Anxiety Management: Sometimes a Diagnosis is Just a Diagnosis

I call it DSM Scrabble because lots of people don't fit neatly into the categories doctors put them in. Diagnoses are convenient boxes but rarely entirely accurate, and certainly not the full picture.

It felt like I'd won the lottery the first time someone put an actual name to my experience of anxiety. My shrink knew all these catchy phrases that described where I was: Maybe she had connections? Maybe she could give me courage, a heart, a brain?

But labels draw lines in the sand. Clearly there were standards and I wasn't meeting them, couldn't meet them, and it didn't seem to matter how hard I tried.

Having a diagnosis provides some answers but it's not the whole story. Whether it's GAD, PTSD, OCD or plain old FINE you're dealing with, it's still your mind and you know it best. Nobody's suggesting doctors, friends and family aren't correct but they aren't mind-readers. For which I'm grateful!

Do you feel stuck?

Well you've got this mind, and it works pretty well on the whole: You work, rest and play as best you can but then anxiety comes and trips you up. In the midst of panic, the world can seem so complicated, so complex that nothing makes sense anymore. It's like being on a bullet-train to an unknowable destination -- too much and you want to get off!

How do I get out of the anxiety trap?

I'll have days where I feel like Godzilla with PMT, I'm that frustrated by my inability to grasp what I'm feeling long enough to change it. My throat closes up contemplating the fear, let alone expressing it and my thoughts race, telling me it's hopeless and I'm better off camped out on the sofa for a week.

You work on those cognitions in CBT because therapists like you to be realistic. To be fair, letting it out isn't the real issue, but it certainly isn't easy -- especially if you've spent a lot of time/energy containing your anxiety so that you can live a 'normal' life.

Thankfully, there's no such thing as normal and life is improved if you do at least six impossible things before breakfast. In lieu of that, let yourself feel. Holding things in hurts your chances of recovery; As someone wisely pointed out during the HealthyPlaceTV interview I stammered my way through, "it's a lifetime thing," not just a temporary mood blip.

I imagine my panic-ridden thoughts as a bunch of balloons that I'm gathering up so I can re-attach their strings and bring them down to Earth when I need; It's easy for anxiety to get away from you, and even easier to forget that there are ways out of it.

How do I get unstuck? Start talking!

Talking about your anxiety will probably make it feel more real, in the short term. That can be scary but it's a good thing, precisely because it has emotional consequence.

When your anxiety is high, it's like watching life through fun-house mirrors, so one of the strings I tie my balloons to is the thought that talking about anxiety creates room to outmaneuver it -- whether that's through behavioural change, reinterpreting situations, or simply speaking up.

The more words you can put to the fear, the better because talking about your anxiety with someone who's really listening is exactly the way to gain perspective and get unstuck.

And yes, I'm listening.