Decades ago, when I was younger, something was wrong but I didn't know what. I remember the first time I came upon a description of what was called "anxiety" (there was no DSM yet, few of the existing diagnoses...no antidepressants...) and, well I recognized the inner experience (this is looking at Mercks Manual) --symptoms described but I could not connect.
Not for a long time---I "got" some of it intellectually but it was a long time before the feeling and the symptoms clicked and I Knew. Someone gave me some Valium, it was awful at the time, I couldn't move but my mind raced and I was angry at the time anyway--dismissed with stupid pills, I flushed them and waited a couple of decades, struggling along...
Few would have described me as anxious. Maybe no one. It wasn't visible till I spoke it/ --- unfortunately, the worst was yet to come but all in all
the journey has been ....instructive---like, I could be in a total panic,numb from waist to foot, out of "this" world and I could function---in a stressful clinical setting with people remarking on my infinite calm. (and so, my social withdrawals and silences were misinterpreted by some as aloofness or lack of interest/...so wrong but I could not explain, or even try to----------)
Sometimes I wish I never made the "click"---
like the GD sing "...there is a road/no simple highway between the dawn and the dark of night/and if you go no one may follow/that path is for your steps alone...

The "click" opened a can of ----------no, it opened my personal Pandora's Box