Hey everyone, I’m going to talk about my anxiety which may trigger others!

I (21F) was just diagnosed with severe GAD and moderate depression. I work full time at one of the largest financial companies in North America, and I was 10 months in until October when my anxiety peaked and I needed to take time off.

I come from a Caribbean family where the old school culture is that “having mental health issues shows weakness, therefore bringing shame upon the family”. I mean this was never expressly SAID, but it was always the vibe of our family.

I find this fucked because both of my parents are severely struggling with their mental health issues. My estranged father is bipolar and paranoid. My mom is severely bipolar and is a functioning alcoholic. There was never food growing up. I have 7 siblings.

I never found out these things until I was an adult, causing me to never understand why my parents treated me and my siblings this way growing up, and why I constantly felt sick with anxiety and felt like I couldn’t talk openly about it. Anyway I legally emancipated myself from my toxic mother at 16, and began life on my own.

Things were better for me after leaving my family home. I got to working and studying, currently pausing uni to pay debts while I make a nice salary for a 21 year old, I even get benefits!

Fast forward to now. I moved to Montreal, currently living with my wonderful (27M) boyfriend. I work from home permanently (since March) because my job allowed me to move provinces. They even promoted me 3 months after receiving the entry position. All should be good, right? Wrong.

My anxiety after being promoted in this company has peaked. I can no longer control my anxiety. I went to a therapist who confirmed my suspicions a d diagnosed me with severe GAD and moderate depression. Looking at the paper I was numb. I knew this all along and my mother never saw to it to make sure her children didn’t wind up just like her. 

Memories of my anxiety attacks throughout my childhood, where I’ve only been gaslighted or abused in return flooded into my brain and the next thought was. “What the fuck am I going to do?” I’m 21 now and I’ve let this shit spiral to a point where I can hardly have relationships. 

I want to quit my job and start freelancing. Do something that I actually enjoy and can do more casually. Fuck the salary, and the benefits. I can’t deal with peoples finances, have them berate me, and expect me to perform miracles for them over the phone. I feel like I’m failing. I have a good job and I really want to throw it away and start transcribing or start a blog or do anything where I feel less anxious. I do NOT want to stop working at all. I don’t want to fail. 

I’m scared of losing money (even though my boyfriend says once his salary kicks in I won’t have to pay rent anymore) this doesn’t feel reassuring it feels like I’m losing my mind and my independence that I’ve worked SO hard to achieve. I’ve been so depressed lately sometimes lashing out at my boyfriend. Just this morning I freaked out panicking and crying about my bank account after paying bills (which led to him trying to reassure me).  Now I’m just laying under the covers writing this feeling like shit for yelling and crying about my money to my boyfriend. He didn’t deserve that. 

I don’t know. It’s just been hard since I spoke to that therapist and I feel as though I took one giant step forward this year and now need to take two steps back to focus on my brain and these intrusive thoughts and worry taking over my life. Anyone else recently been diagnosed? Or how did you take it when you found out that you had serious anxiety and how did you generally cope with the information? If you’ve made it all the way here I love you. 

TL;DR: My anxiety is ruining my new adult life and my recent diagnosis has made things worse in my mind.