Dear Anxious Me: When Feeling Unheard Feels Like Being Erased

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Have you ever been able to pinpoint the exact moment something made you anxious?

Usually, anxiety feels like it just sneaks up on me. One minute I am fine, and the next minute my thoughts are racing, my body is reacting, and I am desperately trying to figure out what happened.

Today was different.

Today, I knew exactly what triggered it.

I was sitting in my office doing some writing while talking to a friend. She was helping me dive deeper into the story I was trying to tell. She asked all the right questions. She laughed in all the right places. I genuinely believed she understood what I was trying to say.

Then I asked her to tell the story back to me.

It sounded tremendously different.

She meant well. She was doing exactly what I had asked her to do. She was trying to help me.

But in that moment, none of those facts mattered.

All I felt was anxiety.

I felt like she was erasing me.

I felt like she was taking away my voice. Like the story no longer belonged to me. Like I was slowly disappearing while someone else took over.

And I panicked.

When Anxiety Makes Me Shut Down

When I become anxious, I tend to shut down.

I pick at my fingers. I count things around the room. I stare at one object and try to force my mind to slow down. Sometimes I shake my hands as though I can physically shake the anxiety out of my body. Sometimes I rub the same finger repeatedly in an attempt to soothe myself before everything gets out of control.

Sometimes those things help.

Most of the time, they do not.

Today, I tried anyway.

I tried to make the feeling disappear, but it would not go away because underneath the anxiety was something much deeper.

I felt unseen.

I felt unheard.

I felt erased.

The more I sat with that feeling, the more I began to wonder how often my anxiety comes from that exact place.

Not every time. I am not going to pretend that every anxious moment has the same explanation.

But many of them do.

Knowing I Am Loved Does Not Always Make Me Feel Loved

I know there are people who see me.

I know there are people who hear me.

I know there are people who love me.

Those are facts.

Unfortunately, the facts and my emotions do not always agree.

I can know, logically, that someone cares about me and still feel completely alone. I can understand that someone is helping me and still feel hurt by their help. I can hear someone tell me they love me and immediately convince myself they are only saying it to be nice.

That is one of the hardest parts of mental health for me.

My friend had not done anything wrong.

She was being a good friend.

She was helping me because I asked her to help me.

Yet somehow, my mind twisted her kindness into proof that I did not matter.

Her actions said, “I care enough to help you.”

What I heard was, “You are not good enough to tell your own story.”

What I heard was, “You do not matter.”

What I heard was, “You do not exist.”

How do you explain that to someone?

How do you say, “You were only helping me, but somehow it hurt”?

The Stories Anxiety Tells Me

The moment I felt misunderstood, my mind immediately began building a case against me.

Maybe I am not a good writer.

Maybe I am not doing a good job.

Maybe this entire thing is pointless.

Maybe I should stop.

It felt like the whole world came crashing down because one conversation did not sound the way I expected it to.

That is what anxiety can do.

It can take one uncomfortable moment and turn it into evidence that every negative thing you have ever believed about yourself is true.

I know I am a talented writer.

I have published three books. I wrote for my school newspaper. I know how to tell a story. I know how to make people laugh, cry, think, and feel.

Even as I type those words, part of my brain is telling me they are not true.

It tells me that if I were really a great writer, I would have accomplished more by now. People would know my name. People would be talking about my books.

Of course, that thought conveniently ignores the fact that I barely tell anyone about the books I have written.

Anxiety does not care about context.

It does not care about evidence.

The facts mean very little when my emotions are screaming something else.

Learning to Disappear

As I processed everything, I began thinking about where this fear of being erased may have started.

As a child, I taught myself that making the people around me happy was more important than understanding my own feelings.

If I could give them one less thing to worry about—me—then maybe I was making their lives easier.

If I could make them smile, laugh, or feel better, then perhaps they would see me.

Maybe I would not disappear.

I taught myself to be useful.

I taught myself to be easy.

I taught myself to hide the difficult parts so nobody would have to worry about me.

Then I grew up and wondered why I felt invisible.

I spent years teaching myself how to disappear and now feel anxious when I believe someone is erasing me.

That is a hard truth to sit with.

Mental Health Is Full of Contradictions

Mental health is hard.

It is hard to look in the mirror and recognize the physical version of yourself while barely understanding the person living inside your mind.

It is hard to wake up feeling broken and then spend the day pretending you are okay because pretending feels safer.

Nobody worries about you.

Nobody asks difficult questions.

You become one less burden.

And, unfortunately, it is incredibly easy to fool people.

I know how to wear my mask.

I can smile. I can laugh. I can tell someone I am doing great. I can look completely calm while picking at my nails underneath the table.

You cannot hear my racing thoughts.

You cannot see everything happening inside my head.

Sometimes I appear calm while my mind is short-circuiting.

