I'm Anxious

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This morning I read an article about anxiety and how women are twice as likely to be diagnosed with anxiety disorders than men. Because I'm a fairly anxious person I started to get anxious about this, and I thought about the reading I've been doing lately around personality and how it is formed.

I've been pondering a lot recently about what we're conditioned to feel and believe, the nature vs. nurture debate, how our perceptions are formed and then how we act these out over our lifetimes. When it comes to anxiety I think about how my parents dealt with worries. When my Dad is worried his eyebrows knit and he makes this 'hrmmmh' noise, it always racked me with guilt when I worried him so I'd always try to ensure that I was telling him good things so he didn't then need to worry about me. My Mum well her style was very different, she is fantastic at worrying, to the point where it manifests in physical ailments, she's also very vocal about her worrying. The result of this on me and my style is that I'm a repressed vocal worrier, which is confusing for me and even worse for the people around me. But who could blame them? The older I get the more I realise that my parents did the best they could with what they had, it's not like any of us get to an age where we have the answers.

What I find even more troublesome about this is that I have been brought up as a girl to believe that it is OK to worry, because if I can recognise these feelings in myself, then I will recognise them in others and I will be more empathetic and a better nurturer. I find this troublesome because I still have a difficult time saying to people that I need help or even just being able to say, 'today I'm feeling a bit worried and a bit emotional - so can you take it easy?'

So how difficult must it be for others who have been brought up to be tough, to be told that they shouldn't show their feelings and that letting it show would be weak. Predominantly, it is men who are brought up like this but I think it transcends the sexes.

I recently watched a video from TEDwomen where Tony Porter talked about this very thing, how women are told they can have feelings and men are told to toughen up. But I think it shouldn't just be about men or women being told something, shouldn't we all feel that it's OK to have feelings?

I am so often told that I should just 'relax' and not worry, but it is who I am. I will stress about things, I will dissect a situation (or possible situation) five hundred times over. Sometimes this will be useless, sometimes it prepares me to deal with things better. 

I will worry, and that's OK, today I'm feeling emotional. But it will pass, and I shouldn't be scared to say (or write that).