Transatlantic GADfest

Questions from an American Gaddie to a UK GADDer

Rachel Hawkins of Our.Rach from Bristol, England (in conversation with Meredith Arthur)

MA: Did you make up the term GADDer? I made up Gaddie. I don’t know what we’re actually called, either in the US or in the UK.

RH: To be honest, I’ve never really referred to it as a term, but I guess if I were to then it would be GADer.  I’m not too sure if there is a term that is referred to GAD sufferers, I’ve certainly never heard of anything before.

MA: Can you tell us a little about how you found out you had GAD? How did you decide to start writing about it? 

RH: I was diagnosed in January 2015.  I’ve always been something of a worrier, dating back to early childhood. I was diagnosed with OCD at the age of 8 and struggled with the overwhelming feeling of worrying on and off for years subsequently.  Everything came to a head for me during 2014 and into early 2015, I had my son in late 2013 and suffered from Post Natal Depression & Anxiety, I had a breakdown New Year 2015 which culminated in me being diagnosed.  I had it in my head that I was suffering from something like Bipolar or Schizophrenia, health anxiety has always been at the helm of my anxious state.  I was put on Citalopram which is an SSRI drug, slowly building up my dosage (I was terrified of the side effects – to be honest, they were nowhere near as bad as I thought they’d be) and referred to the Mental Health team near to where I live.  This was for me to be assessed for Bipolar and/or other mental health conditions.  After a couple of appointments where we discussed all sorts of topics surrounding my mental health, it was decided that I was in fact suffering from Generalised Anxiety Disorder.  I’d heard about the condition before, and wondered if I may have had it, once the diagnosis was confirmed everything started to make sense a little bit.

In June 2015 I decided I wanted to finally fulfil a long term goal of mine, to begin a blog.  I didn’t consider writing about GAD or my experience with PND/PNA initially but in August 2015 I decided the time was right for me to put finger to keypad and talk about my illness and what I’d been through.  The reason for this was twofold.  I find writing cathartic and I also wanted to potentially help others.  I recall reading a few blogs about Post Natal OCD when I was at my very worst, not long after I’d had my son.  It helped me more than you could ever imagine, to realise that what I was suffering, was something that others suffered from too.  Although I wouldn’t wish the condition on my worst enemy, it did help me to gain a tiny bit of perspective at a very challenging and turbulent time.

MA: Was it hard for you to talk about in the beginning? Did you feel like you were “coming out of the closet”? I ask because I’m trying to figure out how the UK is different or similar to the US.

RH: In all honestly, it really wasn’t.  I remember my first ever ‘mental health’ blog.  It was called  ‘My Experience With Post Natal Depression & Anxiety’, it was such a long post, but I really enjoyed writing it.  It put a lot of things to bed for me and meant my site took on a totally different dimension.  To have people contact me to say that reading my post had helped them was one of the best feelings in the world.  It meant so much to me that it had meant something to them.  Looking back, I can recall feeling a surge of anxiety and adrenaline when I hit publish on the post itself.  I knew deep down that I wouldn’t be judged, the people I have on my Facebook/Twitter etc. wouldn’t do such a thing.  Yeah there were people who I’d hoped might respond to it but didn’t, or contact me to ask how I was but never did, but hey I firmly believe when you go through something like I have, you realise who your true friends are.  You learn a lot about yourself and the people around you.

Here in the UK, I still find mental health seems to have a stigma that needs breaking down, even in the year 2016.  What worries me is how there seems to be many people out there who don’t feel like they are able to discuss their mental health condition as openly as they would if they had broken their leg for example or had a physical condition.  This makes me sad, by opening up about the conditions we suffer from, it allows us to accept support from others’ we might not have had and indeed treatment, if we hadn’t have discussed our mental health.  It also helps to break down these barriers that seem to surround so many people who suffer from mental health illnesses.  I hate the thought of anyone suffering in silence, feeling frighteningly alone and worrying they would be judged or vilified if they told someone how they were feeling.

MA: How does having anxiety differ in a mid-sized city like Bristol as opposed to London? Or a small town? Do you think it makes a difference? I think having anxiety in San Francisco, CA can be a different experience than in, say, Defiance, Ohio (where I lived as a little kid). 

Bristol looks pretty! I've never been.

