What Traveling Is like with an Anxiety Disorder
I'm sure many of you think you have anxiety. Many of you are probably mistaken. Although most will experience what some kind of anxiety is like at some point in their lives, most that do are not actually diagnosed with an anxiety disorder.
I am not one of those people.
I've had anxiety for as long as I can remember. It worsened once I experienced trauma and transitioned into adulthood. Generalized anxiety disorder is an ongoing disorder that is persistent and excessive worry about a number of different things - mostly pointless things that the general population feels are nothing to worry about. Anxiety basically means that your body and your mind team up with each other and begin to prepare themselves for the absolute worst thing to happen; except that thing almost never occurs. There are many different anxiety disorders that stem from GAD, one of which being panic disorder. Panic disorder is a more specific anxiety disorder that typically does not have a trigger, unlike GAD. I experience panic attacks often - typically without a trigger - on top of the already existing anxiety. GAD and panic disorder being present at the same time have been extremely difficult because sometimes it's hard to tell which symptoms come from which diagnosis. It's hard to tell if my anxiety attacks are being caused from a flashback of trauma or not.
As many of you know, I travel often. I have seen 11 countries and 17 states. Yet, my psychiatrist has always told me that I have some of the worst cases of anxiety he has ever seen.
Let's talk a little bit about what GAD is before we get into what traveling is like with that particular diagnosis.
The following should not be used for any kind of self-diagnosis. A diagnosis can only be performed upon seeing a medical or mental health professional:
GAD is diagnosed when a person finds it difficult to control worry on more days than not for at least six months and has three or more symptoms:
Restlessness or feeling keyed up or on edge
Being easily fatigued
Difficulty concentrating or mind going blank
Irritability
Muscle tension
Sleep disturbance (difficulty falling or staying asleep, or restless, unsatisfying sleep)
Having a sense of impending danger, panic, or doom
Having an increased heart rate
Breathing rapidly (hyperventilation)
Sweating, trembling, and/or nausea
Airports are full of the unknown. Unfamiliar people, places, restaurants, and there's always possible danger. I have this extreme and unrealistic fear of going anywhere in public by myself. Yet I can walk into and airport and hop on a plane like it's nothing.
Or so you think.
Two days leading up to my travel date, I begin to feel extremely nauseous and I sweat more uncontrollably than the usual. The more my mind focuses on the fact that I'm getting on a plane in two days, the worse it gets. The morning of, I feel so nauseous that I feel as if I might vomit at any given moment. Not to sound disgusting, but diarrhea is a very common physical symptom of anxiety and I sure as heck experience it the morning of a major trip. My mind races constantly about having to go somewhere surrounded my tons of people. I have never done well in large crowds to begin with.
All airports are different. TSA is nerve wracking for me because I never know if they're going to make me take my shoes off or let me keep them on. For some reason, I overthink that to the max. Once I make it through TSA, I have a panic attack about my gate number. They typically don't know what your gate number is going to be if it's more than 3 or 4 hours before your flight. If it doesn't appear on my ticket when I check in, I panic about whether or not it will show up on the screens with flight information. If it is on my ticket, I still panic about whether or not it's even the right one.
If I can't find the information on my gate number yet, I panic about not having a "safe" place to sit. I typically hide out in the bathroom for a little while. But if I notice someone sitting outside the bathroom that saw me go in, then I don't sit in there for very long and then I panic about what to do next.
Once I get past the panic of the gate number and finally find the one that has my flight, I sit down, but can't sit down directly next to someone. I prefer not to sit down facing anyone either, but most of the time, I can't get lucky and have the best of both worlds. I don't want people talking to me or see me reading or playing on my computer. If I put my headphones in, no one will typically talk to me.
I hope and I pray that it isn't going to be a full flight so that I don't have to sit directly next to someone. They always end up taking up the whole armrest. Then I have to consider that whoever it is might sleep almost the whole duration of the flight. If they do, I fear moving around because I don't want to wake them up.
I'm starving, because I didn't eat that morning. Why bother when your stomach feels like it's going to explode at any second? I fear eating, first of all, because I always feel like someone is watching me. Second of all, I'm afraid that if I eat, I'll throw it right up. I skip the eating and suffer.
