Onika L. Dainty

When Worry Doesn’t Stop: Let's Talk about Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Its Overlap with Bipolar Disorder - Part 1 of 5

Anxiety: The Worry That Lingers

I remember the exact moment anxiety entered my life. It was brought on by abject terror.

As a child, I had anxious moments when the anxiety-driven voices in my mind became so loud that I would have to shake my head a few times to quiet the noise. It felt normal, even manageable, until one spring afternoon outside my sixth-grade classroom when anxiety attacked me out of the blue.

To my recollection, here’s what happened.

The Day the River Threatened to Pull Me Under

It was the final few months of grade six, and everything seemed normal. We had just finished recess, and the playground was its usual discord of harshness, where bullies moved from group to group unleashing their cruel brand of humour on any kid who would listen, and especially on any kid they knew it would affect.

There was one boy in particular they reserved the worst of their venom for. That day, the boy, whom we can call Christopher, simply couldn’t take it. He let out a giant scream that echoed across the playground. Every kid stopped and turned to see where it was coming from.

It was coming from Christopher.

It’s still unclear how I got involved, but knowing me, I was always a champion of the underdog and went to his defence. I had a fixer personality even when I was young. Christopher did not seem to want me to fix things. I remember the angry look directed at me before he stomped off inside the school.

That afternoon, as I walked to my backpack cubby to get my notebook, I found a threatening letter instead. It read, “This will be you in five days,” with a disturbing drawing meant to frighten me.

That was the moment my mind began to race with thoughts of danger and death. My breathing became shallow, my vision blurred, and I collapsed on the hallway floor with the letter in my hand as my world fell off its axis and spun out of control. I remember my fingers going numb and taking on a distorted shape that can only be explained by the lack of oxygen moving through my body. My lungs felt as if they had stopped working, constricted in my chest, until eventually I could feel only the last shallow breaths I took before I fainted.

That is how my teachers and classmates found me. The ambulance and police were called once they realized what had put me in that condition. My vitals were checked, and I was given oxygen, although I still felt like I couldn’t breathe. My parents were called to take me home for the day to rest after my traumatic ordeal. It was promised to my family that the police would investigate and “get to the bottom of this.”

For the next two days, I stayed home from school. When I got home, my mother put me straight to bed, and that was when the anxiety and fear entered my sleep. I tried to rest but got very few hours, waking from nightmares of red walls and ropes tangling around me, squeezing the air out of me. My anxiety manifested as screams in the middle of the night. Screams that took my breath away. My stomach refused to hold down any meal, no matter how small. My head throbbed with agony, like a hammer beating against my brain, repeating the same rhythm over and over: “three more days until you die.”

My parents, being strict about school attendance, refused to let me stay home for the entire five days. So, on day four, I returned to school. I couldn’t concentrate. I sat at my desk in a state of hypervigilance. Sounds were too loud, lights were too bright, and my thoughts continued to spin out of control.

By day five, what I believed would be the final day of my life, I was a ball of anxious energy, no longer my cheerful, outgoing self. On that day, however, it was discovered by police and staff, after comparing handwriting samples from each student, that the culprit was Christopher. My parents were called in and told that he had behavioural problems at other schools and would be expelled as punishment for what he had done.

The punishment for me would be the beginning of a mental health condition I did not yet understand. I had no name for it, but I would experience it daily, living from anxiety attack to anxiety attack.

This blog is a reflection on my lived experience with anxiety. I will discuss living with both Bipolar disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder, also known as GAD, the challenges I have faced while trying to balance co-occurring disorders, and how changing my mindset helped me create a space where anxiety could exist.

This is the worry that lingers.

Some worry does not end. Instead, it loops, deepens, and stays.

When Anxiety Persists: A Bipolar Woman’s Reflection

After that incident, I started calling anxiety “the voices.” Throughout my adolescence, I would worry about anything and everything. I created scenarios in my head of negative events that were not actually happening and might never happen, but to my fragile mind, each scenario held some truth.

