Pressure: An Extrovert’s Battle with Anxiety

Anxiety can be a pain that comes in many different forms. If you’re anything like me, you prefer to stay busy and around other people in order to distract yourself from what you feel. In some cases you prefer to focus on other people rather than yourself, which can hurt you in the long run. The “funny” thing about anxiety is that if you don’t come up with some management plan, it will overwhelm you. When that happens, we can hide, become impulsive, and sometimes we can burst into tears. I am a very busy person. I don’t say that to sound pushy or rude, but I never sit still. I’m always doing some kind of activity, project, paper, or solving some kind of problem. I barely have time to sleep. When I say barely I mean that my days usually end at between 12:00am and 2:00am. However, when my day begins varies everyday. Some days it’s 8:00am, sometimes it’s 10:00am. On a really busy day it doesn’t end until 5:00am. As of right now, I only have one day off a week. Most people would look at me like I’m insane when I tell them what I have to do in a day. You’re probably doing this right now, but what if I tell you this is the only way I can manage to stay calm?

Is it Possible?

Now, I bet you’re wondering if you’re reading this right because I don’t sound like a person who has anxiety, right? I’m “too extroverted”— right? For a very long time I thought the same way. “I’m an extrovert so I can’t be anxious because I like to be around people.” In reality, anxiety can hit any individual at any given time. For me it comes when I take tests, overthink, and when I’m in social settings where I don’t know too many people like when I am at the mall. I usually start sweating, even if I’m standing in place.

In other instances I feel the need to pace. It doesn’t stop when I’m alone either. Some days I can truly be my worst enemy, but I was even more so as an adolescent coming into adulthood.

During high school I did research, and I knew what was wrong, but I had nobody around me that would listen to me or how I felt. On the rare occasion my mother would listen to me, she would tell me “Bri, you’re fine.” or  “You do well under pressure. That’s something I could never do.” After hearing one thousand versions of those statements I stop trying to talk about it all together. I suppressed everything actually. Then I discovered this app called “Whisper”. You can post anything on there because it’s all anonymous. One day a friend introduced me to this app and reminded me that how I felt matters and that expression is a key factor in how I manage my anxiety. In other words, I can’t keep it all bottled up.

Reaching Out: Find Your Resource

So, I downloaded the app, and simply posted about how I was feeling, and not fully understanding how to express what I feel to my family without being shut down. I didn’t expect to get as many replies and messages as I did. All of them were so supportive and encouraging. It felt nice to have my feelings validated for once. I got many tips for finding helplines that would help me manage what I was feeling. The one that has helped me the most is the Arkansas Crisis Center.

At first it felt so weird calling a hotline because I thought they were mainly for people with “more serious problems” but when “Sarah” answered the phone she was welcoming and supportive. She reminded me that emotional support is necessary in this process of healing and that I need to let go of what I thought. She was referring to when I told her that I’m an extrovert so I didn’t fully understand why my symptoms of anxiety are different from what is usually portrayed not only by the media, but specialists as well. Sarah had to remind me that a lot of those professionals we see in school only have enough time to go over the more exaggerated introvert scenario, and that anxiety also comes on a spectrum. For some it’s debilitating, but for others it can be managed a bit easier. It varies by person.

The Symptoms

After this conversation I decided to go back and do some research of my own. I came across this website named “Healthline”. I found it interesting that they had a list of symptoms, and some I had never heard of before. Some are:

Restlessness

Fatigue

Irritability

Tense Muscles

Trouble Falling/Staying Asleep

I was shocked by what I found because all of these symptoms fit me, yet I  had never been told that these were symptoms of anxiety. This made me wonder what other lack of information was there, which led me to google “extroverts and anxiety”. Most of the articles I found began talking about how much wasn’t known about extroverts can have anxiety and then they proceeded to talk about introverts and gave multiple examples of how you can notice anxiety with them. A great example of that is the article “How Mental Health Issues May Vary Among Introverts and Extroverts”. This article had many examples to use for describing introverts, but next to nothing to say about extroverts except that we need to watch our reasoning for being around people and that we shouldn’t ignore our problems. Everything was vague.

You’re Not Alone

On another website I found an opinion piece written by Kate Milner. She discusses her own experience with anxiety, as an extrovert, and she also discusses the lack of information there is around extroverts having anxiety. Milner also mentions that “there’s a fear of social awkwardness.” and I could not relate more to that statement. I’m always thinking about what I say and I hesitate a lot because I want to avoid looking dumb or terribly offending somebody. No, I’m not the shyest person in the world, and I’m not an introvert, but the anxiety that I feel is valid. If you’re a breathing human being, what you’re feeling is valid. Don’t let the lack of information and assumptions make you feel uncertain of what you’re feeling. Hopefully more research will be done to further validate what you’re feeling, but just know it can happen to anyone. In the meantime, one of the best ways to cope is by being honest, and in some cases by opening up.