To not understand anxiety!

[Beebeezed]

First time poster here.

I am currently on mat leave but I’m a manager of a company in charge of around 40 staff. In recent years, I have seen a huge increase in staff declaring that they suffer with anxiety. As a company, we do what we can to support these staff and I feel I’m as supportive as I can be. Since going on maternity leave I’ve had time to reflect on my role as a manager and how I can improve and feel that one thing I struggle with is actually empathising genuinely with these staff as I have literally no idea what anxiety feels like. I worry this could prohibit the staff from feeling fully supported. I’ve done a lot of research (mainly at 3am during cluster feeds ) but I’m still at a slight a loss as to what anxiety truly feels like and how it may affect you in the work place. I have felt anxious before but understand this is very different from anxiety

I’d really appreciate you sharing your experiences! And if you do have any suggestions on how your work place could/does support you would be amazing.

Just to clarify, I’m due to return to work soon and this is purely to help me with staff morale and support

I have anxiety, work triggers my anxiety like nothing else I feel constantly on edge and nervous, feelings that I'm not good enough. I can't deal with responsibility as that sets me off. It means I just cannot have a proper career

Anxiety also tends to come with a side order of secondary emotions, including but not limited to anger, shame, embarrassment, sadness, guilt.

So true. My mother knows that her anxiety is generally based on irrational fears, and she also knows that it impacts significantly on those around her. This leads to a tremendous sense of guilt and shame because she feels that she should be able to get a handle on how she feels. Unfortunately, this just feeds the problem and the anxiety itself becomes yet another thing to worry about.

We need to change the way we think about mental health and mental illness. It's good that people are speaking out about this more, but there is still a long way to go. I'm convinced that, in my mother's case, the shame and guilt have repeatedly got in the way of any chance of her getting better. She shouldn't have to feel that way.

The best way I can describe how I feel day to day is this.

Imagine getting to the airport, just about to check in for your holiday and realising you've left your passport at home. That absolute stomach churning, heart dropping moment that makes your breath catch in your chest.

That's what I feel like pretty much all the time. Not just for a few seconds at a time but CONSTANTLY.

If I'm having a particularly bad attack though my body gets red hot and starts to tingle to the point that I feel itchy all over (but particularly my face).

I can't sleep at night because I worry about everything and nothing.

I also get very tearful.

I hope that helps.

For me I get the following, sometimes all at the same time.
Head feels fuzzy
Tight jaw
Throat feels partially closed
Chest right
Stomach churns
Breathing fast
Too hot/cold
Shaking
Palpitations
Couple that with an inability to sleep, poor appetite, panic attacks and tearfulness and my life is crap.

I have been diagnosed with takes deep breath ready for lost of mental ailments
Health anxiety
Generalised anxiety
Social phobia with agoraphobia

It has since made me pretty depressed, but havenr been back to the gp for a depression diagnosis because I'd rather not know I'm clinically sad, I just tell myself I'll be happier tomorrow.

I have panic attacks most days, some days more than one. My anxiety feels a lot like when someone jumps our at you and make you jump, but the kind where your heart races and you feel agitated. I constantly feel like my heart is pumping and I get irritated easily.

I will not take meds because I'm too scared of having an allergic reaction to them. I have CBT (therapy) which helped me understand anxiety, which for a while made me feel a lot better. But then I stopped going, it came back and now I just try to take every day as it comes.
When it first started, my mum didnt understand and just told me it's all in my head and to get over it, dont be silly ect.

I couldn't leave the house some days, I felt sick at work, I would worry to the point of making myself ill.

I try now to push myself to do more things, go more places and meet new people. My DP is a massive support for me, we've driven to France and Budapest for holidays, which I never in a million years thought could be a possibility for me. But he understand how I feel and just goes with the flow. He also puts me in my place alot when he wants me to try try but I'm unsure. Hell coax me to do it. And once I have I'm really glad I did.

But everyone anxiety is different. I have bad days and good days. Work dont know, because we have a girl in who's medical history had 'generalised anxiety' on and before I could even mention I suffered to, my manager looked at me with a disgusted face, called her weird and said she was probably a mental case. So I've suffered in silence at work for 3 years lol.

For me, it is a constant fear that every single action or decision I take - no matter how significant or insignificant - will have unintended, negative consequences. I am so consumed by this worry that I end up having no headspace for anything else. In those moments, I cannot bring myself out of this iterative loop of thoughts in order to "see" the bigger picture.

