Root of My Anxiety
I have been analyzing myself since this whole anxiety bout has happened, I have been rather confused at the length of this episode. I will start to do much better then I will start to feel the effects again. As I have been going through my feelings and trying to find a logical reason, I believe I have found the root. I was concerned with me freaking out at the sudden changes of church, which indeed they have left me feeling quite anxious but surely this was not the only reason. That just didn’t make sense to me. There are several other things going on in my life that are normal anxiety triggers that have come up during this time and I am aware that these are making my anxiety worse than usual since they are all falling at once.
But this isn’t like me, I am feeling cowardly, like a weak and insecure person.
People who know me, know that I may be a lot of things but those three things are not me. So what is this? Why have I been hit with such a large dose of anxiety and why am I unable to snap out of it or reason myself through it much sooner? Diversity. Yes, the answer is diversity, well lack of in this area that we are living in. In the last 10 years I have made major changes in my life from moving to various cities, being in relationships, getting divorced, coming to a new faith, changing jobs, getting married, having children and seeking to find myself to name a few. I have had a lot of change and I have been able to handle it, at times I actually did much better. The constant change made things easier for me because I was always doing something, working on something, seeking out new ideas and new knowledge.
The places I had the least amount of anxiety were in the areas, the places where I was surrounded by many different people.
The best church experience I had was in a college town – very intellectual, new people, old people coming back constant change but the change brought about new ideas, new stories, new visions, new information that constantly intrigued me and challenged me to learn. The last 7 years I have lived in two places and though they are across the country from each other they are exactly the same. The people do not change, there is no challenge here. When I compare these two places to the two places that I lived where I thrived, I see with clarity the difference. The two places that I was not attacked with anxiety as much or able to control it better were places that had many different people, different cultures and beliefs. They lived in the US but were from different countries. I was around people who loved to learn, loved the arts, and they talked to learn about each other.
They really talked about interesting things and were very accepting of everyone.
There was another place that I lived that was much like where we are now and that is when I slipped into a deep depression and I was put on Zoloft. I was also diagnosed with endometriosis which caused severe pain and took over a year for someone to believe me. I went through two emergency room visits and three doctors. Finally the last doctor told me about endometriosis and sent me to a specialist with in two days I had laparoscopic surgery and on my way to recovery. I haven’t had any problems at all after I had children. Very thankful for that because when you are in physical pain as well as having anxiety on top of it, there are really no words to describe it other than life halting.
As I have been working through all of this, I see a pattern.
I recognize that what I feel when I go to church here is the lack of diversity and that makes my differences stand out much more. Now that I have a family with different issues I am in a constant state of seeing how different we really are from others. When I am surrounded by people who embrace diversity of thought, beliefs and ideas, I find them to be more accepting of my quirks and unique thoughts on life. Being surrounded by people who are set in their way of life, who understand their own language, everyone seems to know how everything should be around here and if you want to be accepted you have to learn their ways. They are different in looks, income, social status but they have the same thoughts, same ideas, same goals and they see no reason to think that they should be challenged or questioned in any way.
I have anxiety because I cannot question.
I have anxiety because I am not allowed to be me without serious silent social discipline. The discipline are remarks, eye rolls, the blatant me being invisible and completely unseen by certain people. And I am not being paranoid, this time. 
How do I survive in a place that just wants everyone to be the same? And how do they know what they are supposed to be doing? Other people have moved here from different places and they still know the rules. I have looked and looked for the last three years in this area for groups, even outside of church, I have looked for people who may have a bit of diversity and I have yet to find them. I will still keep looking because there has to be some out there. There cannot be an entire city of people who are unwilling to embrace differences, right? Anyway, as I think of this it has actually brought a lot of peace to me.
I understand the root of this particular anxiety bout and I will make changes in my life to try to help me and my family.
Tags: anxiety, depression, diversity, endometriosis
