I had my first panic attack when I was about 19. Thinking back, I was probably always an anxious child who grew to be an anxious adult. All the hallmarks were there -the disordered thinking, ‘always/never’ etc. I just thought it was a natural response to having a bit of a rocky childhood so I just took it to myself and accepted it as part of my personality. Until one day, out of nowhere I passed out in a bank while waiting in the queue. I had been ill and hadn’t realised quite how ill until I came round looking up at the faces of concerned patrons. I was so confused and disorientated I couldn’t wait to get out of there so I stumbled, blindly, out in to the startling sunshine and then moments later, I vomited on the pavement. Now, I always had a morbid fear of throwing up. And for some unknown reason my brain chose that moment, of all the horrifying moments of my life, to cling to and make the association that being in a queue in a busy place causes me to faint and throw up. Now just add a pinch of salt and bake at 200 for 20 minutes. The perfect recipe for crippling anxiety. I lost a year of my life to soul crushing agoraphobia. It was safer in bed. I didn’t holiday, work, shop, go to the cinema, socialise. I just…existed. It was easier that way. My bedroom wasn’t scary. When I realised that I wanted more from life, I enrolled in college. I was 21 and my fellow students were 16 and 17, fresh from school. I had grown to accept that feeling ill (I didn’t even have a name for it then) was part of my everyday and I would need to work around it. I would feel the tingling start in my legs, the tightness in my chest and I would take myself off to the disabled toilet, gradually succumbing, breath coming quicker, chest getting tighter. Pins and needles now, I can’t see. Noises sound very far away. I would wedge myself between the toilet and the wall…and pass out. I thought it was inevitable. I didn’t know how to stop it so all I could do was damage limitation. I would never know if I was in there for 40 seconds or 40 minutes. I don’t think anyone ever came looking so it couldn’t have been that long. I’d get up, trembling wildly and grasp the edge of the cold porcelain sink which would ground me a little while I studied my reflection. I was ashen, lips tinged purple. That was how I spent my first year at college. I went on to university and took all of my avoidant behaviours with me. I lasted two years. It was too much. I eventually sought help. I was given beta blockers and told to just breathe.

What the fuck did that mean?

I asked for more help and was given assertiveness training. I started to think maybe it really was me. At university I learned about Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). And that was how I came to start dealing with what I now know to be anxiety. I bought a book called “Cognitive Behavioural Therapy For Dummies” and in the 12 months I had to wait to see a psychologist, I taught myself coping mechanisms. I learned to drive, I coped with the death of a friend. I coped with a lot and decided with some disdain that I didn’t need professional help. I could deal with this myself. And I did. For 16 years, I lived a life with appropriate responses to anxiety-inducing situations. I met the love of my life. We broke up. We got back together. We decided to get married. My mother was diagnosed with cancer. My fiance broke up with me and cancelled our wedding. I had to move out of our home, I was homeless. My mother died. I was made redundant. This all within 6 months. I was low, understandably so, but I still wasn’t having panic attacks. I became defiant after that. Anytime I felt anxiety start to tug at my edges, I stared that bastard down. “No”. I had been through too much to lie down to my own brain’s savage pranks. Until one day recently I fell down that old rabbit hole. And just like Alice, everything is upside down and nothing is what it is, and everything is what it isn’t. Suddenly the breathing excersizes were futile. My sense of wellbeing and security was like a helium balloon which, once it got away from me, was impossible to get back. I tried to be defiant -“I’m not doing this today”. But in return I would hear “are you sure??” an insidious little voice originating form somewhere inside my own head which gainsaid me at every turn. I tried to reason – “please…not today, this is too important”. And I would hear it cackle gleefully “But it’s important for these people to see what a loser you are! They need to know!” And so I tried to take control the only way I knew how. Maybe I watched too many horror films but I knew my demon had a name and I knew that saying it out loud would give me power over it and so I shone a light on my darkest corners, all my skeletons laid bare. I took a deep breath and I named it. I told my hairdresser “I am Grace and I have anxiety” and she understood.

It didn’t like that. I heard it hiss, outraged that I had betrayed it and broke the cardinal rule. When you have anxiety, you don’t admit it! You let it wind those greasy black tentacles around your heart and slowly strangle every ounce of joy out of your life. Naming it took some of the fear out of those appointments when the little voice would be taunting me to run, escape. My nail technician – “my name is Grace and I have anxiety”. A little less shaky every time. Understanding, empathy, awareness. People in my corner saying “No, you don’t get her today. You don’t win” when I couldn’t raise my voice loud enough. People whose voices were already familiar to anxiety through their own battles.

But I wonder…How long before ” I am Grace and I have anxiety” becomes “I am Grace. I have anxiety” becomes… “I’m Grace with anxiety”becomes… “I’m anxiety” How did shining a light on it and taking it’s power away become inextricably linking you with your demon? Have I accidentally confused confronting it with accepting it as part of myself? And is that a bad thing? I am a lot of things, good and bad, but I am not my demons.

I am not anxiety.