for a long time, i refused to identify as having anxiety. i felt that it was better to consider anxiety an experience that i had, often, more than most people, but not necessarily unique or irregular or in a way that i should consider myself "ill." i used to criticize my sister (who for reasons of her own experienced much more frequent and severe anxiety attacks much earlier than i did) for blaming things on "her anxiety," or using phrases like "giving me anxiety." this sort of speech felt manipulative to me: manipulating others to behave in ways that avoid harming you, manipulating yourself into behaving as a victim or feeling entitled to certain accomodations. i still see some validity in this. the mind is a tricky thing and, unfortunately, it's very easy to allow a certain way of thinking to build into more inescapable thought patterns. in an effort to avoid this, it might be useful to latch onto semantics: things do not give me anxiety, but i do experience anxiousness.
however, these same semantic tricks have a way of turning back on you. over the years, as my experiences of anxiety have progressed—or at the very least my understanding has—this cautiousness has maybe grown into a defensiveness. out of a very serious and valid desire to learn to not perceive myself as a victim or abnormal or ill, i have avoided therapy or any real professional help. i have insisted on avoiding the pitfalls of self-diagnosis which is so common for our generation, who are fortunate enough to have been raised in an age of information where mental health is widely and openly discussed, but in the process i have avoided any diagnosis at all. there is, i guess, a bit of my dad in me... that masculine toxicity that thinks being strong means acting—or not acting—alone.
these days, my anxiety is pretty fucking bad, and it'd be pretty delusional of me to deny that i have it. it's not daily, and it's not debilitating (so far), but it is frequent, and it does have the capability of progressing into disruption. in the past couple of years i have had more experiences of anxiety that developed into intense feelings of fear that caused physical experiences of illness and panic than perhaps i have had in my entire life. i'm not sure why this is—like i said, i'm not seeing a doctor—but i suspect it has a lot to do with being idle as i enter my second year of unemployment, and the feelings of negativity i'm having in general, caused by everything from low self-esteem (due to not landing a job after over a year of interviewing) and poor social life (after my friends and i graduated and dispersed across the country) to just the general state of affairs in the nation and the world. it's also possible that it's merely something that progresses with age (i definitely inherited this from my dad, by the way, who regularly gets inexplicable "bad feelings" and taught me to "follow my gut"). and maybe it has something to do with some recent life experiences that caused me to feel afraid, that maybe i never properly dealt with, that maybe unconsciously causes me to be more alert.
for a while, i had learned to manage it. i identified some triggers: mainly things that caused my heart rate to spike and made it easy for my brain to misread as experiencing anxiety, like a really hot shower, or going in- and outside of overly-heated rooms on cold days, or just having a ton of caffeine in my system all the time. but now that my experience with anxiety is less on-and-off feelings of discomfort and nervousness and is more increasingly common, sudden, nearly unpredictable feelings of fear, i'm really in a position where i'm finally ready to, like, get diagnosed, get some help, and take some pills here and there if i have to.
the problem with waiting, though, is now i am at the bottom of what looks like a really steep hill, i can't turn around, and i'm in my underwear. what i mean is that, for a very long time, i was receiving fat government checks to put me through school and had access to like, professionals very well-equipped to deal with people like me, and a system that made it very easy to get involved with them. now i am broke and in-debt and have no knowledge of how to properly find and vet a therapist. not that the second half isn't something i could figure out pretty easily, but the point is that it's still an obstacle that takes mental energy from an already-burnt-out baby boy who doesn't have the money to pay for them in the first place.
so yeah, i'm doing tai chi every thursday, trying to cut caffeine and get myself exercising and eating well. don't identify with your illnesses—trust me, you do not need to have any more labels than you already do—but don't avoid diagnoses, and get help as soon as you suspect you may need it. because as i've learned the hard way: you do not want to be in the position of needing to get help urgently at a time when it's least convenient to you.