Happy is what brings healthy, and viceversa, so it can't be that much of a surprise anxiety and depression have had some pretty rough consequences on my health; High blood pressure at 25, on-and-off flings with anemia, near-constant sleep deprivation. I may as well have an imp bouncing up and down on my kidneys whilst someone tells my nervous system to pump out all the stress hormones its got, so I can feel normal, or at least prepared. Like a Girl Scout on crack. That's PTSD hypervigilance for you. It's also that sometimes our bodies express what we are otherwise unwilling, or unable to say.

On acceptance, anxiety and guilt Life with mental illness isn't always fun. Not just because I have a real illness, and that real illness really does affect my life but because some folks have trouble accepting this. I'm not entirely sure why except they don't like the thought that someone with mental illness can "zomg, look just like them," and still be quite unwell. That's the thing about invisible illness: Once revealed, people around you may feel conned, manipulated, lied to. Even though you've done nothing wrong. Yeah, I'm guilty of being unwell in the general vicinity, of having mental health issues and having a life anyway. Sorry about that. Next time I'll wear my "mentally interesting" t-shirt so you can detect the crazy, before it gets in your Coke. *passes the tin-foil hat*

Even after all this talking, and doing, fixing, and mulling-over, and redoing, I still find that I go through stages of really, really disliking dealing with myself, all this: the anxiety. I worry about the things that maybe I can't fix. That's potentially the hardest thing to face about the words which preface my diagnosis; It isn't PTSD. It's 'chronic, severe' PTSD. So you see, there's really no getting out of it. I can't say, "well, I only have a little post traumatic stress," or "Anxiety only gets this bit of my life!". It gets rather a lot, actually. And people with anxiety disorders don't get nearly enough say about it. Not. nearly. enough.

I come up against this wall plenty, in treating anxiety: Combating the sense of hopelessness, of powerlessness, that only too often accompanies the worst symptoms of anxiety disorders. How do I not get stuck when simply feeling things seems way above my pay grade? "If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself." -The Art of War

Tomorrow is Judgment Day, according to the followers of Harold Camping. Believers say they will be taken up to Heaven, while the rest of us anxiously await the apocalypse, come October 21 2011. I have to ask: If the end of the world is tomorrow, why don't more of us believe it? Anxiety and ego strength The answer says a lot about the way people deal with self-doubt, anxiety. And this is just one example of catastrophic, prepare-thyselves thinking.

Is panic emotional pollution? Running on adrenaline, cortisol -the fear center of the brain staging neurochemical warfare on your nervous system- is the equivalent of climate change. It's dangerous. It's doing your whole system damage you can't even see: Forests for trees. Anxiety: I can't stand it anymore Anxiety alters the way our minds and bodies respond to stress so that it's harder, in the long term, to return to a state of calm and restfulness. I can't stand it anymore. If you have an anxiety disorder, you know what I mean.

Have you ever felt safe? Maybe that seems like a stupid question, and if it does, consider yourself lucky is about all I can say. My therapist asked me something like it once, and I ended up triggered, taking a 20 minute tangent via Intellectuals 'R Us to pick up a freakin' clue. Look hard enough at most things in modern life and they are pretty scary. Panic: Life = risk? Life = risk? Is that as good as things get?? Well, catastrophizing ever so slightly less, life = many things but in amongst them, inevitably, is an element of risk.

Anxiety manifests itself in the everyday, supposedly humdrum of it all, and fear has a way of telling me things which are otherwise impossible to speak; The things I cannot acknowledge must still be expressed, for so long as they are part of me, they will find ways to be. And so it is that the common cliches that clutter up the mind become the stuff of our most intense anxieties, and preoccupations:

Anxiety and panic are so overwhelming, that even when you know anxiety isn't the only thing you're feeling, you can't name what those other things might be. You can't pinpoint them, and you certainly can't get to them, hold onto them, or catch them as well as you catch anxiety. Long story short: there's a profound difference between feeling overwhelming panic and feeling okay. And you can't cure panic or anxiety by thinking your way to okay.

On new habits, chocolate, and not always taking the blame I'm treating anxiety with copious amounts of Maltesers, and Greens&Blacks. Probably isn't going to help me relax (such as that ever happens) but it makes me feel better about the parts where I sulk and procrastinate because I have deadlines, and everyone else has a long weekend. Anyway, onto the topic du jour: Is 'my best' enough to stop anxiety -and what is emotional competence, exactly?