Kraken1664
05-07-2016, 07:18 PM
Hey everyone! I'm new here and just thought I'd give this thing a go. :)
I'm a a 21-year-old (male) university student in the UK.
I'd say my anxiety has been with me in one form or another for most of my life, but it's been in the last 5 years-ish that it's been the most prevalent. I thought I'd go through the last 5 years as both a cathartic exercise and in the hope that someone may have some helpful suggestions, and I think the whole context is needed, so here goes!
First of all, I should say I have a physical disability which means I use a powered wheelchair fulltime due to joint and muscle weakness. The relevancy of this should become apparent pretty quickly.
After showing some signs of anxiety (mainly of the social variety) for some years, while on holiday in Spain in summer 2011, I fell out of my wheelchair from an ill-placed ramp in a small town square. I fell forwards crushing my legs beneath me and the chair started to fall on top of me. All things considered, I might have been killed had there not been a man behind me to pull the chair back before it did too much damage. I was rushed to hospital and they luckily found that I hadn't broken anything. Kind of a miracle, seeing as my legs don’t really bend at more than like 120 degrees and when I fell on them they were almost completely bent up underneath me.
Anyway, this put me in an extreme state of shock and trauma and, for about a week, not only was I in pretty excruciating pain, I was also jumpy as hell and pretty much scared of my own shadow. I couldn’t eat at all and pretty much survived off peach ice tea! Over time I physically recuperated and things settled down a bit, but I began to develop a sense of serious unease about going down ramps and, within just a few months of starting my new college, this had developed into a pretty extreme phobia and, at my worst, I couldn’t go anywhere for fear that I would encounter a ramp. Even ramps I’d always used such as the one out of my vehicle became a source of real anxiety to me and I became borderline house-bound.
This coincided with the similarly traumatic dissolving of one of my absolute closest relationships. The personal assistant I’d had for the 4 years prior who had supported me through high school. School in general was tough for me and I repeatedly ran into barriers based on institutional prejudice. For example, at one point my school publically accused me of not doing my own work and the implication was quite strong that they felt I was incapable of producing high-quality of work due to my disability; to put it crudely, the rationale seemed very much to be ‘if his legs don’t work, chances are his mind doesn’t, either’. I proved them wrong with my final results but these experiences in themselves did quite a number on me. However, my one constant throughout these experiences, in addition to the support of my amazing mother, was this assistant. I’d say she was closer to me than just about anyone and I confided in her in just about everything (probably too much, in hindsight – always a wonderful thing). It was one of those things when we just hit it off from the get-go and she really helped me through some of the usual insecurities (and their implications for my experiences as a disabled person) during pretty much the whole of my teenage years. She became close with the family, too, and eventually (again, in hindsight) I’d say she became kind of like my best friend and something of a guardian/fatherly (I never really knew my own) figure for me.
I don’t know if she had a mental breakdown after we moved to the other college together, but her behaviour quickly became rather ‘problematic’. She wouldn’t do any of the roles she was supposed to do, and whenever she was challenged, she became pretty defensive and aggressive. On my birthday weekend, for example, she didn’t give me access to the work I needed and after my mum rang her asking her where it was, she spent the whole of my birthday complaining to me about my mum being meddling and unreasonable. I felt really uncomfortable but didn’t feel able to challenge her. I felt guilty for a long time afterwards and I was too anxious to eat my tea that day. She then, as my anxieties grew worse, started saying things routinely that I could only categorise as direct attempts (at least at a semi-conscious level) to fuel my anxieties. She lied to me about the gradient of certain ramps which threw me completely off balance and messed with my perception. On one ramp which she knew I felt nervous about, she said ‘you’re not going to go up that one, are you? Do you think you’ll do it?’ and, one day, she told me there had been rumours of storms (which she knew would make me worry as it has direct implications for going down my car ramp due to the wetness) when nowhere on the news had this ever been suggested. She also told me she was no longer prepared to go out with me to events such as gigs without a member of her family there and, when I expressed unhappiness about this, she accused me of fuelling her own anxieties. Anyway, I could waffle on detailing other examples forever, but I think I’ve communicated the gist of it. I appreciate how someone could think this shouldn’t have affected me as much as it did; after all, she was just a personal assistant, but as I’ve already said, she felt like much more than that to me. And there was something pretty insidious about the way she seemed to want to isolate me from my family and use my anxieties in order to control me; the fact this came from whom I trusted so much also really messed with my head.
She also, towards the end of our relationship, introduced me to alcohol. The first time I got tipsy was on some strong cider she brought to my home when she stayed over (I was about 16). I shortly thereafter attended her son’s rock/goth-themed birthday party and that was the first time I got properly drunk. I had an amazing time, but also said some pretty embarrassing things which I regretted afterwards. One of the last times we went out together, she and her son accompanied me to a gig, and she gave me loads of vodka. This was after there had already been some serious tensions and, once I’d got quite drunk, I actually cried in front of her and her son. Without going into detail, there was also at one point a significant risk posed by a ramp due to my being drunk, which was thankfully avoided. However, I think this was the point when the seeds were first sowed in my relating drinking and anxiety/danger.
