Anxiety is stigmatized, as are many other mental health challenges. Our culture seems to hear that word as meaning weakness, silliness, being high strung, Nervous Nelly, foolish.

I just looked up the word anxiety, defined as worry, in the online thesaurus:

all-overs, angst, ants, apprehension, botheration, butterflies, cabin fever, care, cold sweat, concern, creeps, disquiet, disquietude, distress, doubt, downer, drag, dread, fidgets, flap, foreboding, fretfulness, fuss, goose bumps, heebie-jeebies, jitters, jumps, misery, misgiving, mistrust, nail-biter, needles, nervousness, panic, restlessness, shakes, shivers, solicitude, suffering, suspense, sweat, trouble, uncertainty, unease, uneasiness, watchfulness, willies, worriment

Many of those words seem to trivialize the experience. While the opposite sounds good and worthy:

calm, relaxation, security, strong

Even when I knew I had PTSD, hypervigilance and all, I did not think anxiety itself really applied to me. Seemed like something other folks had, not me. I had some dim picture in my mind about what I thought anxiety was.

Until I started reading more on anxiety and paying attention to my experience. Sometimes I've even found myself anxious about being anxious, that rarely happens now, my self help skills kick in to prevent that cycle.

Rapunzel, I can surely relate to all that feeling uncomfortable. I think time and experience and research helps. Being aware of what part of our cultural stigma you buy into and what you reject helps too.

Me, I think I need to invent a new word for my experience. Something that rings serious, deep, profound, painful, real. Other times it could be a word I can just shrug off......Oh, there that is again, I recognize it, know what it is, and I'm gonna do something else anyway.....type of word.


Sarah of the jittery flapping heebie-jeebie creeps