From the day I found that letter in my backpack, I lived in fear that something just as terrible would happen to me again. The sad part was that even my 11-year-old self knew it would be a hard road between me and regaining my peace of mind.

What I know now, that I did not know then, was that I would experience a series of life-changing events until one day I found myself in a child psychologist’s office being diagnosed with depression and a mild anxiety disorder. Mild anxiety would later develop into Generalized Anxiety Disorder as I got older and continued to struggle with processing painful experiences in a healthy way.

There is a difference between everyday concern and persistent anxiety. Persistent anxiety does not simply affect your thoughts. It also affects your perception of the world, your self-perception, your self-esteem, and your self-worth. Anxiety can even shape your behaviour.

It is not just persistent. Sometimes the worry that comes with anxiety is all-consuming.

Anxiety during a Bipolar manic episode is something I can only describe as loud and chaotic. Because one of the symptoms of mania is disorganized thinking, anxiety in mania can take on a disorganized, even paranoid form. In my experience, when Bipolar disorder occurs alongside anxiety, it can feel as if the extreme worry itself triggers hypomania, the precursor to mania.

When your body is in a constant state of fight, flight, or freeze because anxious thoughts persist day after day, your mind starts to break down. If you live with another mental health condition like Bipolar disorder, that internal pressure can increase the risk of a serious mood episode.

What Generalized Anxiety Disorder Feels Like: A Lived Experience Perspective

I moved to Toronto, Ontario at 33 years old to start working in the event management industry. I was fresh out of school when I was hired by a boutique events company where the staff consisted of myself, my boss, and another woman.

At first, things went well. I was securing big accounts, much to the excitement of my boss. Then one day, there was a notable shift between myself and my co-worker. She seemed to begin a passive-aggressive campaign to undermine my work and shake my confidence. She told me that if I did not find a way to bring in more clients, my boss would be forced to fire me.

That was the moment my anxious mind took control of my rational brain.

When you have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, unless you are experiencing visible physical symptoms or an anxiety attack, people cannot see the internal war you are fighting with your own thoughts. The moment I perceived that I could be terminated, I believed I was already terminated. The worry became persistent, excessive, and all-consuming.

I couldn’t eat or sleep because I was constantly thinking about being fired. Questions raced through my head one after another:

“When am I going to get fired?”

“What is my boss going to say to me?”

“How much time do I have left?”

“Should I start looking for another job?”

“Should I quit before he has a chance to fire me?”

“Should I just work harder to get the big accounts?”

“If I get the big accounts, will he still fire me?”

“Fired, fired, fired. You are going to get fired.”

With every thought came another and another. The thoughts, or voices, invaded my mind at work, and my performance declined. I started taking two and three days off so I could try to catch up on the sleep I was lacking, but also so I could isolate myself, untangle the anxious thoughts in my mind, and come up with a plan to keep my job.

I could not see how illogical I was being. Based on one person’s thoughtless comment, I was spiralling out of control.

I began to see danger around every corner, as if the world was not meant for me, as if I was not enough. There was nowhere I felt safe or secure, not at home and not at work. I eventually did get fired from that job, but I cannot blame my co-worker. She planted the seed, and I watered it with anxiety until the thoughts overwhelmed me.

Anxiety can feel like your mind is always preparing for something that has not happened. When something does happen, like me getting fired, anxiety can become deliberate, telling you your thoughts were right and that you have every reason to constantly worry.

Bipolar Disorder and Anxiety: When They Overlap

Trigger Warning: The below section discusses suicidal thoughts in a non-graphic way.

When you have a co-occurring condition like Bipolar 1 disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder, the emotional complexity can present as constant mental confusion and chaos. When you are in crisis, it is hard to tell where your thoughts end and anxiety begins.