RH: Difficult one to answer as I’ve only ever lived in Bristol. Bristol has, speaking from experience, a good mental health crisis team who I’ve dealt with on 2 separate occasions.  They don’t judge, they understand and they know exactly the right treatment to deliver in order to enable recovery.  I am a huge champion of the NHS, I feel incredibly lucky to live where I do and to have received the treatment I needed to get better.  Having spoke to a few people who suffer from mental health conditions in other parts of the UK, it’s my understanding that other cities around the country aren’t as lucky as us Bristolians.  Waiting lists can be a lot longer than Bristol’s and the right support can be hard to pinpoint.

MA: My impression is that there are more resources in England for anxiety than there are in the US, be it blogs or books (I’m reading DARE right now). Or, said differently, the awareness and discussion around anxiety seems more nuanced and mature than it does here in the US. Does that seem accurate to you?

RH: That’s an interesting point.  I work for an Education charity where mental health and wellbeing of staff is taken very seriously.  I definitely feel supported there, it’s a topic that I wouldn’t shy away from discussing there.  I definitely think that things are changing with mental health in the UK in that the Government seem to be taking it more seriously which is incredibly important.  I only hope they continue to inject as much money as possible into mental health services.

I’ve read some fantastic British blogs around the topic of anxiety and depression.  But then equally I’ve also read some great American ones too, a Post Partum Depression one will always stick out in my mind, I found great solace in that blog at the end of 2013.

Aside from support from health professionals,  I think there are some superb Anxiety support groups on Facebook, of which I’m a member.  There are also some GAD support groups too which are equally fantastic – it’s great to have those resources so easily assessable.  Mindfulness is something that has really taken off in the UK over the last couple of years, I’ve read a book by Ruby Wax around this topic. Mindfulness is a very effective tool in combating anxiety and I cannot speak highly enough about it, I’d certainly recommend fellow anxiety sufferers researching Mindfulness a little.

Charities like SANE, Time To Change and Anxiety UK do fantastic work to raise awareness of mental health and support sufferers.

From this side of the world, thank you so much for taking the time to share your wisdom, Rachel!

Sensitivity -> Superpower: Step One

Anxiety robs us of our intuition.

Whether a small decision like choosing what to wear, or a big one like a career pivot, anxiety drowns out our instincts. 

Why, thank you officer. Very soothing.

My theory: Anxiety is a hyper-sensitivity. If we can tune in to that sensitivity and use it as a strength, it becomes our super power. But in order to do it, we have to turn down the volume on our self-questioning, and turn it up on our self-understanding. 

Trying to figure out which is instinct and which is anxiety. Seems so "devil on a shoulder." Despite the paucity of two volume knob photos to illustrate the concept, I'm not assuming that you have an angelic instinct.

We each work on turning down the anxiety volume in our own individual ways (here are some places to start if you need them). But what about turning up the instinct dial?  

A place to start is with these two questions:

What motivates you? What comforts you?

Motivation, when tapped into, can be an incredible source of energy and power. It's your engine. Being disconnected from what motivates you is like being in a car with a dead battery.

A little over a year ago, a close friend told me that I am a creator. "You need to be creative," she said. "Without it, you get stuck." It was an incredible clue about my motivation. Recently my husband gave me another one: "You want to understand the world for the joy of discovery. You like to solve puzzles and understand things for their own intrinsic value, not for business. In this, you're more like an artist."  For years, I wouldn't create anything because I wasn't a designer (having worked with designers, I know that they are amazing). I wouldn't write because having worked with incredible writers, I didn't feel I could compare. I now realize, though, that I was unplugging my own battery. I'm motivated by surprise, discovery, and clarity.

When I feel confused, I try to come back to that realization and turn the self-awareness volume up.

What motivates you? 

Being comforted is a feeling that many of us with anxiety seek out. We want to stop bad feelings and replace them with good ones. For this reason, figuring out how what comforts you in a healthy way can be an important first step to getting back in touch with your own instincts.

I've always been comforted by the the feeling of being understood. It's the good friend I described knowing me better than I knew myself. It's my husband helping me get plugged back in. [It's little, dumb things: someone who gets that I prefer Bojack Horseman to Game of Thrones (sorry).]

But what comforts us can be also be problematic. If I feel misunderstood at the wrong moment (violent tv shows are pretty common, and most people like them) I can quickly slip back into generalizations, black-and-white thinking, and catastrophizing.

