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Anxiety is the most disabling of my mental health problems. As long as I can remember I've had a huge propensity to worry. During school and college if I felt under pressure I would faint. I would rearrange books on library shelves and food in cupboards believing that if items weren't in the right place I would have bad luck.

My worries were focused on food and weight when I became anorexic. Despite being of normal weight I was certain others saw a chunky body. For six years I thought about food during every waking moment. Being admitted to hospital was meant to take away this obsession but it exacerbated it. As an in-patient, and later a resident, in a Richmond Fellowship hostel I was terrified of the placement suddenly ending. Nothing reassured me despite funding being agreed in principle for as long as I needed it. In my only experience of work I was distracted by worry. I was a trainee with a year's contract but couldn't stop thinking about what I would do when the 12 months ended. When a restructure of the organisation was announced I took it personally and thought it was to reduce the cost and burden of employing me.


I can feel paralysed by anxiety over what others think of me. I think strangers, as well as those I know, talk about me. This especially applies to voluntary work. In that situation I always thought the manager was about to tell me my work wasn't good enough. I go over what I said to colleagues again and again and whether this was the "right" response.

Being acutely and continually anxious is draining. It's like being on a hamster wheel - a frantic scramble with no exit. The only time I can remove myself from it is if I make myself physically ill. In the past this was through starvation, now it is by cutting myself. The outcome is crashing out at accident and emergency or as a hospital in-patient and having no choice but to rest.

I would be able to work through the anxiety if it weren't for my depression. Feeling both is intolerable. As soon as the anxiety is less intense the emptiness and despair resurfaces. At these times doing anything, even answering the phone, feels impossible. There are supports that help me get through each day. Talking to my community psychiatric nurse about issues that cause me to worry excessively definitely helps. I also have a support worker. My antidepressant does make a small difference and I take an antipsychotic drug which ensures I sleep. I try to channel my energies into different projects and I am a member of the patients' forum for West Kent NHS and Social Care Trust.


Social care workers need to be available to those who with severe anxiety. Phone contact is important because users are unable to leave home at times. Workers should realise that it isn't only severe mental illness that debilitates users. Those with common mental health problems, including anxiety, have complex and challenging illnesses.

Alex Williams is a volunteer and a mental health service user.