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5 Emotions My Anxiety Can Look Like

You can’t always take behaviour at face value. Anxiety can often seem like a plethora of different emotions. Here’s a few examples.

By Victoria KPublished 6 years ago 3 min read
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During my 11 years of trying to navigate and understand my own mental health, I have become frustrated when my anxiety doesn’t always translate directly as nerves. We all know that emotions are never black & white, so here are a few examples of what my anxiety can appear as.

1. Anger

Before I found healthy outlets for my anxiety, I had an awful temper and often had outbursts of sudden anger and violence, which were directed both towards myself and others. Anybody who knows me now will tell you I’m placid, but years ago I would explode into a starburst of throwing things, smashing up the house, screaming and crying and slamming doors. At the time, I’m sure I was a sight to behold and a dreadful presence in my household. I know now, although not excusable, my behaviour was the first signs of my anxiety rearing its ugly head. Even now I can unintentionally snap at people and get wound up when I’m on the edge about things, but my horrendous outbursts are thankfully a thing of the distant past.

2. Sickness

If I had a penny for every day I'd felt sick and nauseous, I'd be devastatingly rich. My biggest fear in life is vomiting. Ever since a dramatic hospital trip when I was 13 where vomiting may have signified by body beginning to shut down, I’ve felt uncontrollable terror at the thought of being sick. Luckily for me, my most common symptom of anxiety is also nausea and IBS. Super. Thanks, Jesus. I’ve been laid up in bed many a day thinking I’d contracted some sickness bug or virus, only to figure out I’d been subconsciously fretting about something and made myself literally sick to my stomach. I think a lesser known, or at least lesser understood effect of anxiety is that despite it being "all in my head," it’s more than capable of making me physically ill.

3. Sadness

Okay, so "sad" might be a understatement, but I didn’t want to write "depressed" as a potential masquerade because we know that anxiety & depression often go hand in hand anyway. Have you ever felt so gut wrenchingly miserable, you made yourself wretch from sobbing so hard, and then somebody asks you what’s wrong and you reply “I don’t know”? I do this all the time and it not only infuriated me, but the people around me who don’t understand how or why this is happening. I think the best answer I’ve been able to come up with so far is “I just feel like crying,” because that’s pretty much it. I sometimes don’t even need to feel sad in order to cry—it’s just an easy, satisfying release that doesn’t require a panic attack for a change.

4. Hunger

Hunger is kind of a weird one and kind of, sort of not really an emotion. It can also be counteracted with starving yourself. For me, it’s difficult to navigate because of my vomiting phobia, but I will admit that there have been times where I have binged until I’ve made myself gag. I can’t lie and say that I know why I do this either. Comfort eating, I suppose. There is a definite, undeniable, nurturing sensation to food and the routine & lifestyle that’s falls around it. Maybe stuffing my face simulates a feeling of faux control. A control of what I’m doing with my body. I have no idea. But it is easier to eat than it is to expend energy on explaining to people how I feel/why I'm feeling that way.

5. Existential

I love this word because I feel like it has such a holier than thou connotation to it. A lot of self acclaimed "existential" people I’ve met in the past have been the kind of “I’m deeper than you because I’ve read Thus Spoke Zarathustra” types. A part of my journey in mental illness has always been understanding & accepting that I am not infinite. I am not important and the universe does not care. I go in these foreboding moods sometimes—that is likely also a side effect of my depression. After over a decade of rolling with the punches that mental illness dishes out to me, you do eventually being to think, “What is even the point?” I am asked to meet people and do things and be social and make decisions that’s all tainted with a rooted nonchalant attitude, because none of it ultimately matters. I can’t empathise that when I’m am in one of these moods, I can be insufferable and difficult to appease. A silver lining is that amidst my existential crisis and my mental illnesses is the comfort of “nothing lasts forever.”

anxiety
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About the Creator

Victoria K

24 yr old woman. Writer of mental health experiences/feminism/poetry. Lover of coffee. Hater of single use plastic.

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