It seems as though what comforts us can help with our self-understanding, but it can accidentally hit the anxiety volume knob as well. 

Knowing what comforts you and giving it context can help you to stay healthy. "Though I desire to be understood, I know that it's not something I can experience all the time. I'll enjoy and appreciate it when it happens."

Superpower activate! 

How Do You Feel When You're Told to "Just Be Yourself"?

A Medium post by David Heinemeier Hansson yesterday got me thinking about this question. Hansson (who goes by DHH) is best known for his creation of Ruby on Rails (web framework) and Basecamp (company and software tool), and I really respect his thinking. I loved his book Rework. He's often insightful on many topics.

Not this one, though. To give him credit, he probably dashed off this post, which has a simple premise:

He then goes on to talk about the power of envy for transformation.

I want to share my reasons for disagreeing with DHH because I think they're important for people like us (with anxiety). At the time of writing this, DHH's post had nearly 900 recommends on Medium. A whole lot of people agree with him. 

Writing my post helped me articulate why I don't, and it's made me feel good about the role of inspiration (as opposed to envy) in our lives. Maybe it will help you too?

I wrote:

I’ve thought about this a lot. Why does the invocation “just be yourself” sound insistent to the point of threatening to me?

I think it’s because: If someone’s not already being themselves, it might be because they’re scared or anxious. It might be that they don’t know who their “self” is at that moment.

Do you see a lot of people around you complacently in love with who they are right now? Do you think that the “just be yourself” motto is truly in danger of making people overly satisfied with their lives?

I’d argue that in both “just be yourself” and in “fake it til you make it” (which is another form of taking envy-based performance to its logical conclusion) social normative pressure suppresses positive growth.

What’s the solution then? Inspiration. Inspiration is growth-oriented.

It incorporates both learning to trust yourself and being inspired by the people around you, online and off. This is what leads to growth.

Take risks and share your new work. Publish a piece of writing or reveal a new project you’ve been designing or coding.

Feel good about these risks because your inspiration is your safety net.

my inspiration

Procrastinate, Precrastinate...Let's Call the Whole Thing Off.

Marion Fayolle for the NYTimes

I really liked this piece called "Why I Taught Myself to Procrastinate" by Adam Grant in yesterday's NY Times. In many things, I'm the pre-crastinater Grant describes:

I know that for many people, anxiety brings procrastination with it. And I've experienced that, too, with some of the most meaningful, amorphous tasks in my life, especially when I was younger (There was a certain book project...).

More frequently, though, I find myself chasing the euphoric feeling of progress, as described by Grant. At what cost? I believe that the cost has been creativity. One of Grant's students, Jihae Shin, spent years trying to convince her professor that procrastinating could aid the creative process. He didn't buy it. So she designed some experiments to explore the topic. What she found is that our first ideas tend to be the most conventional. It's only by letting our minds wander that we come up with unusual patterns: 

I've been feeling this need increasingly lately. Creative thinking needs space to flourish. It can be hard to give yourself freedom and license to do it, especially with anxiety pounding on the door. The way that I've been approaching it is to try to tune in to the feeling I get as I approach the task.

If > crazed pre-crastinator feeling > then > back off for a couple of days and see what insights time gives me

If > avoidance procrastinator feeling > then  > amp up my attention a little to see if I can bring the work into focus

The place that I tune in is the meditation mat. What about you? I'm gonna open a topic about this on the Talk board and see if anyone has thoughts to share.

"I've had my share, I'll help you with the pain. You're not alone."

This is not a story. I have no story to tell. Nothing to add to eloquent tributes I’m reading. I’m mourning. Nearly anything I’d say feels trite.

But something that’s hit me as I watch Blackstar over and over is that Bowie is as close as I’ve come to religion. His performances have always felt like an expression of shared humanity personally delivered to me. I’m thankful for his final message in the way I imagine worshippers are during service in church, synagogue, or mosque.

If you have outsider feelings (like I often do, for no good reason), you might feel like an outsider to the Bowie outpouring you see around you right now.

Realizing that David Bowie is my form of worship has changed that response for me.

These are my fellow congregants.

This is my exultant community.

Finding Other Voices

One of the things that starting this project is doing for me is helping me find the other people who are writing about anxiety in a way I can relate to. It's so great that we have tools to be able to connect with each other. I found the work of Lisa Scott aka TheWorryGames.com through Twitter. (If you're on Twitter, you should be following her @TheWorryGames as well, of course, as Beautiful Voyager @nervesbegone.)