During my depressive cycles, anxiety and the intrusive thoughts that come with it have sometimes deepened my distress and contributed to dangerous thoughts about my own life. For me, those moments often begin through the lens of anxious thinking, negative self-perception, diminished self-worth, and lowered self-esteem.

When depression shifts into hypomania, mania, or psychosis, my anxiety moves into that same realm of dysregulation and can take on a voice of illogical fear, paranoia, and emotional instability.

Anxiety has always felt different depending on my internal state. During remission or baseline periods, I have a firmer grip on my thoughts, and I can recognize more clearly when anxiety is trying to overtake me. I use tools like breathing exercises, meditation, and positive self-talk to calm the waves of anxiety that pass through me, attempting to pull me under into a dark place where my life has no value beyond what my anxiety dictates.

During episodes, however, it has always been difficult to distinguish mood shifts from anxiety symptoms. It becomes a constant question: which came first, the shifts or the symptoms?

When I reflect on my past experiences with Bipolar 1 disorder and GAD, I come to the conclusion that although Bipolar 1 disorder is my primary condition, Generalized Anxiety Disorder often acts as a trigger and causes my moods to shift.

For example, although I experience anxiety throughout the day, at night the voices often become louder and more persistent, disrupting my sleep. When I have insomnia for days at a time, when my thoughts will not quiet and prescribed medication does not have the desired effect, lack of sleep can lead to elevated mood and eventually mania.

Anxiety does not always stand alone. It often moves through mood states differently.

Living With Both: Emotional Weight and Exhaustion

There is an emotional fatigue that happens when living with overlapping mental health conditions, especially when each has its own dialogue inside your head. You become constantly alert, fearing relapse and living with uncertainty.

My past experiences with both conditions often creep into my present-day anxieties, especially when my mood shifts from elevated to low, or from low to elevated. The emotional weight and exhaustion of living with both Bipolar disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder can be overwhelming at times.

Then I remind myself that my mood disorder and GAD are both part of the lived experience that has shaped who I am today, both good and bad. Managing more than one internal experience can make even calm moments complex, but the calm moments, though rare, do exist.

At present, I practice self-awareness. When possible, I do not allow the voices inside my head to lead me. Instead, I show myself compassionate grace and remember that with inner strength and time, the voices can move from a loud roar to a dull silence.

I still hear and feel my anxiety when it creeps in, but with the self-care tools I have acquired, the emotional weight and exhaustion of living with anxiety has become less and less. It is not about ignoring my inner dialogue. It is about making space for it inside my head, a space where I can choose to listen to the anxious roar or turn it down to a dull silence I have learned to live beside.

Final Thoughts

Finding a Name for the Worry, Reclaiming Peace

Many years ago, the writer inside me decided to take control of the narratives in my head, the voices in my mind that I called anxiety. I realized one day, as I listened to the worry, that it often came in the form of a storyline. There would be one worrisome thought, and then that thought would build upon itself, creating a full story of anxiety.

Calling my worry one of the storylines in my head helped me untangle whether it was fiction or non-fiction, real or imagined. Although this has never been the solution to my anxiety, it was definitely a turning point in how I experienced it.

This new awareness created a space of understanding rather than a resolution to my condition. It allowed me to reflect on my ongoing relationship with anxiety.

Understanding anxiety does not end it, but it can change how you carry it.

To my readers: Have you ever experienced worry that felt constant or hard to quiet, and what helped you begin to recognize it for what it was?

A Bipolar Woman’s Self-Reflection: Black Privilege - A Dedication to My Ancestors

The following piece of work was a reflection written in 2016 after experiencing what I call ‘polite racism’ now known as microaggression in my workplace. The interaction that occurred was so quick and seemingly insignificant but it had a profound effect on me. It wasn’t that I couldn’t feel the presence of racism as it stared me in the face the morning I made coffee in my office kitchen and was told it was my job to serve others in my office and I should feel grateful to be there. Rather, it was the privilege of knowing my lived experiences to that point that dictated that walking away from the indignity being handed to me was my right as a Black woman who had fought and earned her seat at every and any table I chose to sit at.

