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Identity

Figuring out who I am in the face of anxiety.

By Josh Breaker-RolfePublished 3 years ago 6 min read
2
Me, at the beginning of my quest for an identity.

I am sure I am not alone in thinking that 2020 was the hardest year of my life. True, I have only been on this planet for 22 years, and I'm sure I have harder years ahead, but still, it was tough.

For as long as I can remember, I have struggled with people. When I was very young, I simply thought of as a shy child, but as I grew older, this shyness didn't dissipate in a way you would expect. It developed into a genuine fear of people. My social inadequacies made me an easy target for bullies, and I retreated further and further into myself.

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't a totally lost cause. Around certain people, often similar social outcasts, I actually liked myself, I felt confident, I could relax, I could be happy.

As time went on and I began High School, I was determined to reinvent myself, determined to be well liked, even popular. This ambition did nothing to quell my anxiety, I would over analyse myself. I was very thin skinned, social experiences I perceived to be a failure would have a catastrophic effect on my mental health and I would isolate myself.

In a desperate attempt to gain social cachet, I attempted to mould myself into a hyper masculine figure. I wanted to build myself in the image of my role models at the time. Charismatic, strong, dominant. There was no room for femininity in my world.

Time went on, my attempts at being a contemporary Hercules made me marginally more confident, but I was never really happy. I got a girlfriend, had a solid group of friends, and delved deep into drug culture in another vain attempt at forming an identity.

I couldn't have known then, but my dissatisfaction with my life and my identity had an incredibly simple explanation. The house I had so painstakingly built had no foundations. The only thing keeping it standing was a total fantasy. I was, and I'm sure many of you can relate to this, trying to be someone I was not.

Knocking this house down and beginning to rebuild was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. The house, my identity, was the only thing shielding me from the vicious winds of social anxiety. I first realised that I would have to brace myself for the storm in my first year at university, I am now in my third year, and I've barely laid the foundations of my forever home.

2020 was a very important year for me. Hard, but important. My mental health had deteriorated enormously in my second year at university, and in a strange way, I saw lockdown as a blessing. Socialising had become incredibly difficult for me, I was very rarely leaving my room and talking to my housemates, who were some of my closest friends. Lockdown was an excuse to go home and isolate myself completely, just this time I had an excuse other than my mental health. I was ashamed of my anxiety, of my insecurity.

I am aware now that this is an incredibly unhealthy mentality, but I was not thinking rationally. I wanted to hide.

And hide I did. I rarely spoke to my family, I didn't speak to friends, my only attempt of a zoom quiz with friends was a complete failure. My anxiety overtook me and I left halfway through, pretending my WiFi had cut out.

Social anxiety and isolation are in an incredibly toxic relationship. Social anxiety desperately wants to be with isolation, but social isolation is an incredibly abusive partner. For someone suffering with social anxiety, this sets in motion a destructive cycle. You feel anxious, so you isolate, which in turn makes you more anxious, until you are eventually left as little more than a husk of a person, seemingly devoid of personality and terrified of the world.

I have fallen into this cycle many times in my life, and I am no stranger to it even now.

As the country descended deeper into lockdown, I descended deeper into my anguish. I had stripped myself bare, exposed myself to those vicious winds, and, isolated from the world, completely lost sight of who I was, or who I wanted to be.

The turning point for me was when I finally accepted I was unwell, and made moves to get help. My parents didn't even know how ill I really was, partly because I was ashamed, partly because I was afraid that it would upset them. I arranged to start therapy through my university, and with great difficulty, told my parents. They were incredibly supportive, even though I still couldn't admit to them the source of my pain.

I was so ashamed of my illness because, for me, social anxiety was the very antithesis of masculinity. Despite knocking my house down, I still clung to those false foundations. I am not saying I believed anxiety was feminine, simply that it was un-masculine, and not being masculine was shameful for me. Being anxious meant that you were not charismatic, confident, or strong, and that was incredibly difficult for me to admit to myself, let alone other people.

I started taking medication, I swear by it now, but before I got used to it it amplified my anxiety tenfold. In the meantime, I had started therapy. In the beginning, I couldn't even turn on my camera or look at my counsellor. The only way I could really talk and work through my issues was by trying to forget there was a real person on the other end of the phone.

But, eventually, things improved.

I was able to make eye contact with my counsellor, I was spending more time with my family and as lockdown was lifted, I was slowly easing myself back into social life, one person at a time.

I decided it was time to start rebuilding my house.

Free from the shackles of masculinity and with nothing but a bare plot of land on which to build, I began to think about the type of person I was, and the type of person I wanted to be. Knowing the type of person I want to be is easy, but figuring out who I am and combining the two proved to be more difficult.

As I leave 2020 behind and throw myself into 2021, this is my primary resolution. I want to become more aware of myself. I have started doing yoga every day, to become more aware of my body. I have started meditating, to become more aware of my mind. I have started expressing my affection for people more openly, to become more aware of my soul.

Although I am undoubtedly only just beginning my journey of awareness, I have noticed one of the key obstacles to understanding myself is a lack of mindfulness. Terrified of being left alone with my thoughts, I fill my life with distractions. I am never doing just one thing. If I am watching TV, I'm on my phone at the same time, if I'm cooking, I have a video playing in the background. I can't even go to the toilet without scrolling through my phone. I'm sure this is something many of you can relate to.

This year, I am committing myself to mindfulness. I am committing myself to giving every task the attention it deserves. Intrusive thoughts be damned. The only way I am ever going to understand myself is to listen to myself, however much I don't want to. I hope you will join me on my journey. It will be so much easier together.

See you on the other side.

healing
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