My scarlet letter A

No I’m not about to speak about adultery.... I have a different scarlet letter A that has plagued me for most of my life: Anxiety. I just want to talk about what it is like to have high functioning anxiety and depression. 

I’ve struggled with anxiety and depression from a very young age and as an adult I get days when I’m so overwhelmed that I just need to speak about it. The thing is anxiety pushes against you trying to connect with people and so this post is basically my way around that. I guess that’s what this whole blog is: me trying to have the honest conversations that depression and anxiety seem to hinder.

So what is it like to be high functioning with depression and anxiety. Well sometimes I feel like it’s living a double life. On one hand I am an adult with a full time job that is stressful and deals with people, who lives away from family and is mostly self sufficient. On the other hand I have avoided things like going to the dentist, fixing my car and just generally keeping up with normal life admin because it causes me very high levels of anxiety. I’m somewhere between functioning and drowning. Maybe you’re reading this and you don’t have anxiety but this sounds like your life. That’s always the hard part for me; I always feel like I’m trying to get my friends to understand what I’m saying but I don’t think I ever can. Striving for people to understand you is maybe a pointless task anyway. Let me try that again. Just like this post my thoughts are very haphazard. Especially when I’ve been triggered. As is the case right now. Anxiety is like a live wire. The electricity is always running and it just takes the tiniest spark or touch for the situation to become dangerous. On an average day I can control all of the thoughts running wild in my head. I have built in defense mechanisms that operate automatically to keep my level of anxiety manageable. And I function pretty well. Then we have triggers (events, situations, sounds, smells, words etc which set off my anxiety). If I’m triggered my anxiety levels go up and my higher cognitive functions go down. So simple decision making, planning etc go from rational and simple to mammoth tasks that I can’t manage. On good days as a person with high functioning anxiety I can manage my life and excel on my own with some difficulty organizing and keeping up with complicated admin. I can progress and grow and learn. On bad days I struggle and may need help to fill out forms, make appointments and even make decisions about simple things like eating, buying groceries, impulsive spending, keeping on track with daily tasks etc. On my worst days I need help with basics: hygiene, getting out of bed, suicidal thoughts. I live in mostly good days and the threat of bad days are like a cloud hovering overhead. Anxiety and depression suck. I don’t have many days where I am confident about myself as a person. I feel like by the worlds standard a person with depression and anxiety doesn’t hold much value. What employer wants someone who is inconsistent at best and will most likely exhaust their sick leave within the first half of the year. Or who wants a friend who is flakey and very insecure , who withdraws themselves at a drop of a hat. And even in church the word anxiety is treated like a contact transmitted disease with everyone quoting Timothy at you whenever you just try and speak about what’s going on in your head. But then I remember Paul and his thorn. I remember the scripture that says Gods strength is made perfect in my weakness. I remember Job. I remember that God is the one who has carried me through my entire life and that he uses foolish things to confound the wise. I may be flawed. I may be weak. I may be emotional and highly sensitive. But “blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth”