Imagine loving someone so much, but you’re so worried that something terrible might happen to them. You start trying to predict the future to protect them from any little, tiny possibility of danger. You alone are tasked with the responsibility of keeping this perfect person you love safe. You see the possibility of harm everywhere, and you are constantly reminding them of this. It’s very frustrating especially when the person you love isn’t careful enough. Then bad things happen. It is a high pressure job, taking care of something so helpless. Sometimes you get angry because, clearly, they forget about this. You have to remind them over and over that they can’t do anything without checking with you first. But, you have to do all these things because you love them so much.

This isn’t the type of love I want, but this is how I love myself. Rather, it’s how my anxiety loves me. I don’t think that I have ever opened up about what it’s like to really be an athlete with anxiety. Like the reality of how my brain works, how it affects my day to day, and my current treatment. I’ve been intentionally vague. I’m a big talker about being raw and breaking down mental health stigma. It’s easy to be a proponent for something when you’re just boosting the stories of other people. Not everyone in my life knows about the extent of my anxiety and my actual diagnoses. In sharing parts of my story, I’ve noticed many people are really pro-mental health when it’s something they can forget about. When you’re one of those “hide behind a smile” type of people, it’s ok. When your struggle with mental health is just a story to pull out during long bus rides, or drunk at a team party, it’s fine. However, when you start having panic attacks, show outward signs of internal struggle or, God forbid, talk about medication, many people (not all) change the topic quick, fast and in a hurry. Maybe I haven’t been so honest about the scary parts of anxiety here because I want to hold out hope that I am one of those “strong, silent” types. (We all know I’ve never been silent). Like I could be the poster child for anxiety and OCD because you would never think I have it. Like I’m fucking kicking its ass. However, that would be one PHAT ass lie because I do feel like I am losing my fucking mind and not in a cute unhinged kind of a way.

For me, anxiety is a disorder of distortion and control. If you’ve seen Stranger Things, you know about the “upside down.” That’s how I kind of imagine the world. My reality is very dark; danger is literally everywhere, but it resembles the real world enough that it’s easy to forget, or not even realize. It is not an accurate representation of reality. In this distortion, all my worst fears are true. I am a terrible person, player, friend, and daughter who is undeserving of any type of love or really anything positive and it’s my fault. I always say that anxiety is a disorder for narcissists. There’s this illusion of the world revolving around you and that you alone have the power to keep order in this upside down. Anxiety crowns you queen of this nightmare, shackles you with a crown and scepter, and chains you to the throne. So long as you keep everything perfect, none of the bad things are true. However, if anything bad does happen it’s 100% on you, and a reflection of who you are as a person. Everyday I live in this nightmare-ish reality where I am lazy, selfish, rude, and overall the most awful type of person. I am the type of person who causes bad things to happen, and everyday I must constantly try to counteract or prevent these things.

Obviously living within this reality adjacent hell scape, where I alone cause/control anything remotely negative to happen is amazing…I’m kidding it sucks. It’s made worse by the things my brain convinces me will maintain this “perfect” idea of myself. For me, this includes ruminating/overthinking every single situation I have with someone to make sure that I haven’t done anything perceivably offensive. I don’t mean just thinking about what I said. I have spent hours mulling over a single interaction analyzing tone, body language, eye contact, word choice, literally anything to decipher the smallest bits of extra information. I will also constantly look to friends for reassurance that I wasn’t rude or acted in any kind of negative way. There’s also the more obvious symptoms. I have been late for things because I have to check over and over again that doors are locked, stoves are off, windows are closed, and appliances are unplugged. In my head, not doing one of these things could cause some sort of disaster for which I undoubtedly would be to blame. Additionally, I often I have waves of discomfort when things aren’t, “right.” It feels like when one of your limbs starts to come to after being asleep, but I experience this in my whole body, sometimes inexplicably. It’s a little bit uncomfortable and almost hurts in a way. Usually, when this happens, I have to run through every possible cause to try to find the thing that “turns it off.” Most times, for me, it has to do with something being “dirty.” This could lead me to do something like deep cleaning my room immediately, or taking 2-3 extra showers. Whatever it is, I have to keep doing it until it feels right. Really, it’s all about doing whatever it takes to keep my mind quiet.

The upside down and the effects of anxiety spread over to soccer as well. For me, this looks like only being able to imagine making mistakes during games and trainings. Inevitably, leading to those imagined mistakes becoming reality, lowering my confidence to literally zero. Further these errors are internalized as personal faults rather than just athletic mistakes. Somehow, something like one mistimed header equates to me being a terrible person. Similarly to how I combat my anxiety in everyday life, with soccer, I also try to do things until they feel “right”. After less than perfect trainings, I have spent an extra 2+ hours in the gym. I’ve done hill sprints after playing 90 minutes, I’ve watched hours of film after one bad game all to chase this feeling of being “right.” Anxiety is interesting because, in some levels, we need it; it can actually help us. We all have an individual threshold for anxiety in which it’s beneficial. It can keep us aware, ready. It’s only if you go too far over that personalized level that there’s negative effects. I, of course, sway to the less helpful side. However, there are ways in which its helped me as well. During my injury, it had me doing extra rehab. It has me spending extra time on the field working on my weaknesses. In some ways, thinking that you are always behind others keeps you motivated. Oftentimes during my off-season training, I find myself replaying my mistakes from the season over and over again and designing drills that mimic those scenarios. In this way, I’m always hungry. I am my own best coach. However, I can admit I don’t often know where the line is and I don’t always do this extra training, film etc with the best intentions. Sometimes I am just stressing my body unnecessarily, probably just trying to exhaust myself so I’m too tired to think.

This type of mental ill health is something you can raw dog for only so long. It was when I was in university that it became something I couldn’t handle alone. This is the time I started going to therapy, and that worked for a while…until it didn’t. Newsflash: I’m really really really good at thinking! I can think about an emotion, understand why I’m feeling it and where it stems from very well. However, this type of awareness isn’t the most helpful. In my mind, if I can explain my emotion then there’s no point in feeling it; it’s just not helpful. In some ways, I felt like therapy was just another opportunity for me to overthink things, but with no real solution. I could understand that I was anxious. I could pinpoint why, but I couldn’t actually live with it. While I did feel that therapy helped me in so many ways. I eventually took a break from it after college when I went pro. I only started going back around the time of my injury, which obviously had negative effects on my mental health. This time around was kind of the same. I had a really great psychologist who pushed me to just sit with emotions instead of dissecting them. However, I ran into similar obstacles as before. I struggled to live with my anxiety; I was always fighting with it. I was constantly trying to get rid of it rather than acknowledge and accept it. I was winning this fight, I thought, for a while. However, when we reported back for preseason after the summer break, I was back in a difficult, uncomfortable environment and struggling to be the “perfect” player. My anxiety came on ten fold. I couldn’t even calm my mind enough to use the strategies that I had practiced for 6 months prior in therapy. My brain was inundated with negative thoughts. There was no way for me to distinguish my “upside down” from the real world. There was no respite from my nightmare. After a lot of encouragement from my boyfriend, I decided to seek more help in the form of medication. I found a good psychiatrist and scheduled an appointment for the next day. He agreed that I did have anxiety. He also introduced something new, OCD. I was relieved that a professional actually thought there was a real issue. He prescribed me a really low dose of medication just to try out, and I’ve been doing well with that since then. Medication hasn’t solved my problems in any way. However, it has brought them down to a level where the strategies that I worked on in therapy can now have an impact. For the most part, I’ve had this insane sense of relief. There are some days where my brain is truly just quiet, and I haven’t been able to say that ever really in the past 26 years.I know this isn’t the end of my journey because there are still a lot of days that I struggle. Just knowing that I have diagnosable mental health issues makes me feel different. It can be lonely when I explain how I think and what’s going on to people and they either stare blankly or don’t understand it at all. It makes me feel like I am losing my mind, or that I am weaker or more fragile than others because my brain is broken in a way. It can be embarrassing when I can feel a panic attack coming. I know that people can tell. I mean, I look like I’m about to freak TF out and in those moments I can’t stop and explain everything about how my brain works and how it’s just a symptom of an issue that I have. All I can do is hope they don’t notice. I don’t regret seeking treatment for my anxiety, therapy or medication, it’s something I obviously need. However, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel embarrassed about doing so sometimes.

I make a lot of jokes about having anxiety. I know it’s part of who I am and I probably will always have this way of thinking. However, I am not proud to have anxiety issues. I don’t want to be the poster child for athletes with OCD or something. I would be an absolutely terrible role model for other athletes because I have no idea what I’m doing. I don’t want this issue at all. I know that in some ways I have my anxiety to thank for some of my successes, but I would rather not have this abusive relationship with myself. I would rather not even be able to write a whole post about struggling with mental health issues, but that’s kind of why I wrote it. I’m like a Deadpool-esque antihero hero if you think about it. I’m like the Dark Knight. I’m not the hero you need because I’m not a hero. I think you get the point. I just want to be real. Anyways, if you take anything from this: mental health issues, specifically anxiety sucks. It’s hard living like everyone hates you and it makes being an athlete harder. But, there’s so many options for relief out there. Finding the one that works for you is hard, and can be difficult on the ego. Don’t stop looking though, because it’s so worth it. Boom I just broke this whole thing down in like two sentences.