There are always small minds lurking around every corner but It’s how you choose to react to their attempts to tear you down, upset your spirit or steal your joy. On that day in my history I thought it was important not to feel anger and indignation but to reflect on the lived experiences of my ancestors and myself that make me privileged to be black in the world that I inherited and to express empathy and understanding for those who still can’t embrace my blackness.    

Black Privilege-A Dedication to My Ancestors 

I studied history at Carleton University for four years and I have a Bachelor of Arts Honors in the subject. It’s not a Master’s or a PhD and I am not professing to be an expert but I do have four years (+) foundation on the topic.

I have studied Canadian, American, European, Asian and African history. I have studied the history of the world, which is re-written as everyday passes, so it is impossible to ever study it fully.

But this is what I have learned and some of the conclusions I have come to, again based on what I learned.

In the history of the world, at some point EVERYONE WAS OPPRESSED BY SOMEONE FOR SOME SEEMINGLY VALID REASON THAT MADE SENSE IN THAT TIME AND AT THAT TIME.

The English, for example, oppressed the Europeans, the Indians of Southeast Asia, the Asians of South East Asia, the Irish, the Scottish and Africans—this period in history is called Colonization.

They justified their actions with religion and man-made laws and years of feudal tradition and a variety of other territorial ideologies that I won’t go into, because it doesn’t really matter the reason…it’s a fact…it happened.

Before the British Empire, there was the Ottoman Empire and the Roman Empire etc. And for some reason they thought it was a good idea to repress and place value on people and their families and their lives.

A hierarchy was created, the concept was developed, and it has existed since the beginning of time.

Leaders, lead and followers, follow. Sometimes there were good leaders who had the best interest of the people at heart.

More often there were leaders that made selfish decisions, let absolute power cloud their judgment and cause immeasurable, reprehensible damage.

To rule is to serve, some people serve others, and some serve themselves. This is a face for the Ancestors of the people who currently inherit the world.

I have now given you a very broad and general statement about centuries and centuries of history—social history to be specific. It is up to you to go and do your research and then see if you truly agree or disagree with the next statements I am about to make.

Though I have studied world history, the history that I am most concerned with is my own.

I was born in Guyana, South America. My ancestors were a part of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Essentially, the ships that left from Africa went to different parts of the world, not just North America.

If I were born a slave, I would have been raised on a Guyanese sugar plantation. If I looked the way I do now, had the same spirit or energy, if I could make people laugh or sing a song or had any special talent, I would have been a House Slave.

If I had no value beyond the ability to work long hours in extreme conditions, I would have been in the fields.

Based on my knowledge of the Slave Trade and Slavery, I believe this is all true. This is what African slavery looked like all around the world.

I have also thought about what I would have done if I were a slave. Would I be born and live and die a slave? Would I rage against the injustice of the experience and fight and flee to freedom?

I can say with some measure of confidence that I would run, fight and flee. I would risk getting caught and beaten and killed. I would do anything I needed to do to get out.

But I am not a slave. I was not born a slave. I have not lived as a slave and I will not die a slave. So, I can’t say what I would have done, only what I hope I would have the courage to do in that situation.

I am so grateful to my Ancestors for carrying that burden, for being strong, for trusting in God to cast away their worries and fears, for falling in love and making babies and preserving traditions; for being resilient so that I would never have to be in the world that they left me, in the world that I inherited.

Now when I speak to you about my Ancestors, I am not talking about the experiences that shaped an entire faction of people.

I am speaking about the Ancestors that are directly responsible for me being alive because they are the only people I feel I have a right to speak on behalf of. They are a part of me, they make up my history and therefore I have that right.

