Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from November, 2019

Anxiety Isn't a Four-Letter Word

"Stop being a worrywart!" "Nothing's wrong with you!" "You're such a hypochondriac!" "Why are you so scared of everything?!" "Abbie's so sensitive!" "You're so weird!" I heard all of these statements (in addition to many, many others) most of my childhood.  What I didn't know then - and only learned much later - was that I've been suffering with undiagnosed anxiety my entire life.  But growing up in an Irish-Catholic family, I learned pretty early on that we don't talk about our feelings - instead, we push them down, and forget they ever existed. So it's not surprising that I didn't have the vocabulary to completely explain what was going on in my growing, anxious-wired brain.  It wasn't until 6th grade, when I was forced to receive therapy for my eating disorder, that I started taking anti-depressants - and yet it still didn't click until my adult life that my...