rynling | It's Dangerous to Go Alone

Since the start of the year I've been ordering a lot of zines from Etsy, and they've been a great source of solidarity for mental health issues. I've been suffering from severe anxiety since around 2016 or so, and I'm thinking that it might be good to talk about it.

It's hard, though. So maybe I can discuss it bit by bit?

Okay, here goes.

My department has a meeting every month during the school year. These meetings are generally terrible for multiple reasons, and I hate them. During the fall semester, when I was in a truly dark place, I stopped attending altogether (meaning, in concrete terms, that I skipped the meetings for October, November, and December). It's not strictly necessary for me to go to these meetings, but it's expected that I be there as one of the tenure-line faculty members. It reflects poorly on me if I don't go, and the rest of the faculty notices.

Our spring semester doesn't start until the last week of January, so our first department meeting of the year was in February. I bit the bullet and went, but it was so awful that I had to leave after an hour so that I could have a panic attack in the privacy of my own car. I'll be honest, there was a lot of self-harm involved. It was intense.

The next meeting is this afternoon, and I am not looking forward to it. Thankfully, I have a friend who has agreed to drive me to the university, park in one of the "15 minutes only" spaces outside the building, walk me up to the department office, find a regular parking space, and then stand outside the meeting room and wait for me to come out. There will probably still be tears, but hopefully there will be significantly less self-harm this time around.

Dealing with anxiety is difficult, but I'm lucky to have friends who are willing to be there for me.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

runicmagitek

Damn, I want to bake a cake for this friend of yours. A+ quality friend right there. I'm so happy you have that kind of support.

Anxiety is awful. I've been struggling with severe social anxiety for... well, all my life. I wish I was exaggerating when I say actual face-to-face interaction with people for prolonged periods of time, no matter how well I know them, makes me physically ill. And it's horrifying to have the mental health conversation with anyone, whether it's a family member or a supervisor or whatever. I used to have a manager almost a decade ago who essentially told me, "Well, that's nice, but you need to get over yourself" after I returned from being hospitalized due to a suicide attempt. Now I have a manager who I told a year ago that I'm a million times more comfortable emailing/texting in terms of communication and he's been nothing but supportive of that. You just don't know how people are going to react until you dive into it, which again, can just irritate the fuck out of that anxiety.

The biggest thing I think with mental health in general is trying to figure out what works for you. What works for me may not work for others and vice versa. And it is a lot of work to figure out for yourself, but I like to think it's worthwhile. For me? I'm like a beacon of sensory processing disorder, so anything to eliminate excess sensory crap is great. I use active noise-cancelling earbuds all the time (if that's a thing you're interested in, I'd be happy to link the ones I have). I try to listen to calm, quiet instrumentals. At home, I have weighted blankets galore to burrow into to help calm me down (not ideal when you have a meeting with your boss and his boss, but heavy hoodies and scarves have helped too). Taking five minutes to mindfully breathe before tough situations is useful, but not all the time. Something about the smell of chai tea is really calming for me, so I always grab one if I'm super anxious. I pack extra changes of clothes in my backpack in case I sweat through them thanks to anxiety. If I know I have to talk at some point during a meeting or even at a doctor's appointment, I will literally write down everything I want to say and read it off of my phone, because fuck, I'm not going to remember shit I wanted to say two minutes ago, but I can at least write something that will make me sound less like a bumbling idiot.

Phew, that was a lot. I hope that helps? :\ I just want to give you a hug and let you know I'm proud of you for facing that scary department meeting. I got roped into a conference call today at 4pm that I Did Not Sign Up For But Hey Here We Are: The Runic Story and I'm also an anxious mess at the moment. I feel ya. It's a constant battle of acknowledging what you're going through and making the best out of a shitty situation. But we can do this together. I believe in you!

And honestly, when in doubt, I just channel Charlize Theron when going about my life and I've had positive results, so you know. There's that.

From:

rynling

This helps A LOT, thank you! I know this is a late response, but I've been coming back to this comment at multiple points during the past few weeks.

You deserve a longer response, but it's difficult for me to discuss this sort of thing, so let me just say: THANK YOU SO MUCH for being open and honest about mental health issues. So much of what I see in social media spaces is along the lines of "Not everyone is neurotypical Karen," which has always felt distressingly confrontational to me. But! The way you discuss these sorts of things in public as just a part of everyday life (albeit one we'd all probably like to dial down a little) that intersects with other aspects of work and fun and identity and creativity takes a lot of the stigma away from the experience, and I really appreciate what you're doing!

From:

runicmagitek

Awwww you are most welcome! I'm so happy to hear some of this helped :D I just remember how I felt as a teenager and even an adult struggling with college with mental health bullshit - alone and a failure - and I don't want anyone else who experiences even a sliver of what I do to remotely feel like that. I can't be quiet about it; being quiet was what almost literally killed me. I'd rather make neurotypical people uncomfortable with how vocal I am on the topic than make myself uncomfortable for the sake of fake civility, you know? Not exactly the easiest thing to do when you got anxiety looming over you, but someone's gotta step up and say something, so might as well be me. And if people don't like the fact my brain works differently than theirs? Well, fuck 'em :D

I also can't stand the "Not everyone is neurotypical Karen" stance on these matters. I'd rather just be candid with my own experiences and let that speak for me than... I don't know, using my mental health as a crutch for an unnecessary shitty attitude. People these days, yeesh....

But seriously, thank you for these kind words. This made me smile so much to hear this from you :D I hope you're doing even a lil' bit better and know I'm rooting for you!

From:

lassarina

I'm so glad you have such a good and supportive friend, and I'm so sorry that the meetings are so stressful and terrible for you :( I hope you made it through today without self-harm.

From:

rynling

I made it through, and everything was okay!

This seems so obvious, but having a sympathetic friend to talk to makes such a huge difference. My anxiety is so situational and connected to such specific triggers that most people don't that it's something going on with me, and I never really tried to explain it to anyone outside of a professional setting before. I've been unlucky with healthcare professionals and colleagues, so I was starting to feel that I actually was crazy, but having someone say "you're okay" so was validating and empowering, honestly.

I don't want to pull some sort of sentimental Hallmark bullshit like "even the smallest act of kindness can make a difference in someone's life," but... That's kind of true? This is a little off-topic, but this whole episode made me think about exactly we lost when online subcultures became so aggressively militant in 2015 or so. It's like, that's one set of support structures that's just out of the picture for a lot of people now. I can't even imagine trying to process something like mental illness through fic only to become the target of online bullying for not describing your experience in "the right way." I'm starting to get really interested in how exclusionary radicalism in leftist spaces like Tumblr impacts individuals and the broader cultural gestalt, but the pushback against people who have taken steps in that direction sure has been troubling, to say the least: https://twitter.com/_queerioes/status/1100803025319460865

From:

lassarina

......yikes, fucking yikes. *hides from that Twitter post*

(I am so fucking over the "if you're over 25 you're a predator" discussion for a million years. Literal grandmas in fandom taught me endless amounts about how to be a good friend, human, adult, citizen, and netizen. Like, yes, there are predators; we need to be wary of them and not tolerate their behavior; this is true of literally every hobby and interest on the face of the planet.)

No, your anxiety (and you!) are completely valid. I am so sorry people have been shitty about it. Something being intensely situational doesn't make it not real.