I woke up in the early hours of this morning from a bad dream
In a single, sharp jolt,
my body was forced out of a comfortable dormancy
and shifted into a state of panic.
My heart's racing,
my mind wandering to terrible and dark places
seemingly against my will.
This being preceded
by a very uncomfortable couple of hours the night before,
when I was lying in bed attempting to get to sleep.
But again...
I simply couldn't because my heart was beating out of my chest,
erratic breathing,
unusual and unhealthy thought patterns that
only make the condition worse and worse.
If you're expecting a regular, silly IHE, well this is not the video for you.
And if it makes you uncomfortable,
I recommend leaving right now.
But my body
literally cannot take it anymore
and I feel that making a video essay
explaining how anxiety affects me
will not only help me cope and deal with it,
but it may even help other people out there come to terms
or relate
or empathize on just what it can do to a person.
If there is only one single person out there
who finds even a smidgen of solace or comfort
in knowing that they're not alone,
then this whole video will be worth it for me.
As you may or may not know,
I like to keep my personal life private and away
from this youtube channel as much as I can for the most part
Not because
I'm embarrassed or scared of what people might think,
but mostly because I think it's unhealthy
to share every waking moment of your life
with a collection of strangers on the Internet.
Everyone deserves privacy
and it's not something most people even have to think about.
Never in a million years
did I ever even consider the possibility
that my privacy would be something
I may have to worry about.
So what does this have to do with anxiety?
Well,
in May of 2016
I vanished for nearly a month.
No videos were uploaded,
I barely posted anything anywhere,
the only place you could have found me
was on the JAR Media podcast.
Where I definitely wouldn't have mentioned
or talked about what was happening to me at the time
I did a livestream, where I loosely and vaguely
explained where I was for that time,
beating around the bush and avoiding
the exact reasoning
But let me explain to you what happened
Near the end of April or early May
I can't really remember
some anonymous people out there
started to get...
creepy.
No, I'm not talking about stupid comments
or rude email
I mean invasive,
disgusting, abhorrent behavior
that can only be described as stalking
This includes hunting for not only my full name
but all my immediate family's full names,
adresses, phone numbers,
long-lost pictures of me from
up to four or five years ago
before I even started this YouTube channel
There was even this one blog someone made
that was dedicated to hosting all of this private information
saying things like
'We have to find pictures of him'
'We have to stalk him and find everything out about him'
And not surprisingly
this completely threw me for a loop
and ever since then, my anxiety has been
pretty much a daily struggle.
It can be anything that causes it
Maybe only a small thing, like...
being too scared to call up the dentist
to rearrange my appointment
because they are on holiday on my original booking
Or stopping myself from going swimming
simply because I don't want to interact
with the person at reception
Or even more destructive behavior, like
panic attacks that wake me up at like 6AM
and leave me shaking and out of breath
for seemingly nothing
Or locking myself away
and refusing to interact with anyone
and just leaving myself to my own terrible thoughts
The cycle of axiety
is one the worst things about it
It's a spiral
that just gets worse and worse if you let it
You may be saying to yourself 'Well, that's dumb, stop!'
'Just don't do it, that makes no sense!'
And you're right
The thing that agitated me the most
about axiety at first was the lack of being able
to find a reasonable explanation or cause
for why I feel the way I do
Because the awful thing about axiety
is that it's not reasonable
It defies logic,
it is wrong
It's a thought process and a destructive vicious cycle
that is very hard to wrap your head around at first
and only gets worse
the more self-aware about it you become
Anxiety is destructive
Crushing
It hurts you both, phisically and mentally
It ruins relationships with people
It makes you feel pathetic and lost
It makes you feel wrong or broken
Embarrassed and sick
But let me tell you something
You should never
feel embarrassed or ashamed for something
you have no control over
Whether it's a mental illness,
your skin color, your sexual preference...
