The Cycle of Anxiety and Depression

The fight between anxiety and depression is one that can be immense and at times overwhelming. With each day, the cycle between the two begins again, and we exhaust ourselves in the process of attempting to deal (or not deal) with the emotions that follow.

Sometimes, it begins with feelings of exhaustion and fatigue. It feels like there isn’t any purpose in life. In my experience, the motivations, goals, and sense of purpose that often push me forward are now gone and have disappeared into the mist of my own thoughts. I am faced with this crippling sense of emptiness, a loss of feeling both inside and out.

I ask myself,

“Why am I here?”

“What purpose do I serve in this life?”

The thoughts center around my sense of worth and my worth to other people.

“What do I really mean to the people around me?”

“Do they really care about me?”

It is this sense of emptiness that takes away my desire to focus and work. Scientifically, this is caused by an imbalance or difference in the way the brain reacts to certain chemicals, however, this condition is typically caused by a mix of genetic, biological, and other environmental and psychological factors. For me, these feelings manifest themselves as the desire to sleep all day, and the lack of motivation to do the things that I am passionate about and care about.

Once I start to avoid these things, the spiral begins.

“Why can’t I do anything”

“Why am I not doing enough.”

I ask myself why I cannot seem to get my own life together and why I feel so useless.

It is these thoughts that ramp up my heart rate and cause my breathing to become more shallow and quick. I tense up, tears flowing freely down my cheeks. It’s not long before I begin to lose feeling in my arms and legs. I tell myself to take deep breaths but I only begin to breathe faster and faster, and the way I feel about my life connects to the physical state of my body, as I slowly begin to spin out of control.

For some, these feelings and emotional outbursts are exactly what they feel during a panic attack, but these attacks look different for several people. It can cause people to isolate and hide from the people around them, locked in the tall tower of shame, anxiety, and a diminished sense of worth.

This cycle is one that repeats itself, causing me to feel trapped in a constant tug of war, between a lack of motivation and the panic that results from the lack of productivity. This is raw, real, and my story, and it is a story that so many of us around the world face on a regular basis. From this, I hope to reveal a world many of you can relate to, or perhaps a world you’ve never seen. I hope many of you find peace from reading this and realizing that you are not alone. Reading this story is one step towards feeling heard, or feeling empathy for those around you because you never know what they may be going through behind the pictures they paint of their lives.

References

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/depression/index.shtml