YY, Shiny, I did the two-day Mental Health First Aid course, and it was very useful in helping me to feel more confident about responding to people with mental health difficulties. I have made it mandatory training for all managers in my team.

Another vote for The Mental Health First Aid training. Every workplace should send people on this course.

You are doing the right thing to think about this and to ask here OP.

I’m curious about you having experienced depression but not anxiety. I had assumed that depressed people always suffered from some level of anxiety. Maybe not?

Anyway, about your staff. I have experienced anxiety. It’s a loss of perspective: you respond to ordinary problems as though they were huge.
When you are in the grip of it it can feel absurd to be told that yoga or sleep or a nice walk can help. The idea seems almost insulting (as if you had lost your baby in the supermarket and someone suggested taking a nap). But these physical things do help! (In my case I get panic attacks on planes and I can stop them dead by getting a bunch of ice cubes and applying them to my skin).

In your position I would ask staff “what helps?”. If they say “nothing then perhaps a skilled counsellor would help. But if they already have strategies and know their triggers then it would help if their managers knew about these? But one size doesn’t fit all. If a strategy is imposed on all staff (eg compulsory massage) that could increase the nightmarish quality of anxiety (to use the baby lost in supermarket analogy, it’s as if people are not only failing to look for the baby but they are now blaming you for continuing to look even after you massaged them).

My mum suffers from anxiety, she worries about everything, trivial things can keep her up at night, she struggles with making decisions sometimes about something as simple as choosing dinner.

I’m fine now. In the past though:

• There was a social aspect of not being able to have any interaction with someone without over analysing it. Did I say something stupid/ am I boring/ they don’t like me/ am I being awkward. Literally every person I meet or talk to I would beat myself up in some way.

• Imagining the worst case scenario in every situation and having to check things over and over beyond all reason. Especially at work as I work in a role where a mistake would involve fairly serious consequences.

• Physical effects such as feeling breathless and completely out of control. Heart palpitations are the scariest thing that has ever happened to me. Also feeling like you’re going to faint- like you are paralysed and can’t speak (only happened on a few occasions but very scary)

• Keeping it all hidden. Literally no one I know would suspect me of feeling this way. I come across ‘normal’ most of the time but there’s an ongoing battle in my head. So I thinks it good that your workplace are openly discussing it.

I have anxiety. For me it's a worry of what the day holds. Certain things cause me to be anxious but a lot of it is unnecessary. I worry about things that are probably never going to happen. I worry about the kids and husband, imagining the worst possible things happening to them. I'm constantly stressing about money too.
I wake up and I always have the feeling I'm supposed to be somewhere important, like a child's hospital appointment and I've forgotten about it, therefore my mind never fully relaxes.
I do mask it and I force myself to go out and do things because I've got the kids. If I'm anxious about going out, I'll still force myself to go out with them because it's not fair that they miss out because of me. I do think I might need help with it but I cope well with it most of the time.

MrsMeeseeks "How can you 'not understand anxiety'? You know how it feels to be anxious about something? It's like that, but long term. It's an extremely straightforward concept."

No, it's not like that at all. I spent my whole life being occasionally anxious about sensible things - exams, money, relationships, the usual. After mum died and I had to deal with all the fallout from that I had anxiety-as-a-condition for about six months. Utterly different - others have already described it well upthread. It seems you are the one with no idea what anxiety-as-a-condition is, and are even more unreasonable being on the OPs case about it. Read and learn.

I wake up at 3am, stressed out of my mind with my work/money, and won't get back to sleep.
By 6am, if I'm lucky, the feeling will have disappeared, but on bad days, it stays with me.
I feel physically sick, my heart often feels like it's lodged in my throat, and I have knots for a stomach. As a result, I cry a lot and if it's a bad month, I often lose a ton of weight (but not in a nice way).
I have to remind myself that it's a passing phase - it's just the odd chemicals in my brain that is causing it, and it won't last.

I have experienced anxiety. It’s a loss of perspective: you respond to ordinary problems as though they were huge.

That seems to me to be a very good explanation.

Unless you have suffered with it it's not something you can put into words or try to explain, ppl that have never suffered with it never appear to 'get it' in fact when I was in my twenties, a neighbour of mine suffered with it. And I remember saying to my then husband 'why doesn't she just pull herself together and shake it off'.

Little did I know I would later down the line suffer with it and my words came bk to haunt me.