To be continued...
I'm a a 21-year-old (male) university student in the UK.
I'd say my anxiety has been with me in one form or another for most of my life, but it's been in the last 5 years-ish that it's been the most prevalent. I thought I'd go through the last 5 years as both a cathartic exercise and in the hope that someone may have some helpful suggestions, and I think the whole context is needed, so here goes!
First of all, I should say I have a physical disability which means I use a powered wheelchair fulltime due to joint and muscle weakness. The relevancy of this should become apparent pretty quickly.
After showing some signs of anxiety (mainly of the social variety) for some years, while on holiday in Spain in summer 2011, I fell out of my wheelchair from an ill-placed ramp in a small town square. I fell forwards crushing my legs beneath me and the chair started to fall on top of me. All things considered, I might have been killed had there not been a man behind me to pull the chair back before it did too much damage. I was rushed to hospital and they luckily found that I hadn't broken anything. Kind of a miracle, seeing as my legs don’t really bend at more than like 120 degrees and when I fell on them they were almost completely bent up underneath me.
Anyway, this put me in an extreme state of shock and trauma and, for about a week, not only was I in pretty excruciating pain, I was also jumpy as hell and pretty much scared of my own shadow. I couldn’t eat at all and pretty much survived off peach ice tea! Over time I physically recuperated and things settled down a bit, but I began to develop a sense of serious unease about going down ramps and, within just a few months of starting my new college, this had developed into a pretty extreme phobia and, at my worst, I couldn’t go anywhere for fear that I would encounter a ramp. Even ramps I’d always used such as the one out of my vehicle became a source of real anxiety to me and I became borderline house-bound.
This coincided with the similarly traumatic dissolving of one of my absolute closest relationships. The personal assistant I’d had for the 4 years prior who had supported me through high school. School in general was tough for me and I repeatedly ran into barriers based on institutional prejudice. For example, at one point my school publically accused me of not doing my own work and the implication was quite strong that they felt I was incapable of producing high-quality of work due to my disability; to put it crudely, the rationale seemed very much to be ‘if his legs don’t work, chances are his mind doesn’t, either’. I proved them wrong with my final results but these experiences in themselves did quite a number on me. However, my one constant throughout these experiences, in addition to the support of my amazing mother, was this assistant. I’d say she was closer to me than just about anyone and I confided in her in just about everything (probably too much, in hindsight – always a wonderful thing). It was one of those things when we just hit it off from the get-go and she really helped me through some of the usual insecurities (and their implications for my experiences as a disabled person) during pretty much the whole of my teenage years. She became close with the family, too, and eventually (again, in hindsight) I’d say she became kind of like my best friend and something of a guardian/fatherly (I never really knew my own) figure for me.
I don’t know if she had a mental breakdown after we moved to the other college together, but her behaviour quickly became rather ‘problematic’. She wouldn’t do any of the roles she was supposed to do, and whenever she was challenged, she became pretty defensive and aggressive. On my birthday weekend, for example, she didn’t give me access to the work I needed and after my mum rang her asking her where it was, she spent the whole of my birthday complaining to me about my mum being meddling and unreasonable. I felt really uncomfortable but didn’t feel able to challenge her. I felt guilty for a long time afterwards and I was too anxious to eat my tea that day. She then, as my anxieties grew worse, started saying things routinely that I could only categorise as direct attempts (at least at a semi-conscious level) to fuel my anxieties. She lied to me about the gradient of certain ramps which threw me completely off balance and messed with my perception. On one ramp which she knew I felt nervous about, she said ‘you’re not going to go up that one, are you? Do you think you’ll do it?’ and, one day, she told me there had been rumours of storms (which she knew would make me worry as it has direct implications for going down my car ramp due to the wetness) when nowhere on the news had this ever been suggested. She also told me she was no longer prepared to go out with me to events such as gigs without a member of her family there and, when I expressed unhappiness about this, she accused me of fuelling her own anxieties. Anyway, I could waffle on detailing other examples forever, but I think I’ve communicated the gist of it. I appreciate how someone could think this shouldn’t have affected me as much as it did; after all, she was just a personal assistant, but as I’ve already said, she felt like much more than that to me. And there was something pretty insidious about the way she seemed to want to isolate me from my family and use my anxieties in order to control me; the fact this came from whom I trusted so much also really messed with my head.
She also, towards the end of our relationship, introduced me to alcohol. The first time I got tipsy was on some strong cider she brought to my home when she stayed over (I was about 16). I shortly thereafter attended her son’s rock/goth-themed birthday party and that was the first time I got properly drunk. I had an amazing time, but also said some pretty embarrassing things which I regretted afterwards. One of the last times we went out together, she and her son accompanied me to a gig, and she gave me loads of vodka. This was after there had already been some serious tensions and, once I’d got quite drunk, I actually cried in front of her and her son. Without going into detail, there was also at one point a significant risk posed by a ramp due to my being drunk, which was thankfully avoided. However, I think this was the point when the seeds were first sowed in my relating drinking and anxiety/danger.
To be continued...