Why You are Not Alone with Your Anxiety

Anxiety has a unique ability to make you feel terribly alone and isolated in your suffering. It can be hard to believe that anybody – and I mean anybody – could be suffering from the same bizarre and torturous symptoms that you are experiencing. But you’re not alone. In this episode, you’re going to learn just how common anxiety is, and how to get rid of this feeling of isolation so that you start feeling more normal again.  

When you are suffering from anxiety, you have all these bizarre and intense sensations, and they are so strange that it’s difficult to believe anyone is suffering in the same way that you are suffering. But the reality is that your anxiety follows a well-recognized pattern of symptoms that’s being experienced by millions of people around the globe at this very moment. Yes, you heard me correctly - millions of people are suffering in the exact same way you are suffering. 

This might seem hard to believe, but the National Institute of Mental Health has reported that 31% of adults in the United States experience an anxiety disorder during their lifetime. That’s nearly 1 in 3 people just in the United States alone. So no, you aren’t alone. There are fellow anxiety sufferers around you right now – they might be in the car next to you at the stop light, walking past you on the street corner, or in front of you in the checkout line. They, like you, have been trapped in a vicious cycle of anxiety.  

What’s more surprising is that it’s quite likely that someone close to you, such as a family member, friend, or colleague, is suffering from some form of anxiety right now. It might be that they get panic attacks, have social anxiety, or have a general anxiety disorder. But here’s the thing: in most cases, it's not possible to know they are suffering because we don’t openly talk about it.  

For example, I want you to take a second to think about your own willingness to talk about your anxiety. If you are like most anxiety sufferers, you have not told all of your friends and extended family about your anxiety. And I’m sure you haven’t said anything to your co-workers, colleagues, or other acquaintances either.  

Chances are that you’ve likely only told a handful of your closest family and friends about your anxiety. You have, for the most part, suffered in silence.  

As anxiety sufferers, we are notorious for suffering in silence. We don’t tell others about our anxiety and they don’t tell us about theirs. But this silence creates the illusion that you are completely alone in your suffering. It feels like nobody else is going through what you're going through. And that’s a problem. Because feeling alone and trapped with anxiety is itself anxiety-inducing.  

When I was suffering from anxiety, I only told my closest friends and family about my anxiety and I hid it from everyone else. As a result, I spent over a year of my life feeling more alone and isolated than I ever thought possible. I felt like I was trapped on a deserted island like Tom Hanks's character in the movie Castaway.

But then, as I began my recovery from anxiety, I completely reversed course and tarted telling nearly everyone that I knew about what I had been experiencing the past year. I told them about the relentless waves of anxiety, the sleep panic, and the spontaneous panic attacks. As I did, I was stunned by the response. Several people began telling me about their own struggles with anxiety. A close relative of mine explained how she experienced panic attacks when in large crowds, a good friend of mine revealed that he gets anxiety while on airplanes, and a new acquaintance told me that he’d been suffering from general anxiety for nearly as long as I had. On top of all that, many others told me that they personally knew someone who was also experiencing severe anxiety.  

So, what I discovered was that I hadn’t been alone with anxiety at all - it was simply my silence that had made me feel alone. As I started telling people about my anxiety and hearing people close to me tell me they were suffering in similar ways, I felt like this huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I suddenly no longer felt alone and isolated in my suffering. My eyes were opened to the fact that anxiety is not uncommon and that it’s actually widespread, and has the ability to affect anyone and everyone. 

Alright, so here’s what I want you to do. If you are feeling alone with your anxiety, I want you to start telling people about what you’ve been experiencing. Tell them what you’ve been going through. Explain to them the sensations, the panic attacks, and the limitations it has put on your life. Yeah, I know it can sound scary to be that vulnerable to other people, but I promise that you will feel incredibly liberated once you open up about your anxiety. Not only that, but I think you’re going to be very surprised to find how many people you know are also dealing with issues related to anxiety. 

But I’m not going to just send you out there to talk about your anxiety without any support. First, I am also going to address the two primary reasons that we don’t talk about our anxiety. Reason number one is that we don’t understand why we are experiencing anxiety, and so consequently, we don’t know how to explain it to others. 

For that, I have included my 5-Step Cure to Anxiety and Panic Attacks in the link below. That’s not only going to allow you to explain your anxiety, but it’s also going to give you the complete roadmap to your recovery from anxiety, and its completely free. The second reason we don’t talk about our anxiety is because most anxiety sufferers, myself included, feel ashamed of having anxiety. You can feel embarrassed and ashamed that anxiety has had such a significant effect on your life and be hesitant to open up and talk about it. But listen, there is no shame, and in the next blog post, I’m going to break down why there is no reason to be ashamed of your anxiety.