Anxiety as an excuse

[Nelly5678]

Don't get me wrong! I know some people genuinely have anxiety issues, but is it just me or has suddenly in the past year everyone "has an anxiety disorder" the second they feel nervous over the slightest thing??? It's really starting to annoy me how people blame eveything on their anxiety, when all I wanna do is scream at them that they don't have anxiety!!! I can't be the only one...?

yes op i agree....looks like quite a few do too

if its genuine, then of course, thats different

but people used to throw around the 'i'm so depressed' buzzword,then it became 'ocd',then 'he/she must be on the spectrum'....now its anxiety!

those who truly do suffer with those things must get so fed up with the dramatics!

I had the same attitude about 6 years ago. "Just get on with it" "you'll be ok" sort of thing. Then, out of the blue, I started having panic attacks for no reason at all. I worked through my issues, and all was good until I fell pregnant. Severe anxiety, depression and OCD. I don't want to be like this, I just want to be normal. My brother who is 17, has exactly the same as me, his is more noticeable, he has nervous ticks. I suppose being skeptical is normal if you've never seen it and people that say "in the olden times people would have to just get on with it" no, people would have been branded crazy and thrown in a mental hospital. I literally can't go into a shop without becoming clammy, sweaty, faint and sick. Even when it's quiet, I can't breathe. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. I'm not saying everyone has it the same and that every case is genuine. I'm just saying that until you've seen it happen to someone you love or until it happens to you, you can't really understand it but please don't think it isn't real because it's very real x

Perhaps people are encouraged by campaigns not to be ashamed or judgemental of mental health difficulties so speak about it more.

Forgot to add that I've only recently come to terms with it and am now receiving counselling. It's not something I'm proud of and only very close family members know about it. I'm not "proud" of it and I get frustrated at those who wear it as a badge. I don't post it all over my Facebook, I wouldn't dream of it. I would be mortified if everyone knew. My pregnancy hormones have made it 10 times worse and am no longer able to hide it from close family members. No one knew before that. Most cases are genuine, some aren't.

Perhaps people are encouraged by campaigns not to be ashamed or judgemental of mental health difficulties so speak about it more.

I think there's certainly a degree of that but more so, a degree of people not understanding the difference between actually suffering from anxiety and being anxious about a certain thing (a job interview for example).

As far as I know there is no rhyme or reason to anxiety suffered through a disorder. It's just an overwhelming, crippling feeling from how people describe it, that comes on for no apparent reason.

1. Mental illness is extremely common.

1. You're likely to see a lot of us online, talking about our anxiety, because social interaction is much easier for many of us online.

1. We're all encouraged to talk about mental illness more, to remove the stigma that very much still exists. I've tried to do that. I still find it difficult to talk about when it's not anonymous (like on here) but I'm making baby steps.

1. Anxiety is fairly easy to self-diagnose, and many of us are too ashamed to seek medical help (see point 3 about stigma). I've had anxiety for about 15 years, but was only diagnosed by a doctor a few years ago. Was I any less of an anxiety sufferer when I didn't have a formal diagnosis? No.

1. Have some compassion.

It's actually something I only hear about on MN. I don't seem to know anyone in RL who has anxiety.

Hardly anybody RL knows I have anxiety. My own mother doesn't know. Because of judgemental people like the OP and those who agree with her, it's hard for us to talk about non-anonymously.

Would you be happy, for example, walking into your workplace tomorrow and telling everybody you have a mental illness?

I’m probably one of those people that you refer to OP. However, I do see where you’re coming from

Mine got out of hand during pregnancy after an appointment with a horrible consultant, to the extent where my Dr wanted to medicate me there and then. And it really ramped up after losing my mum, to the extent where I would have several panic attacks a day and I would genuinely believe that I was having a heart attack (I even called an ambulance out for my worst one and they were lovely and understanding, but practically begged me to consider that maybe that was the time to go on medication).

I confided in a friend of mine about my situation and she immediately tried to make out that she suffered worse because she occasionally gets worried/anxious. It’s upsetting that some people try to trivialise it when some genuine people have so much difficult to function on a day to day basis

I have anxiety and have since I was a teenager. It ruins my life and every day it's a battle to leave the house. If I didn't have Dd I could easily not leave the house for weeks on end. Small tasks that other people don't bat an eyelid at, fill me with absolute dread.

I do agree with you though.

I suffer from anxiety. And boy do I suffer. But I also know a lot of people who say they have anxiety but have never been diagnosed, I think it often gets used like when people say they are stressed but not suffering stress iykwim.

I was diagnosed a number of years ago and that diagnosis helped me come to term with a lot of my childhood that I can now realise was indicative of my anxiety.

Peachy thank you very much for explaining the difference between situational anxiety and clinical anxiety. That was really helpful.

Well... I've been a neurotic wreck my whole life until I started on citalopram. I've never even considered the fact that I might have "anxiety" or that I could take medication to feel better. But now I feel like I can cope with life in a way I just couldn't before, and my positive experiences are no longer tainted by over-thinking and worry. I would never 'use' this fact to get out of things. In fact, funding out that I 'have anxiety' has actually allowed me to do everything I couldn't before. Because now I take medication that allows me to do this. When I take my medication I don't actually have any symptoms of anxiety.

YY DailyMail
Hardly anyone knows I have an anxiety disorder. All diagnosed and everything.
In fact even when I am explaining to to people whilst I am in the middle of a horrible anxiety flare up they will look at me
Part of my anxiety is to disassociate to protect myself.
So I will be talking to a medic 'I am really sorry, I have PTSD, I am usually very sensible but this sort of situation causes me a lot of anxiety'
Medic 'oh, have you taken valium, you seem very calm'

So you can't tell if someone hasn't got an AD BUT I do think its an overused term much in the same way that people claim to be 'addicted' and 'obsessed' and to be 'totally OCD'

You won't get anyone admitting to self diagnosing wrongly though will you?
So these threads will always be the same. People with AD feeling (understandably) defensive because anxiety is a fucker to live with, people trying to explain what AD are like and people who don't have anxiety disorders but like to think they do because just be a bit worried doesn't make them interesting enough.

