What A Bad Day With Anxiety Feels Like

There are days when anxiety makes you feel so kerosene drenched and flammable, that anything can be a trigger to a colossal fire within you. You open your eyes and you can sense it there, and there is absolutely nothing you can do to placate yourself and diffuse the flame that feels just about ready to spark up. Ideally, if this was the flu, you could take a sick day. But this isn’t the flu, and because it isn’t physical no one is going to take you seriously. There should be no shame in taking a mental health day, but society has confused you so much that you actually feel guilty calling in about this.

And so you go out into the world and continue as normal. As though everything around you is not a match. As though every other word will not set your mind aflame and leave you screaming because you are burning from inside, unable to breathe because of the cinders that are piling up in your lungs. The thing is, there is only so much you can do to make it stop. There is only so much you can do to keep the fire at bay. You are the only firefighter protecting the city of your mind and where you put on out on one end, another one starts.

Invariably, the fire will start, no matter how hard you try to make it stop. It starts and you’re there, trying to stop it, but thats when the panic attack sets in. Whilst you’re trying to deal with ten problems at once, it creeps up on you, like something waiting in the dark for you to turn out the lights.

So there you are, burning, trying so hard to control it, reaching blindly for anything to help.

And as you are burning, there are some people around you, who instead of helping you fight the flames, are just watching you burn, saying “Don’t you think you are overreacting?”