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Anxiety, the Good, the Bad, and How We Don’t Talk About It Enough

We should buck convention and have a free-for-all to talk about it. So what?

By Iria Vasquez-PaezPublished 6 years ago 4 min read
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Awareness of the symptoms of anxiety mean that you can control or outright mitigate them if only because you learn how to redirect the way you are thinking to something more positive. But positive thinking isn’t everything. Anxiety causes pain. Extreme pain. On airplanes, I throw up from my anxiety, also other people’s anxiety I’m picking up on and focusing on, and the throwing up happens if I eat. I have since determined I need to eat at the airport, chug meds with that meal, and then get on the plane. My last traveling experience in 2014 made me realize this. There should be no eating on planes, I would have to put away the food in a bag for later consumption. My medication demands I have food with it though. I always isolate two snacks to eat with my meds when I take them at night.

I have one carbohydrate-loaded snack and one protein or vegetable snack. It is how I keep my blood sugar stable in the middle of the night. Cheese and meat is another microscopic meal since I’m small, generally not eating much anyway. I count calories and right now, I’m retaining water, which is a medication side effect. I’m using parsley tea as a diuretic and I might have to go to urgent care this week, if I do the study at Stanford that is, I have access to an urgent care facility at any rate, and I’m hitching a ride, so low stress. Driving with swollen ankles may be somewhat easier but I’m worried about the mental wherewithal.

My anxiety hardly manifests itself because I take medication. It is much better. I mean it is kept in a barrier in my mind, a huge wall. It looks like a black oil slick or maybe a seething ball of something oily. It is kept at bay. In that barrier, erected in my mind like a force field, I can somehow muster up the courage to drive. When my courage fails me, I generally take the bus or light rail. But right now with my ankle the way it is, it is risky business to take the bus since I have to walk to the stop or the light rail station itself.

Anxiety really has come under control for me because of the Buspar. I am also working on maintaining perfect diabetes. I want to maintain an average of six. I mean it. My diabetes is hard to manage but my anxiety is definitely contained when my glucose is normal. So I strive to maintain a great average daily, all day, every day. My average sits at 168 for today. I have nailed good middle of the nights so we shall see where this goes. Medication seriously helps anxiety. If you think you need to tough it out, don’t. My anxiety from OCD, bipolar 1 and schizophrenia made me very paranoid. I couldn’t trust anybody.

My imagination worked on overdrive but we writers need that. Many fertile seeds can come from mental illness. It’s why the greats of the past had it. I used to drink to get my anxiety under control. I mean I was a functional alcoholic. I started attending A.A. meetings to quit drinking for good in around 2010. I got more stable shortly after that. Quit trying to make anxiety go away by toughing it out. Medication helps and makes it much easier to deal with. I have discovered over the years that I know when driving will make me crazy. I know a lot about what I can and cannot tolerate. Shows for example, are very hard for me because of the crowds as well as the music content. You have to realize my anxiety used to be crippling along with paranoia. I got a book called Overcoming Paranoid and Suspicious Thoughts. I physically read it, did the charts, and forced myself to think about my paranoia and why I feel this way or force it on myself. This helped me beat the paranoia.

This one book and reading bipolar books helped me cope with my triggers as well as learn to recognize every trigger I have. I have thoroughly beaten back my paranoia because I now can understand why I trust certain people while others have broken my trust. Some of these are people who have given up on themselves, on all aspects of themselves, which is why I let them go to begin with.

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About the Creator

Iria Vasquez-Paez

I have a B.A. in creative writing from San Francisco State. Can people please donate? I'm very low-income. I need to start an escape the Ferengi plan.

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