Find youself an anxiety buddy!

Everybody that suffers with anxiety has those days where you have something big planned but anxiety and panic are taking you over, and it all just seems like too much to deal with.

Of course you want to stick to your plans and go on that day out, or to that party, or just to meet up with friends, but a thousand fears are going through your mind and holding you back. 

In your anxious state of mind the last thing that you would want would be for anybody that you are with to find out how you are feeling and to know that anxiety is getting the better of you that day.  It seems easier just to cancel your plans than to worry about making a fool of yourself in front of people.

Sound familiar?

The one thing that helped me to finally deal with still facing up to social plans on days when I felt particularly anxious was to find myself an anxiety buddy.

My anxiety buddy is my sister, and I kind of ended up recruiting her by accident, but it has all worked out pretty well for us. 

One weekend we had a cousin staying with us and we were all due to go out for a meal.  All day I could feel that I was starting to get a cold, and the onset of a sore throat and temperature were starting to make me feel run down and apprehensive.  Most of my panic and anxiety is related to feeling unwell as I first developed anxiety and depression as a side effect of glandular fever, so any time I feel my throat start to swell or I know I am getting ill I start to panic about being away from the house.

At the restaurant as my throat got increasingly sore and I began to get those familiar flu type shivers, I was beginning to majorly freak out and then I eventually went into a full on panic attack.  I just wanted to run out of the restaurant, but at the same time I desperately didn’t want anybody else at the table to know that I was struggling or feeling anxious. 

In the end I couldn’t take it anymore and I quietly asked my sister to come to the bathroom with me, and as soon as we got in there I burst in to tears and told her that I was having a panic attack.  She calmed me down and reassured me that she would look out for me for the rest of the evening and would help me if I had any further attacks.

What I noticed was that the panic instantly eased off as soon as I told somebody what I was experiencing.  Trying to hold it down and not show my weakness to anybody was giving the panic all the more power to take over my body.  I was fine for the rest of the evening knowing that somebody else at the table knew how I was feeling and that I could turn to them for help if I needed to.

From that point onwards my sister has firmly been my anxiety buddy, and I am hers too.  If ever we are going somewhere and I am feeling anxious about it, I will usually call her beforehand and tell her how I am feeling so that I know I have a support system in place should I need it.  My sister does the same with me too, on days when she is feeling the fear she will let me know it’s a bit of an anxious day for her, and I will do my very best to look out for her and help her.

If fear of getting panicky in front of people is holding you back from social plans, it might be worth trying to recruit an anxiety buddy too.  Sometimes it can take a while to find the right person, it has to be somebody that can be compassionate an understanding of your needs, but who at the same time can make sure that you don’t run away from situations and that you push yourself to face your fears knowing that support is there if you need it.

A good way to find a potential anxiety buddy is to try mentioning your fears in front of people and seeing how they react.  If when you mention that you sometimes get panicky to somebody, and they say back to you that they get anxiety too, then they could be the perfect anxiety buddy for you and you could make a deal that you will tell each other when you are struggling.  Sometimes other people are feeling the exact same way as you, and once you open up about your anxiety they feel that they can do the same too.

It might take a while and a bit of trial and error to find the right anxiety buddy, but once you have that support system you will find that panic and anxiety start losing their power to ruin your social life!