowledge only gets me so far, however and it's not actually very far without help. I was extremely privileged to have access to affordable therapy that was helpful. That is not the case for everyone because capitalism is the fucking worst, racism is real and mental health is not considered valid. Same goes for the fact that I have access to medication that works without negative side effects. It has made my anxiety manageable, but my little voice still has a direct line to my stress.

Stress sucks too. It's a shame we don't take mental health as serious as physical health, considering stress is often complicating people’s health. A prime example can be found in the above paragraph. Honestly, for me, anxiety and stress is kind of a chicken or egg dilemma. I'm not certain how much stress triggers my anxiety and how much my anxious brain creates and perpetuates the stress cycle. Its rinse and repeat, with no included instructions indicating any sort of stopping. This is an issue for a lot of folks; be it wither stress, anxiety or the gross combination of both.

I'll tell you what annoys the hell out of me about all of this. First, is that I can't just drop anxiety like it's hot. Because I would. Forget any advantages it provides as far as preparedness, I'd rather be underprepared without gut wrenching worry over social interactions.

Second, is the sentiment that I need to “push through it”. What does that even mean? I've memorized the fear litany and have logged some serious hours into exposure and desensitization of anxiety. That's isn't pushing through anything, in my opinion. That's was an incredibly hard, involved process that I was guided through. When I hear “push through,” it sounds an awful lot like “suck it up,” which is some of the worst medical advice of ever. No one should be invalidated like that. Anxiety isn't just some jitters that can be laughed away.