Based on what I know about my Ancestors, I would say half made the best of an extremely, horrifically bad situation and found a way not just to survive but to thrive in their new circumstance—the other half did not;

They were bitter and angry and resentful and afraid and that was their choice. That was how they dealt with the destruction, degradation and devastation that slavery caused.

There are 400 (+) years of history documenting the slave experience, interpreting and re-interpreting them and it is painful to listen to, look at and read.

So, I never tried to tackle it all but instead I tried to make sense of how I came to be here and what I wanted my living history to be.

This is what I know about how I came to be in the world that I inherited…

My family, my parents had a series of life experiences that led them to each other and then on December 30, 1982, I was born. That is when My History begins.

My parents worked hard, they sacrificed and fought for me. They took me from a place where our Ancestors were slaves, where I could have been born and lived and died as a slave and they freed me.

Because my parents grew up in Guyana, they knew all the challenges that I would have to face and that I would inherit if we stayed.

They wanted better for me, more than they had, they had a dream just like Martin Luther King Jr. and they did everything in their power to make it happen; fast forward 42 years to today…

I am a 1st Generation Guyanese immigrant with a Bachelor of Arts Honors in History, a Graduate Certificate in Public Relations and Communications from Humber College and a Graduate Certificate in Event Management from Durham College.

I have a deep and abiding trust in the Lord that He continues to walk with me on my purpose filled journey through life and He will be there to catch me when I stumble or fall.

I am currently pursuing my goals of being an author and public speaker with dreams of pursuing other things and the confidence and security of knowing that everything I want is within my reach. I just have to keep working hard and I will get there.

My past experiences, my living history, the story I have written for myself because of my parent’s hard work, courage, perseverance, lack of pride, resilience, patience, tolerance, and overall awesomeness—I know every dream I have ever had is going to become a reality.

This glass ceiling that I heard so much about growing up; the limitations of Black People, my parents shattered that ceiling before it ever got in my way, so I have lived a life as if it never existed.

Ideas, criticisms, labels and stereotypes associated with black people, they always offended me, but I never let them affect the decisions I made about my life and future.

If the world said I couldn’t do it because I am Black, I was always hell-bent on showing them I could do it, not because I am black but because I am me…

Onika L. Dainty…the sum total of my experiences, living history, constantly learning, never asking permission or forgiveness (unless I really need it which, I usually don’t with permission but always do with forgiveness).

If I fail, I take a step back and ask myself why? I look to my support system of family and friends because I know they are always there.

And I ultimately learned not to blame people outside of my control for the things that are inside my control.

This security and freedom have given me the confidence to smile and laugh and talk to and listen to and learn from all kinds of people from all different parts of the world that I inherited. I look at things from my point of view and let people look at things from theirs.

I do not judge or diminish other people’s experiences. I do not subscribe to negative labels, and I do not let the concept of Racism and all the burdens it brings to dictate my actions.

I am kind to everyone until they give me a reason not to be. I try not to be cruel but instead remember that they are the sum total of their life experience and that they are living history so, every day is a new opportunity to change.

I believe in love and not hate, though I know they both exist in the world that I inherited. I know how conflict and wars between people and nations begin but I still can’t say I understand why because although it is happening in the world that I inherited it is not a part of my living history.

I can only be responsible and accountable for the decisions I make when faced with conflict, adversity and challenges because according to my Ancestors and my history and what I have learned, all that they expect of me is:

To do my best, to work hard, to trust in God, to fight when it is time to fight, to flee when it is time to flee, to love and fall in love and make babies and to pass on traditions; to respect them and the burden they carried on their backs across an entire ocean, beyond 400 (+) years of struggle and pain to give me the gifts I have today—the gift of security, safety, confidence and support.

That is the world that I live in, it’s the only one I can exist in, the only one I know and can survive and thrive in like they did. That is the world that they left me, the world that I inherited.

That is my Black Privilege. What’s yours?

In Recognition of Black History Month and My Ancestors