Here's an interview that Lisa did with Like-Minded Magazine, an online interview magazine founded in Amsterdam. Three of my favorite quotes from her interview:

"You gotta have a sense of humor if you have anxiety. A lot of it really is ridiculous and its okay to acknowledge that and have a laugh every now and then."

"I have trained myself to be an optimistic pessimist."

"I never would have been motivated to change the way I was living w/o the extreme discomfort & fear anxiety gave me."

I had posted this on the The Beautiful Voyager Facebook page, and then realized that there are people who come here who never see that. So I wanted it to be here too. Lisa's good words deserve to be heard!

The Tyranny of Chill

I've been married for 8 years, but that doesn't mean that I'm not acutely aware of the struggles of my friends who are still swiping left and right. Dating with anxiety can be a particular form of hell. You need to be at your best to meet someone, but sometimes the thing that sets you off is the "getting to know you" situations. Or the "am I allowed to put down my armor now" question. It's hard not to use bracing battlefield analogies when talking about anxiety and dating.

I don't think it's a coincidence that I met my husband when my GAD was at all all-time low. At the time, I didn't even know there was such a thing as GAD. But lately I've been reading some writers who make me think that knowing who you are, understanding and embracing it, will be the healthy future for the highly sensitive (which is what anxiety really is). It gives me a lot of comfort and a feeling of safety to know that there are whip smart women who understand themselves and not backing down in their dating lives. By the time she's 26, whether she chooses to date men or women, my 6-year-old daughter will have a lot of role models for finding her own voice.

One of my favorite pieces from recent history is Against Chill by Alana Massey. It's a piece I would have read again and again if I were dating now.

To the uninitiated, having Chill and being cool are synonyms. They describe a person with a laid-back attitude, an absence of neurosis, and reasonably interesting tastes and passions. But the person with Chill is crucially missing these last ingredients because they are too far removed from anything that looks like intensity to have passions. They have discernible tastes and beliefs but they are unlikely to materialize as passionate. Passion is polarizing; being enthusiastic or worked up is downright obsessive.

AH! I would have said. The crazy thing that makes me care so much, get so involved...that makes me ME, is the thing that makes me uncool. Call it anxiety, call it my passion. If I reveal it, it's what makes me less dateable. And then I would have read the piece again. Because I would need to hear that's OK. Those aren't the guys I want to be hanging out with anyway.

This is such important writing for people with anxiety. This is how we learn from our anxiety. I hope it brings you as much reassurance as it does me.

Personal Prioritizing: We Suck At It

Anxiety makes us bad time managers. Thoughts don't pass by, gentle puffy clouds we want them to be. Anxious thoughts are greedy hands, reaching out, asking for more time and attention.

"The lightbulb over the back porch is out. I better fix it." Where others might be able to take note and continue their day, Gaddies end up in a whirlpool of what-if's and perceived negative outcomes. "If I don't change it, something might happen tonight and I might need a light." "If I don't get to it now, I might not get to it for another couple weeks." Changing the light bulb mounts the to-do list, becoming as important as getting to school on time, getting work done.

Clearly articulating the problem to solve is my first step to build out the GAD tool kit for priorities. The problem: Every to-do hits my brain laced with adrenaline and cortisol,  bursting onto the scene as a bunch of pushy P1's, all wanting to be on the top of the list.

I know that my eventual solution is going to involve defusing the initial thought. I'm going to use my physical response as a guide. It might look something like this:

1. Thought hits.

2. By hits, I mean, it suddenly seems super important.

NEW STEP! Check in with self: are you feeling neck tightness or shallow breathing?

IF YES, what mindfulness technique could help?

3. Before continuing with new, adrenaline-fueled task, go through a mindfulness technique, be it meditation, noting or describing the situation in words. "I am standing on my back porch in the morning, on my way to work, seeing that the light has burnt out."

4. See if any of the techniques change how the task gets prioritized.

NOTE! Don't do task without asking yourself: is this really the most important task for me to be doing right now? Am I doing it out of panic? 

I'd love to hear others' approaches to working around the GAD adrenaline panic. What works? Has an approach seemed like it should work, and it didn't? Since this is something I really struggle with, I'd love more insight and input on it!