World Mental Health Day: Anxiety

The phone is ringing again.  You don't pick it up.  You can't pick it up. You don't even know why. It doesn't matter who it is calling, you can't even say why you can't speak to them.  You just can't.  It's like some frightened bird trapped in your chest thrashing its wings.  You can't breath.  You feel dizzy.  You just can't think.

You're making plans in your head about going somewhere, doing something yet the thought of leaving the house and actually doing it, alone, make you rigid with some sheer and utter panic.  You just can't do it.

Your partner goes out for the evening.  you can't sleep because you can't stop imaging them being run over or mugged.

You stand breathless watching your parents car pull away with your children in the back as they go round for tea and for several minutes all you can imagine is the car crashing.

When travelling in car or bus you constantly have scenarios of a crash in your head until you're convinced you're going to die.

You lie awake obsessed that there is something horrible going to happen to you that you can't control.

You're occasionally paralysed with abject terror.  You don't know what of.  You don't even know why.

There's some all encompassing sense of foreboding.

You spend ages trying to find a way to contact someone by e-mail because you seem absurdly unable to phone them.  If you do psyche yourself up enough to do it you have to do it instantly, before it passes and you become terrified of it.

You can't meet anyones eye.

You  dissect everything you say and do, convinced everyone thinks you're a total twat and they're only tolerating you out of politeness.

So you banish yourself to emotional and social solitary confinement.

You're too scared to say hello.

You can't wait to say goodbye.

One minute you're sat on the bus and the next you feel sick and disorientated, none of the windows are open and you can't breath.

You're walking round the shops when suddenly, everything is spinning.... the lights are too bright...the noise is too loud...you can't think.  Your brain is slamming around your head and your stomach hurts. You can't remember what you're supposed to be doing and for an instant you can't remember where you are.

You did the school run yesterday yet today, you have an indescribable inability to leave the house.

It's all silent.  It's all invisible.  It's all inside. You can't see it and I can't show you.