How I Am Battling Crippling Anxiety

Hello, I have anxiety. I have been diagnosed with a pretty bad generalized anxiety disorder case, and I have been this way for as long as I can remember. I don't know what it feels like to live without anxiety, and because of this I have struggled with the things that others find normal, things like driving, making friends, and going outside by myself.

Sadly, this was mostly due to the fact that one of my parents had anxiety while I was growing up, the kind where they made me recite the rules whenever I went to a sleepover. "Don't stray from adults, no getting in the water, stay away from the road, repeat that back to me." The kind where I heard of the daily stories of how children, girls in particular would be murdered, killed, or otherwise. "You know that girl died from twisting on a swing like that, don't do that again." The kind where I was told to cross my legs, hide my bra straps, and always wear a bra around men, including my own family members. "You know that's not very lady-like."

This was a generational struggle after all, as my Grandmother only enforced these ideas in my head. She called me just recently to tell me that a girl had died because she didn't check to see if a car was the right car, an Uber. What they don't know or realize is that I check every time, I check twice, and then I check again. I don't trust myself for one minute, and even when I feel like I may finally trust myself a little, I feel bad for allowing myself to make my own decisions.

I have struggled with driving from day one of Drivers Ed., not to mention the fact that I held it off a year, knowing that I wanted nothing to do with it. For me, there is nothing scarier than having control and being out alone. I allow others to make decisions for me because I find it easier than actually saying what I want.

Day by day it gets easier, but then I realize how much work I still have to do. Every time they tell me another cautionary tale, I have to tell myself that I can be on my own because they teach me that I shouldn't be. It is a hard cycle, and while I may have escaped many things women my age have gone through due to the nature of these stories, I also have little trust in men because of this. Only recently, after getting a job where I have to interact with men every day, did I start to feel okay around them.

For the longest time, I intentionally avoided men, thinking that the one good man I am with was the only one out there. I wanted to believe that I could not be friends with any men, not only because of what I had been told, but because I had once tried to be friends with men, multiple men, and every single one had treated me badly in one way or another.

I am glad that I now have found my initial thoughts to be untrue, but this came from intentional positive thoughts while I was around the opposite sex. This became a practice of telling myself that they really were just trying to be friendly. But I still have a wave of relief when my Uber driver is a woman, and an air of fear when they are not. I told my Mother, "I wish there was a setting for just women drivers if you are a woman (or a non-male person)," and I told my therapist "I hope the people at the DMV will let me request a woman for my driver's test."

I'm not sure if I will ever fully trust men, and while I am a little distrusting of everyone, I know that I will always believe somewhere in my mind that I will need to be wary of every male stranger. How can I be sure after all? This is not to say that I believe every man to be bad or that they all would take advantage of a woman if given the chance. But I do believe that they are more likely to, and not by a little.

This may all seem hard to you, or maybe you relate to it. I personally do believe that I have gotten better. I went from not driving at all, to driving to work every morning, with my partner, but still. I went from not being able to even look at men without feeling guilty, to becoming friends with my male coworkers. I have many other things that I am still working on, like going out of my apartment alone, to even crossing the street, granted with a pepper spray glued to my hand. While it all has been difficult, I have found it to become easier over time, and I'm hoping I one day will be able to make my own decisions without feeling like I need to ask someone else for their opinion.

I am growing, and I am strong.