I would say I have an anxious personality type. When I worked I felt physically sick every morning before going into work. This wasn't related to anything that may be happening that day - I just felt anxious. It might lessen in the day or it might not.

What would help me:
Having a clear focus and purpose to my work - more people than you think might not be clear what their role is. My role was very unclear and this massively increased my anxiety.
Have clear work based development for staff - just being abandoned to 'pick things up as you go along' increased my anxiety. I like to feel that I have an appropriate skill set and knowledge base to draw on. If I dont' have it I would like help to develop it at work.
A manager who will give me constructive feedback - descriptive praise on where I have done well and where I need development and support.

I did want appropriate challenge though - so that when I acheived I felt good adn that increased my confidence. Being praised for wrok that you find easy doesn't feel good, and always having easy work to do eventually destroys your confidence.

@BuildBuildings the OP is literally asking for help empathising and has done research... how is that not having time for the issue?

Don't project other people's dismissal into the OP it's unfair

The worst anxiety I had, I sat down in the middle of the street at university clutching onto a tree crying and shaking for no apparent reason other than I was terrified I was going to die. I ended up being picked up by university security, taken to a nurse, then a mental health worker, then my GP and given sedation to calm down.

Since then (January) I’ve left the house probably less than 30 times. I don’t laugh anymore, I rarely smile. I feel tired 24/7 and I spend my days worrying about what bad thing is coming next. I’m 27 years old and when I go out I hold my mums hand. I have weird thoughts about fate, I search for patterns constantly. Have fixations on certain worries. I’ve spent too much money trying to comfort myself. I haven’t got any friends left. My arms are black and blue and numb with bruises from self injury . I’m on sedatives to sleep at night .

Anxiety is absolutely horrendous, soul destroying, life crushing.

and how I can improve and feel that one thing I struggle with is actually empathising genuinely with these staff as I have literally no idea what anxiety feels like

Lucky bloody you.
I second @AvocadosBeforeMortgages who said watch Anxiety and Me with Nadiya Hussain that was on last week - it's exactly like that if you genuinely want to learn.

Would also agree about the Nadiya documentary, I watched the other night sobbing as the first time I’ve seen someone who seems to understand how horrible I feel. Nobody else in r/l gets it - family are very much ‘but WHY are you anxious? Just get a grip , I’ve never felt like that etc etc’

I will get flamed for this, but there is an increase in people saying they have anxiety because it's an easy fob-off for a GP in relation to people having normal human emotions when experiencing difficulties. It has become the "in thing" or the "get out clause" to many, and it is minimizing it for real sufferers, like some on this thread.

Real, mental illness anxiety is fucking horrific. I have complex PTSD, health anxiety and panic disorder. It feels like my body is disconnected from my brain. It feels like I will die any second and like I have constant adrenaline because of this. The physical symptoms are unreal - racing heart, vomiting, shaking, tics, fainting, aching, diarrhoea, muscle spasms to name but a few. When it's bad I can't stand up from my bed to use the toilet as I'm too terrified. It's like the feeling of watching someone murder your children in front of you but you're powerless to stop them. I've been hospitalised a few times because of the heart symptoms. You want to die but are too scared to kill yourself. You want to run but there's nowhere to run. You can't sleep because if you close your eyes, you'll die.

I get a bit pissed off when people say they have anxiety but they're just a bit nervous, or have normal butterflies in response to something. They have no idea.

My body can feel very tense all over. I wake up 3 am and cannot get back to sleep. I can also get a tight chest or palpitations somewhat.

I find keeping commitments to a minimum and working alone in the quiet really helps.

I never realised I even had anxiety until I was well into my twenties. I have had it for so long (since early childhood) that I genuinely thought it was normal and everyone lived with a permanent sense of dread.

I wake up most days feeling sick with worry.

I have different things which I feel anxious about but my main one is forms/admin/officialdom/post. It took me days to pluck up the courage to set up a direct debit recently. I'm petrified of making a mistake and getting into trouble for it.

I don't think there is an absolute definition of what anxiety feels like because no two persons will feel the same.
I can give you my version if it helps.
Imagine you wake up in the night and you hear someone prowling about downstairs. Then you hear footsteps on the stairs. It is pitch black, you are home alone, your mobile is downstairs. It is that absolute moment of terror when your heart feels like it's going jump out of your chest. You can't breathe. You can't move. You want to scream but you can't. And then imagine getting that feeling every time you leave the house.

Watch a very scary movie on your own, if you don't feel any fear/anxiety whatsoever I'd be very surprised.