Jemma got in touch with me as she wanted to share what it feels like to have anxiety, and the issues a lot of people have in taking mental health seriously. There’s still a taboo that mental health is something you can just ‘get over’ and Jemma talks about why this is so flawed. You can find Jemma on Instagram. 

I want to be honest with you: for a long time, including before I ever suffered with it myself, I associated the term ‘anxiety’ with weakness. Physical ill health, like chicken pox or a broken leg is something beyond your control, but surely anxious or depressed people can just, like, be more positive and just try – right? Hahaha I wish. Anxiety is often defined as a ‘feeling of worry, nervousness or unease’, or a ‘strong desire or concern to do something or for something to happen.’

To me, anxiety seemed like Piglet from Winnie the Pooh, a small scared and maybe even slightly pathetic creature (no offence to Piglet he is still one of my favourite Winnie the Pooh characters.) Even when I first admitted to myself that I had symptoms of anxiety, this idea of ‘weakness’ still stuck with me, despite discovering for myself that ‘staying positive’ had little to no effect on the tirade of emotions, panic and fear going on in my head almost constantly. It turns out that having a mental illness is something beyond our control just the same as physical illness. Weird hey?I wish it was possible to just connect a wire into my brain and project everything that goes on in there onto some sort of hard-drive that could explain everything better than I can but until that’s invented all anyone really has is their own experiences, so I’ll try to explain mine.

• Imagine giving a piggy back to a huge gorilla who is screaming in your ear constantly so you can’t move or think properly
• Imagine that feeling when you’re `at the very top of a roller coaster that’s just started falling, you know, when your stomach feels like it’s going to come up out of your mouth?
• Imagine a dark cloud just above your head which makes everything around you really harsh and bright, yet also dark and fuzzy at the same time – it makes no sense yet it’s still happening.
• Imagine you’re trying to untangle a knot which no matter what you do will not loosen and it’s just so frustrating and you feel so useless and stupid for not being able to just undo a simple knot.
• Imagine feeling constantly guilty and like you’ve forgotten something really important. That you’ve let someone down, but that person is everyone you have ever met and they all just really wish they had never met you.

These feelings were taking over my life constantly but there was no reason why this was happening. My life was good, my friends, family and boyfriend were and still are all amazing yet all I wanted to do was hide in my room in the dark day after day. This made the guilt worse and due to the fact that it was all in my head I felt as though I was making it up and wasn’t strong enough to just get over it.

Despite feeling this way almost constantly, the only time I was ready to tell a lot of my friends about having anxiety was when was I put on anti-depressants. I think this is because it made what was going on with me seem more valid, because how can you deny something that you’re taking pills for? It made it easier for me to talk about because I felt that people would have to take me seriously if a doctor had deemed me ‘serious’ enough to be medication-worthy.

Obviously this is a flawed way of thinking, yet I know I’m not the only person who has thought this way. This is representative of the fact that people generally find it hard to accept the fact that what goes on in our brain and how it can make us feel is just as much out of our control as whether or not you get a cold next week. This is why having the courage to talk about how you feel is so important. Also, having the courage to listen to someone is just as important, and accepting that what they say they are going through is valid, even if it doesn’t make sense to you.

Over time I have found that most people do want to at least try to understand what you’re going through, and it’s never anything to be ashamed of. If someone puts you down for how you feel then that really says more about them than it does about you. Another thing I’ve come to realise is that Piglet isn’t pathetic, he goes through hell every day and still carries on and I think that makes him pretty darn strong. You rock Piglet.