Anxietea

Month six at my first job out of college.

I click into Microsoft Teams, zeroing in on my latest meeting reminder. It’s a casual, low-stakes coffee chat with a senior strategist. Piece of cake. Yet I can already feel my throat closing, my heart palpitating. The dread of a one-on-one with a person I barely know, who will create a first impression of me based solely off the pixelated rendition of my face on their HP monitor, creeps in. I run to the kitchen to get water and throw back a 10 milligram, peach-colored pill. It is a tiny tablet, but I still choke on it – my gag reflex is horrific. I can actually see my polyester shirt tick slightly up and down as my heart, in its panic, tries to break through my skin like a scarab in The Mummy. I could always cancel, say that the wifi went out in my building, or that I died. That feels dramatic for a coffee chat, I think. The meeting is about to start, and it’s too late to jump from the physical window, so I open the virtual one. 

I stumble through the fifteen minutes of pleasantries and prattle, taking tiny sips of water, fidgeting with my shirt, and blinking insanely hard. Breathing, usually an automatic ability, shifts into manual – I stall, unable to drive my own transmission. The meeting ends, and I can’t be sure if the senior strategist could tell how not okay I was. I work at a top strategy consultancy, a people-oriented trade where everyone is a smooth operator. I used to be, too. In a perfect world, I wouldn’t have this condition, known to most as anxiety. Yep, just anxiety. The thing that everyone feels before a big presentation or meeting their SO’s parents. Anxiety is a normal human response to life’s crazy moments. Not small coffee chats. Not everyday. Not every minute.

But I am a special snowflake – I have an anxiety disorder. The universe clearly knew I was too powerful to operate ably, so it installed a latent condition in my body that exposed itself only after I had developed a huge ego. My anxiety started peeking through when I was a freshman in high school – my stomach would hurt desperately before a presentation. But I loved presenting, feeling everyone’s attention on me as I dramatically recapped the symbolism in The Great Gatsby or revealed the injustice surrounding the treatment of the Mapuche in Chile. I was a high-octane student, undistracted by boys or popularity. I had a tight-knit group of friends and an undying need to do everything all at once.

I captained our volleyball team, performed as a nun in our school’s rendition of Sister Act, ran for student council president (lost to my best friend). I organized the annual prom car crash simulation, paraded around in pantsuits during business competitions, and threw ice cream fundraisers for kids with cancer. I truly gave not one single shit about what people thought about me. I wanted to live a big life, and this was just the start – college was the next chapter.

I became a college applications guru. I followed the tiers to a T – two safety, two perfect fit, two reach schools. I conquered SAT prep, scoring a nice round 1500. I meticulously edited my essays and ascended from 11th to 9th in class rankings over the course of the semester. My first rejection, Early Decision to UPenn, was painful, if not entirely unforeseen. I clearly was not docile Quaker material. But that was followed by a safety school, Temple University, offering me a half-ride while my best friend flaunted his full-ride status. I was in anxious shambles. 

That anxiety, peculiarly, began manifesting itself in physical ways. I was gagging. Not in the fun Drag context – I was not slaying the house down with my sickening looks. I was dry heaving, violently. My much-abhorred English teacher at the time remarked that because I had taken so many sips of water during a presentation, I would be receiving a B. I felt very broken – I had no idea what this mysterious throat-closing sensation was. And clearly, people had noticed. 

It became a vicious cycle. I was anxious about gagging, which made the panic worse, which then made the gagging worse. During some scarier moments, in desperate attempts to distract my mind from the unrelenting stream of panic, I would dig my nails or pens into my thighs, hoping that this pain would override my mind and shift my adrenaline towards solving a more immediate threat to my being. It never worked.

My older sister, bless her heart, was very concerned about this shift in my mental capacity. She ordered my skeptical parents to find me a psychiatrist. They delivered me to a family friend, who I was told abided by HIPAA and wouldn’t spill my dirty laundry to the entire Pakistani community. I drove to her office, sank into her ridiculously comfortable couch, and promptly began sobbing as I explained my situation. Startled, she immediately prescribed me Propranolol, a beta blocker designed to slow the heart rate, with little side effects and no addictive qualities, unlike other anxiety medications such as Xanax or Klonopin.

I took my little peach pill diligently every day, not understanding the effects until one night, when I decided to check my email at 10pm. In my inbox sat an interview request from Georgetown University. A one-on-one conversation with someone who would be staring straight into my soul for a few hours, determining my future. My heart quickly shot off, surpassing the highest OrangeTheory zone. But just as quickly, I felt the drugs in my system hold my heart back, reigning it in like a cowboy yanking the reins. It was divine. I slept like a baby.

And I crushed that interview, meeting at Starbucks with a wonderful Georgetown representative who, with his zipper down the entire time, crunched the ice from his cold brew and immersed himself thoroughly in my life story. So when I was accepted to Georgetown, I knew I had found a solution in my little peach pill. But progress is not linear, especially in a competitive environment like an undergraduate business program. An environment where things like networking, case interviewing, and debating are the currency of success. For months at a time, I functioned adequately, suiting up against Tisch’s, Mediterranean princes, airline heiresses, and those of that ilk. But more times than I care to count, my anxiety would return like that kleptomaniacal fox in Dora.

Anxiety is a malignant tumor of mental illness inside of me – my on-again, off-again boyfriend that I just can’t seem to break up with. It’s not that I haven’t tried. I have done a lot of work on myself to understand how certain triggers affect my reactions. My anxiety stems from fear of the unknown. So college was a big one; the job search, apartment hunting, and any big change that brings up uncertainty throws me off. Another trigger for me is performance, which breaks my heart. I love singing – I am good at it, and it makes the people around me happy when I do it. But I am never closer to a heart attack than when my parents ask me to sing their favorite rendition of “Beneath Your Beautiful.” 

The most important thing that I have learned over time is how to improve my gut-brain axis, basically the relationship the digestive system has with the mind. I not only have anxiety, but also Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), which I did not know about until recently, when I was told I suspiciously have one-too-many crapping my pants stories. I am in the process of eliminating my daily cold brew, my guilty pleasure Chipotle, and my mother’s famous haleem from my diet. Sometimes, a milkshake is worth the ensuing panic attack. 

A year out of college, my mental health is still yet to stabilize. Yesterday, I successfully presented a cheeky pitch to my client's CEO. But today, I discreetly covered my mouth to avoid gagging into the camera during a Teams meeting with my project manager. I find myself becoming increasingly antisocial as I skip out on FaceTimes with friends or coworker happy hours. Anxiety begets loneliness, even depression – I would rather avoid that development, even if it means gulping peppermint oil, sucking ginger candies, or even trying therapy for the fourth time. 

I know of people who have it worse than I do. On Instagram, you can find a page called @bensmithhasanxiety, run by a guy who actually vomits when he’s anxious. Ben’s page is utterly inspiring and radically candid about his mental health struggles. On TikTok, you can follow Julian Sarafian, a Harvard Law graduate-turned-serial-gagger, anxious to the point of suicidal ideation. It was transformational to discover that my condition was not as rare as I thought. R.E.M. was right – Everybody Hurts. Especially during the pandemic, when uncertainty is the status quo, mental health is the silent killer. 

I can’t wait to hand this article to my next therapist instead of stumbling over the words my body won’t let me say. I can’t wait to make someone else feel less alone in their mental health struggles. Maybe I’ll throw a party for those that relate to this piece. It shall be a stress-free silent disco – come as you are.