Sometimes I know something is wrong, but I cannot find the words to explain it.

How do you explain something you barely understand yourself?

Feelings Do Not Always Follow Logic

Those of us who struggle with mental health can often identify what something is without understanding why it feels the way it does.

I can see the color yellow and know that it is yellow.

Yellow is supposed to be bright and cheerful. It is my favorite color.

That does not mean it always makes me feel happy.

A black room does not automatically make me sad.

An overcast day with drizzle and thunder is supposed to feel gloomy, but that weather makes me feel creative. I may not want to leave the house, but I become incredibly productive inside it.

Feelings are complicated.

Life is complicated because of the nuances.

I can recognize that someone loves me while struggling to feel loved.

I can know that someone is helping me while feeling harmed.

I can understand that I matter while simultaneously fearing that nobody would notice if I disappeared.

Both realities somehow live inside me at once.

Am I Broken If I Need Medication?

I met with my medication provider today.

Our appointments are normally quick.

He asks how I am doing.

I say I am great.

He says I look better.

I say thank you.

He asks whether anything is new.

I say no.

I wear my mask well.

The truth is that I am doing well. But I also know that if I were struggling, I might not admit it. One of my biggest fears is having my medication increased or having another medication added.

Do I understand that hiding my symptoms would not help me?

Yes.

Do I understand that I need my medication?

Yes.

Once again, those are the facts.

My emotions tell a different story.

My emotions tell me I should not need medicine to be normal.

They tell me I should be good enough the way I am.

They tell me that taking medication means something inside me is broken.

People remind me that I am not broken.

I want to believe them.

But medication is usually taken because something is not working the way it should. That makes it difficult for me not to connect needing medication with something being wrong with me.

I take medication for anxiety. I also have medication I can take when the anxiety becomes overwhelming.

And I still get anxious.

Sometimes I wonder what the point is.

Logically, I understand that medication can reduce how often anxiety happens and how intense it becomes. I understand that it is a tool, not a magical eraser.

Emotionally, I still struggle with needing it.

That is another contradiction I am learning to live with.

The Negative Feeling That Stays

Yesterday, I was processing what it meant to know that I was chosen.

Today, I was anxious because I felt like I did not exist.

It is interesting how easily the negative feeling can override the positive one.

There were far more moments today when I laughed, smiled, and felt loved than moments when I felt anxious.

There were moments when I remembered that I am loved.

There were moments when I remembered that I am worth loving.

Yet when I sat down to reflect on the day, anxiety was the emotion that demanded my attention.

Anxiety was the feeling that stayed.

Maybe that is because negative emotions are louder.

Maybe it is because I am more accustomed to believing the painful things.

Maybe joy feels temporary while anxiety feels like evidence.

I am still figuring that out.

My Bite of Pie

Here in Dear Journal, we talk about our bite of pie—the thing we accomplished today.

It does not have to be enormous.

It does not have to impress anyone else.

It only has to mean something to us.

Today, I felt anxious and did not give up.

That is my bite of pie.

I felt myself being erased.

I felt myself beginning to disappear.

And I still decided to keep trying.

That is a big deal for me.

Maybe that is what people mean when they say to fake it until you make it. I did not feel confident. I did not suddenly believe every positive thing about myself.

I simply kept going despite the feelings telling me to stop.

As I sit here now, I do not feel as anxious as I did earlier. I do not feel as scared, sad, or lonely.

There is a sense of calm.

My thoughts are still racing, but I am calmer.

I still cannot articulate everything happening inside my mind the way I want to. I wish I had a giant canvas where I could paint my thoughts with words so beautiful and precise that anyone looking at them would instantly understand exactly how I feel.

But I cannot.

I cannot perfectly explain something I barely understand myself.

Most days, I barely understand me.

But I keep trying.

Every day, I take another small step forward.

Every day, I take another bite of pie.

You Are Not Alone

I hope that by hearing my story, you recognize that you are not alone.

We are not hopeless.

We are not unimportant.

People notice us, even when our minds convince us otherwise.

I do not share these thoughts only for myself. I share them because I know someone else is sitting somewhere feeling exactly the way I felt today.

They are struggling.

They are hiding it.

They do not know how to explain it.

Maybe they do not know whom they can trust enough to tell.

We already judge ourselves enough. We do not need more judgment from the people around us.

So write it down.

Write it in your journal.

Write it on a random piece of paper.

Send someone a message that says, “Hey, this is what I am feeling.”

You do not have to explain it perfectly.

You do not have to understand it completely.

You just have to start somewhere.

I am not alone because I have you.

And you are not alone because you have me.

Sometimes, that has to count.

Today is another page in the story.

It does not have to be perfect.

It just has to be written.

Before you close your journal tonight, ask yourself:

What was your bite of pie today?

Until tomorrow,

Love you loud.