What is Anxiety? My Diagnosis and, Ah Yes, the Timeless Battle of Clowns vs. Firefighters.

It didn’t take long after the first session with my therapist for the verdict to come through: I had Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD).

Basically, I was anxious about pretty much everything and anything.

My anxiety didn’t stick to just one issue. So, once I’d solved one problem, my brain immediately latched onto something else. It constantly needed something to worry about. For example, I woke up feeling anxious about work, but once that problem was resolved, it shifted to my health. If my health anxiety subsided, it moved to friendships and relationships or some other area of my life.

My brain was always looking for a new problem to fixate on — it couldn’t rest until it found something to fret over.

We then discussed how, despite feeling like something was constantly wrong, I could still function as part of society. For example, I could hold down a job. I cooked dinner, did the dishes, and took care of other chores. Those crippling self-doubts didn’t stop me from fulfilling day-to-day requirements. This meant my anxiety was classed as ‘high-functioning’—not a formal diagnosis, just a subset of GAD.

That helped explain why I hadn’t seen my thoughts as a problem before. Why would I question anything when I was still going through the normal motions of being a 20-something? Sure, I had a constant shadow of deep foreboding, negativity, self-doubt, and general darkness tagging along with everything. But I was still getting the job done.

Soooo... gold star for acting like I have it all together?

Learning I had GAD didn't come with an 'aha' moment though.

I didn’t think, Oh, that's why I struggle to get to sleep sometimes because my brain is replaying every possible worst-case scenario it can think of.

Or, that's why I wake up at 3 in the morning and panic about what I have to do at work in a few hours.

At the time, anxiety was just a buzzword. It wasn’t something people had, it was just something they felt.

To understand how it impacted me, I had to figure out what anxiety is—and I realised there’s a thin line between anxiety and fear. Both stem from the primal survival instincts we developed thousands of years ago, but the difference lies in space and time.

Fear is an immediate response. It’s the alarm bell that goes off when we’re in actual danger. If a car swerves towards you, that triggers fear because it could seriously hurt you right now. Fear also causes a physical reaction—your heart rate spikes, adrenaline floods your system, your stomach drops and you take action to save yourself. You get out of the way.

Anxiety, however, is a fear-based response. But instead of reacting to real danger in the present moment, it reacts to things that could happen in the future. The body doesn’t know the difference, though. An anxious thought still triggers a fear response—adrenaline floods your system, your heart races, your stomach churns, and you feel the urge to act. Except now, you’re trying to act on something that isn’t actually happening, even though your brain is convincing you it will.

Anxiety swoops in and tells you it’s here to save the day, but really, it’s like an uninvited clown showing up to put out a fire that doesn’t even exist.

Which, when you think about it, makes no sense, right?

Stick with me while I talk you through the metaphor I've developed.

Imagine your logical brain as an experienced firefighter. It’s known you since the moment you were born, has seen you through countless challenges, and has an unlimited capacity to face whatever may come. It can spot potential problems, find solutions, and act calmly and decisively.

The trouble is, it can’t do any of that if it can’t even get a moment to think.

Because the clown’s running around like the sky’s falling, flinging buckets of water everywhere, making a scene and shouting about non-existent fires.

It’s so loud, so chaotic, that the firefighter can’t even assess the situation. It’s trying to say, ‘Hang on, there’s no fire. Calm down. Let me think for a second,’ but the clown won’t listen. And, understandably, its overwhelming urgency is all the firefighter can pay attention to. So it just stands there, watching the circus unfold, trying to hold it all together, while the clown’s telling them the world is about to burn.

God forbid the exhausted firefighter says, 'You know, maybe the clown is right. Maybe there will be a fire.' That’s doubt, and the clown sees that moment of hesitation as a win—an opportunity to grow louder and more insistent until, eventually, you concede that it’s right.

You need to realise that allowing the clown to run the show leaves your logical brain overstimulated, exhausted, and unable to concentrate.

After learning this, I quickly understood why I was so drained all the time—physically, emotionally, mentally, you name it... although that’s about it lol.

I looked at my life and saw I wasn't living.

I’d become a full-time doom-scroller, refreshing my Instagram feed like it was a part-time job. Drowning out the noise in my head with an endless stream of content felt like the only way to survive. I was disconnected, disengaged, and completely uninterested in things that used to bring me joy, let alone finding new things that might. I was numb. Nothing made me happy but nothing made me sad. Sleep was restless and broken or barely happening at all. I was snappy, short-tempered, and actively avoiding people - friends I'd moved back to be close to again. Despite being glued to my phone, even answering a single text felt monumental sometimes.

And no wonder, I had a resident clown who overreacted to everything. From choosing an outfit in the mornings to deciding what to watch and what to do with my weekends, everything was put under the spotlight for scrutiny. So, I fell into a cycle—wearing the same clothes, rewatching the same shows, and doing nothing on the weekends became the norm.

I could function, sure, but I was sick of just existing between work and home. I wanted more than my job and endless scrolling on the internet.

My mission was crystal clear: get the clown a chair and tell it to sit the fuck down.

I am a firefighter and things are under control.

But, where to begin?