I can't really focus on the book I'm reading because the kid sitting on the other side of the gate keeps staring at me, or so I think. I can't wait to get on that plane, because once I get past all of the people looking at me as I walk to my seat, I can finally relax because the only people that can clearly see me is the person sitting right next to me and the person sitting diagonally behind me that can see me through the crack in the seat. Two people are better than a whole flight's worth of people.
Forget getting up to go the bathroom because then I have to deal with people staring at me again. It wouldn't be a big deal if I could have gotten up from where I was sitting at the gate to go to the bathroom before we started boarding. But I couldn't do that either because there's still the factor of people staring at me. So the last time I used the bathroom was right after I got through TSA and before I found my gate. If I use the bathroom while I’m already walking from TSA or the gate I just came off of from my flight, my anxiety lessens for some reason.
Not getting up to go to the bathroom wouldn't be that big of a deal if the flight was short. And they are, except for when I go to Europe; ten whole hours of sitting in the same seat, hardly able to stretch my legs, risking the fact that I could get a blood clot. Forget sleeping because I twitch once I fall asleep. I'll either scare the person sitting next to me and risk them judging me, or scare myself awake. I don't dare stare out the window for too long because then people will wonder what it is that I'm looking at, since everything all looks the same up in the sky.
It always feels like an eternity before the captain comes back on and says that we are beginning our decent into whatever city I'm landing into. I can breathe a sigh of relief before I remember that this is only one of two or three flights. The city I'm landing in is only there for a layover, not my final destination. The closer we get to the ground, the worse the anxiety gets once again, because I have to go back in and do it all over again; panic about the gate number, only use the bathroom as soon as I walk off the plane and not use it again until I land in the next city, panic about the people staring at me at my next gate.
It probably sounds like I care too much about what people think of me. And maybe I do. But the tricky part is that I don't choose anxiety. I don't choose to care what people think of me. I don't choose to panic over "pointless" things.
Let me tell you something about anxiety.
Anxiety is completely and utterly illogical. Nothing about it makes sense.
But let me tell you something about the people who suffer from it like I do.
We already know this.
We already know that what we think and feel isn't logical to you. But to us, it is. It makes perfect sense in our heads. Just because something doesn't make sense to you, doesn't mean it doesn't make sense to someone else. I'm not saying anxiety is the right way of thinking or a good thing in any way. What I'm saying is that by telling someone that what or how they think isn't right or doesn't make sense, it invalidates them.
Anxiety isn’t just overthinking everything. It isn't just "having a panic attack" - if you knew what those were like you probably wouldn't throw it around so lightly - because you can't hang out with your friends that night. Anxiety is a disorder that affects the brain both physically and psychologically. Anxiety affects your everyday life. For me, it affects any and all things that I do or say. It controls me. It controls my every move. It doesn't let up. It doesn't let up just because my head feels overwhelmed. It keeps pushing me and pushing me until I've reached my limit. And then once I've reached my limit, it pushes me right over that cliff and I plummet down to rock bottom. Sometimes, it's over nothing - or so you think. Sometimes it's over something major and logistical. Either way, it controls me and the fact that some people are controlled in just the same way but aren't doing anything about it because people have to make rude comments about their disorder, is heartbreaking. People will literally never get help because of something someone else said about their anxiety; some snarky comment, some joke that they thought was funny, but was really invalidating to the person with the disorder.
Something else that invalidates people like me? Saying you have anxiety or a more specified anxiety disorder when you in fact have not actually been diagnosed. The mental health community is full of people who are all for self-diagnosis. I would be too if I was a mental health professional specifically trained to screen patients for specific disorders. I understand that not everyone can afford to go see someone who can screen them. But until you have been screened, you have not received a diagnosis. Telling people that you have anxiety when you have never been diagnosed throws the term, its definition, and its symptoms around like they're nothing.
Most people think there isn't help out there for their anxiety disorders. But let me just say that anxiety medications work wonders. Therapy works in a number of different ways for a number of different diagnoses, including anxiety. If you believe that you may have an anxiety disorder, please see a professional. I promise that there are ways to do it. Even if it's just one time to receive a diagnosis. A diagnosis helps so much in the recovery process. If you know someone with an anxiety disorder, please do not invalidate them or their disorder. Please encourage them to seek help if they haven’t already.
If you or someone you know needs support right now, call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, or text START to 741-741
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