Everyone has their own special mental weirdness. And your humble, almost perfect Bitches are no exception. (I know. Try not to die of shock. My sincerest apologies for ruining the illusion of our all-encompassing perfection.) And since May is Mental Health Month, we’re going to lay our personally atypical brain chemicals and lessons learned from life experience all over you!
Recently Kitty and I were talking about how our personal mental weirdnesses have affected our lives. Financially, emotionally, physically. And we realized we had a lot to say on the topic, a lot that our darling readers might relate to or take comfort from. Being an adult is stressful as fuck! And brains are complicated organs full of chemicals doing unpredictable things. So why not share with the rest of Bitch Nation?
A few years ago, I was diagnosed with anxiety. This didn’t come as a surprise to me, as I’ve always been prone to stress, hyper-focusing on mildly important stuff to the point of panic and despair, and constant worrying about small stuff. But it did come as a surprise to my familiars, since over my lifetime I’ve become pretty damn good at hiding my symptoms.
I just wasn’t good at actually dealing with them.
An anxiety disorder is a mental condition in which a patient tends to… well, to freak out more than is normal. A clinical anxiety disorder is not only bothersome, but it interferes with your life. It’s not only unpleasant, but constant and overwhelming. And while everyone feels stressed or panicked from time to time, the thing that sets those with clinical anxiety disorders apart is that their stress, their anxiety and panic attacks, are completely uncontrollable, disproportionate, and inappropriate to the situation.
There is no “just relax” to someone with anxiety. We literally cannot relax when in the throes of a panic attack or anxious episode. That’s kind of the problem.
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