Don't you let anyone, EVER make you feel like you should be ashamed,
guilty or embarrassed for that
Objectively, on paper, I should have
absolutely nothing to worry about
I have a very comfortable and safe life
But another cruel symptom of anxiety
can be a sense of constant doubt
and worry
Things like, my YouTube channel is doing TOO well
My life is going TOO smoothly
My partner is TOO attractive and TOO perfect
Things are going too great for me
and maybe I don't deserve it
Even if you're joking or not, the 'get a real job' thing
is something I hear extremely often
My response is usually this tweet from Jim Sterling
But I remember a few years ago when I worked in retail for a bit
Someone called me over to ask for help
I politely told this guy what to do, as you're supposed to
and his response was to rudely say
'Well, how the fuck was I supposed to know that?
I have a real job'
Now, I'm definitely not suited to retail
because I found it to be horribly crushing
but in saying that
conversely, anxiety was hardly a problem for me at the time
It was still there,
but the difference is
I had no investment in weekend throwaway jobs like that
So it was easy to shrug it off and forget about it
But when your life completely revolves around
entertainment for an audience of people
that you are always constantly trying to impress and make happy
because you really, really care about it
I found that I started to ignore basic human needs like...
staying healthy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
I now work every single day of the week in some regard
I never switch off
I find it hard to switch off
It's always in the back of my mind
I used to take one day of the week to try and relax and do nothing
But now I livestream on that day
Which I thought would be fun
because I'm really bad at interacting with my fans
so I thought this would be the perfect way to do it
But I've been met by a large backlash of people who
because I'm sacrificing even more of my time to try to interact
and entertain my audience
and it does not affect the main flow of content at all...
I've people saying things like
'Your channel has turned to garbage
can you just make an actual fucking video, please?'
You get the idea
And comments don't usually bother me, but every now and again
there will be that one that will catch me at the wrong moment
and will just make me ask myself
Why do I even bother?
So if getting a real job
results in me being able to sleep at night
and not have panic attacks
then please, somebody go ahead and swap with me, yeah?
I don't know if you've heard about it, but the YouTube channel
"Boyfriend vs Girlfriend", I think that's what they're called
recently came out saying that they
literally have to stop making videos for a while
because it's ruining their lives.
They were roboticly documenting their lives
every single day
for multiple years, every day
And as a result it has ruined their relationships
and mental health, basically
And this is the result of two people honestly
just trying to entertain their fans and keep them happy
I'm not gonna let it go that far
and I'm not even making a video a day, like they were
So I can't even imagine how broken they must feel
So from now, my videos are done...
when they are done
If you can't respect me or appreciate as a person
enough to be patient for your free content
Then, would you kindly fuck off?
I don't want you here
I've so many great ideas for videos
some which will be coming really soon
I'm not Markiplier or Leafy
these videos take so much time for me to finish because I'm an anxious perfectionist
I like working on something for a long time until I'm happy with it
I used to release a video a week
but that often led to times where I wasn't happy with the video
where a couple of extra days would've made it that much better to me
But going back to the main subject of the video
I'm not talking about this to try and get some kind of
sympathy vote from all you out there
Although anything kind or supportive will not go unappreciated
But the whole point is
that anxiety is more common than you think
and if you've been suffering in silence
or relate to anything I've said
or who have let it gradually build over the years and
spiral out of control like it did for me
Then please, please, please
make an appointment with your local general practitioner
and just talk about it
I know people who have dealt with axiety
just by talking to people about it
You don't need to suffer alone
there are plenty of us out there
Seeing as axiety is caused by your body overproducing adrenaline
as soon as I saw the doctor and explained my situation
he prescribed me with some tablets that lower the adrenaline output
and I've felt, like, really good ever since.
I know this has been quite a serious video
but I didn't think wacky editing and jokes left and right
would be suitable
for the subject matter
This has been on my chest for a long, long time
So I'm glad I've finally got it out there
I hope this has been helpful,
interesting or eye opening for you
and good luck to all of you out there
who are dealing with similar issues
I'll see you on the next video
Bye