If you’re anything like me, at this point you’ve probably felt your jaw physically drop at the absurdity of a year the world has experienced. It’s like someone had taken plot lines from every single one of our favorite binge-worthy drama series, threw it all at 2020 (and some of 2021) and said “this should be interesting.”
As someone who has dealt with anxiety for most of their life, I can say that this hodgepodge of random, scary, and uncertain information is not so far off from the chaos that someone with a mental health disorder may experience in their own mind.
For me, it’s like having your brain flash through all the terrifying and confusing news headlines of your own life.
On bad days – these headlines act as a puppeteer – guiding me blindly through life against my own “wise mind.” Trying to navigate this chaos is exhausting, – being pulled in so many different directions and spread so thin that life can be anything but enjoyable.
Thankfully, because my older sister, Lindsay, had dealt with similar struggles, I was encouraged to find the resources, like those provided by ADAA, to ask for help; to ask someone else how I was supposed to deal with my mind because I definitely couldn’t figure it out.
My name is Emily. My sister, Lindsay, and I are both living with obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety (clearly it runs in the family). Through years of sharing one anxiety-ridden saga after another, we’ve come to learn that, though our OCD came in many different forms or “flavors,” we shared very similar mindfulness techniques to help us cope with our anxiety.