Why anyone would want to live with an anxiety disorder is beyond me. They are exhausting.

Alot of people do seem to have mental disorders now, but maybe people are just more open about it.

However, there is a theory that psychotherapists and the drug companies are inventing these things to make money. They want you to believe that normal emotions and eccentricitys are disorders that need medicating. I also think alot of people want reasons and a magic cure for the way they are feeling and doctors are happy to give them that.

I know this might strange but I never realised I suffered with an anxiety disorder until this time last year when I had a breakdown. I was given a name for the way I had felt for 10 years and that it wasn’t just my personality or my quirks.

Maybe it’s just more spoken about and people are more honest about how they feel, you shouldn’t minimise someone’s feelings.

As someone with severe, diagnosed PTSD and anxiety, it is really offensive when people claim to have anxiety when they don't.

Being anxious is a normal human emotion which everyone feels from time to time, some more than others.

Having an anxiety disorder is a medical condition that is extremely disabling and isn't being taken seriously any more as everyone seems to have it when they don't.

I haven't left my house for months. I've had to give up my career, claim Pip, it's ruined friendships and caused breakdowns. It's not as simple as feeling worried about answering the phone or going to a party.

I've always been anxious, except when I was pregnant, but it's only in the last two years I've done anything about it even though it was nowhere near as bad as it had been on some occasions. I think pregnancy having such a calming effect showed me what it was like not to be anxious and made me less accepting of it.

Drug companies inventing mental health disorders to make money - I'm sure prozacandwineplease agrees with me - no-one would take antipsychotics unless they had no choice as the side effects are devastating - mine included doubling my weight, infertility due to hyperprolactinemia which caused my periods to stop and I now have an increased risk of osteoporosis (confirmed by scans); sleeping 18 hours a day; being unable to move as everything seems to slow down; high cholesterol as a side effect; not being awake past 8pm and therefore not being able to drive in the evenings; fainting due to low blood pressure and rapid heartbeat; inability to control body temperature - and these aren't even the worse side-effects that can occur. No-one prescribes or takes these drugs lightly - without them I'd be sectioned and a danger to myself and therefore my children. I'm thankful the pharmaceutical companies invented them as otherwise I would be dead.

When you look at modern life with non stop news, constant looking at phones and contemporary reporting of very traumatic unpredictable events such as terrorist attacks, as well as things like people working a lot harder and yet being no better off, ridiculously high house prices, Brexit. Well, it's not surprising more people are suffering from anxiety if they had a susceptibility anyway imo.

I agree with DailyMailReadersAreThick

I have struggled with anxiety/health anxiety since I was a child. Sometimes I'm okay and others I'm not. My close friends know, but everyone else just thinks I'm a little bit odd.

I avoid using it as an 'excuse' as it's not something you want everyone to know about. So I'm more likely to make something up, than to tell the truth about my anxiety in real life. However, it's much easier to be truthful about it anonymously online, so I'm more open about my mental health conditions. Perhaps others feel the same and that's why it's more 'common' now?

Maybe some people do confuse feeling slightly nervous for crippling life changing anxiety, but it's probably that there's a huge squiggly grey area, on a very wide spectrum, starting with feeling nervous and uncomfortable in certain situations all the way up to having an all encompassing mental health condition which can take over and control your life.

Just dropping in OP to tell you that everyone does infact suffer with anxiety as it is a normal human emotion. It is only when it becomes excessive or causes a problem that it becomes an issue for an indevidual.

But you already know that right, considering you have a masters degree in the subject as you can apparently tell who does and doesn’t have ‘it’.

Have a and chill the fuck out.

Perhaps there is an increase of people saying it: it used to be the kind of thing you kept hidden. I said it to a colleague for the first time yesterday evening. But that is after 40 years of desperately trying to hide it, on failing to turn in bits of work because I couldn't face some minor barrier, of mild self-harming, of beta-blockers because silly little things send my blood pressure sky-high. And I do the "acting incredibly calm thing" MrsDV mentioned, because it makes me dissociate.

My DM has never been able to say it. She never will. But she was also unable to have the kind of career her talents would have suggested, she ended up living in an obscure place which she hated, and she needed an incredible amount of support from her immediate family.

My dd is the first member of my family who has been diagnosed and properly medicated. Does she find it offensive if non-diagnosed people talk about their anxiety? No, she has gone through enough to understand that there may be all sorts of reasons why people don't access support. She had to wait for 10 years for her chronic joint disorder to be diagnosed- that doesn't mean she didn't have it before it was diagnosed.

I don't usually post on these types of threads. But i hope one day you know the pain of being unable to get out of bed because your to worried about going outside your front door because your neighbour mentioned in passing that they had a sickness bug.

Or perhaps imagining what would happen to your children if you were to unexpectedly drop dead.

To have these issues effect day to day living, to be unable to fall asleep at night due to a small thing to most people.

Your ignorant that's your problem.

I could be one of the people who you think doesn’t have it. On the outside I have a smile plastered on my face and seem perfectly normal. What you won’t see is me waking in the night scared because I have to leave the house the next morning, the panic attacks before I walk out of the door, the upset tummy due to nerves and the breathing techniques I have to do whilst I’m out.

My anxiety is extreme but where is the cut off line between anxiety and just worried?