Three years ago, when I FINALLY got some psychiatric help for an episode that was already almost a year old at that point (thanks for nothing), my then-psychiatrist diagnosed me with panic disorder/agoraphobia, OCD, Borderline Personality Disorder, depressive disorder, dissociative disorder, and Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. Believe it or not, I was okay with that. It gave me something to hold onto, because I couldn’t make sense out of what was happening to me anymore. By the time I got in to see him, it was already too late. The damage was done. I will never fully recover. It’s not pessimism, just plain fact. Too much has happened to me, and rearranged my brain and how I perceive things.
Anxiety Archive
- Sub-Categories
- Agoraphobia (1)
- Generalized Anxiety Disorder (3)
- Nightmares (1)
- Panic Attacks (8)
- PTSD (16)
09 May 2013
A Different Approach
Once upon a time, there was me. I was a drunk. I wanted to die. I couldn’t handle the way I was living anymore. So I went into a recovery house. I failed. I went to another one. Three years into sobriety I had a mental breakdown. Things have been fucked ever since. But through it all I’ve also had this eating disorder, see. So it’s not enough to try to get my life back from mental illness. I’ve got an eating disorder too.
18 Apr 2013
Overcoming Paranoia by Letting People Love Me
I would invite people into my world and it would set in. You can’t trust these people. And you definitely cannot trust groups. When it comes down to the survival of the group, you will always be disposable, as you have been before. You know from personal experience that no one cares if you’ve been harmed or abused if one of the leaders has done it. If the charismatic person can convince others you are crazy, you will lose. After all, you ARE crazy, right? It’s better just to run away. Before they hurt you and you hurt them. It’s better alone anyways.
11 Feb 2013
Hysterical Woman Problems: Jealousy
One of the most common things people with BPD have in common is abandonment/attachment issues. Mine run incredibly deep & I feel that I need to warn people about in advance so they can give emotional consent about whether or not they want to invest in a relationship with me. I feel the need to warn them that I’m incredibly sensitive, have a lot of unexplainable triggers that result in dissociation (a whole other article!), and that I have problems trusting that people aren’t going to randomly disappear. And while I own these feelings, actively work on them & and try my hardest not to bring them into my relationships (often going as far as to isolate myself for periods of time when I’m feeling them), they still come up. They still permeate every single aspect of my life. With such BIG emotions, I have to ask for a whole lot of patience & understanding in all types of relationships. People who are diagnosed with BPD often have the tendency to either dive in way too deep or constantly prevent themselves from dipping their toes in the water at all, all due to fears of abandonment. Some of us are trying our hardest every second of the day to figure out some sort of healthy balance for our interpersonal relationships to the point where it gets super confusing. Many of us are very, very tired a lot of the time because of this. Sometimes, I sit around and think about how fucking un-cute that must sound to all of my potential dates and I feel really fucking defeated & lonely.
01 Feb 2013
I want Sexual Accountability
Trigger Warning: Mention of rape
I am beginning to pathologize the sexual desperation I have felt for a cis-male-flesh-cocked lover in my life lately. This is new for me as I have mostly never been able to enjoy penis-centric heterosexuality and I consider myself exclusively queer. I have been incredibly weighed down by my sexual dysfunction for my entire sexual life. By sexual dysfunction, I mean my inability to experience healthy arousal, be orgasmic and/or connect sexually with another person without fear of becoming triggered. I haven’t had many positive end results when attempting to experience sexual pleasure with another person of any gender/orientation.
30 Jan 2013
Needles, Fear, and T
Trigger Warning: for those afraid of needles.
I have a fear of needles.
It is a pretty common fear. It kind of makes sense. I mean, needles do hurt, often just a tiny bit and but sometimes quite a lot, depending on what they’re doing. Plus, they invade some of the most private parts of our bodies and remove parts of us or put new things inside of us. It’s creepy. And people don’t always ask permission before they put needles inside us (although they almost always should). Needles can help us, but they can also harm us and/or reveal things about us that we may not wholly want to know. Needles can be violating.
10 Jan 2013
Naming Names – Putting Agoraphobia Into Words
I still don’t know how to talk about agoraphobia. I’ve been trying to figure out how to explain it to people since I was 16 years old, but I’ve been largely unsuccessful at putting it into words. I’ve mostly just stayed quiet about it and used vague “anxiety” euphemisms to describe why I can’t hang out / go to work / go to class / go grocery shopping / whatever, and have also spent a lot of time struggling to come up with “legitimate” ways to account for what I do with my time while NOT doing these things, especially since spending [lots of] time alone or in my “safe zones” is actually super positive for me. For almost 20 years, I’ve had no concept of how to talk about this enormous part of me that has both limited me in humongous ways and also shaped me into the wonderful weirdo that the people close to me know and love.
09 Jan 2013
Go Back to Sleep
These are my nightmares.
I have them a few times a week. Sometimes every night.
Sometimes they are just feelings. No dreams. Just waking feelings of fear.
I did not know nightmares were abnormal for adults until I started reading about it. Apparently a very small percentage (under 3%) of adults report more than 2 nightmares per week, or even year. Maybe that’s wrong. It is from wikipedia. But now it makes sense when I have told people about these, how no one seems to share the experience.
01 Jan 2013
“Good” Victim, “Good” Self-Care
I would like to welcome the newest member of our writing team, Nikki. In her first post with us, she talks about the expectations placed on abuse victims/survivors. Thanks for sharing with us, Nikki!
There was a thing going around Tumblr that I can’t find now because I still don’t totally understand Tumblr, and it was about being a “good abuse victim.” How a “good victim” never gets involved with abusers again. “Good victims” have scars to prove their abuse, they get everything documented, they go right into therapy. They get fixed, they don’t get abused again. “Good victims” publicly call out their abusers… or wait, is it that “good victims” just talk about it with people close to them and work it out themselves and never make a scene? I don’t know, I never did it “right.” I marched around calling myself a Survivor for years which, to me, was like a “better victim,” a stronger one. Cuz when you’re a victim you’re weak and when you’re a survivor you’re strong and you did “good victim” properly and graduated. I said FUCK YOU to victimhood like it was bad. But in retrospect that’s saying there’s a right and wrong way to handle abuse, and that’s bullshit. As a repeat VICTIM of abuse I wanted to look strong even though repeat abuse makes people look weak. But fuck these hierarchies of who handles abuse the best. I am a victim of abuse and I’m surviving.
03 Dec 2012
My Tricks For Easing Anxiety Of All Sorts
I was diagnosed with anxiety/panic disorder at the age of seventeen, though my anxiety has been around for far longer. I am now twenty two years old, a caregiver, a partner, and a writer. So it has been shown to me through my own approaches to my anxiety that I have got some hang on myself. I am no expert. I am my own person who has lived with this mental illness my whole life, so I can only speak for myself and my approaches to easing the ever looming anxiety monster and hope that these tips some how aide in the anxiety of another.