You Say You Hear Me, But Are You Really Listening?

My journey through high functioning anxiety to a passion for compassion.

Illustration by Bella Cornado

by Hannah Cross

Light slowly begins to creep through the blinds, taunting me like it does each morning. Reminding me that another sleepless night has passed me by.

Like every other morning, I don’t have time to be tired. Feeling defeated after yet another wide-eyed night, I punch the covers off and rush to get ready for my 9 a.m. class.

My daily commute to Bellingham from Anacortes makes it challenging to stay awake. By the time I reach the lecture hall, my hands shake due to a wonderful combination of exhaustion, anxiety and caffeine.

Throughout the day, I tell myself to be productive because the weekend double shifts I work prevent me from affording any free time during the week. I am running solely on countless cups of coffee.

Somehow, I make it through another exhausting day, and yet when nighttime arrives I’m wide awake. In the still of night, my only companion is my toxic friend named Anxiety.

I toss and turn, and Anxiety does the same, seemingly glued to me. I feel tears sting my cheeks as I think about all I have to do the next day and how I’ll somehow have to do it all at 100% even though I’m running on 1%.

“This feeling isn’t going away,” I think to myself. “I need help.”

The first time I acknowledged that I needed help was summer 2019. I had always been an extroverted person who loved life and couldn’t seem to fit enough into each day, when suddenly the activities I once enjoyed began to beat me down. I couldn’t keep up.

I’ve always been an open book, especially with my family. I tried to find the words to communicate how low and sad I felt, but my family couldn’t hear me.

They said, “College is a stressful time. This is normal.”

But I knew it wasn’t normal — at least, not normal for me.

My heart worked at the speed of light for nearly six months, only slowing during the 20-minute intervals of rest I would get each night.

This certainly wasn’t my first encounter with stress. But this wasn’t stress; this felt like an iron fist slowly tightening around my chest, making it difficult to breathe.

I love my family, but I knew they could only hear what they could comprehend. I knew I needed someone that had the professional capacity to really listen to me and understand.

So I began going to therapy.

I reluctantly opened up to my friends and family, but made sure to keep my struggle as quiet as possible. Growing up in a family that had exhibited such physical and emotional strength was a tough thing. I felt guilty because I had no visible evidence for how I felt.

Therapy began in winter 2019 and to this day I can still remember the feeling I had when I sat down in a chair across from my therapist.

“I’m afraud,” I told myself.

“What am I doing here?” I thought to myself, “There are people with real problems, and I must seem like I’m making light of them.”

These anxious thoughts came to a screeching halt when my therapist looked up at me and said, “Hi Hannah, how are you feeling today?”

I blurted out the first thing that came to my mind, “I’m good! How are you?”

We both looked at each other and after my brain had processed the irony of my reply, we chuckled and began talking.

At this time, I also began expressing my troubles with a close friend, also named Hannah. We’d shared a bond since high school, and grew especially close after rooming together our freshman year.

I have always respected the deep compassion and understanding that Hannah possessed, an attribute earned through facing her own hardships.

She became a source of healing and understanding for me. For the first time in a long time, I felt like someone was actually acknowledging all the messy bits of me, and she could understand them. I am forever thankful for a friend like Hannah, because she gave me a safe space to come to terms with how I felt.

Not everyone who experiences anxiety has such a safe space. While that is extremely disappointing to me, I also feel it is my duty and privilege to be that safe space for others, as Hannah once was for me.

It was during this time that I also began to acknowledge the healing benefits of therapy and other mental illness resources.

But it didn’t all happen at once. The first few weeks, I felt like the exercises I had been given and the bi-monthly sessions weren’t doing much, except forcing me to “wake up” even earlier before my morning commutes.

But something happened about halfway through our sessions.

During one early morning session, my therapist said, “You do so much so well, Hannah. Has anyone ever told you that?”

My walls suddenly dropped, the tears that had been trapped behind a dam of denial suddenly burst through. I cried. We began making progress.

It wasn’t long after that I came to terms with the fact that I was experiencing high functioning anxiety with acute depression.

According to an article written by Medical News Today, “Some people with high functioning anxiety may be good at hiding their symptoms from others and appear calm and confident. The anxiety may even drive them to achieve rather than holding them back. On the inside, however, they may overthink and be unable to relax. The anxiety symptoms may affect their sleep or appetite.”

For the first six months of my struggle, I avoided the idea of antidepressants because mental health stigma told me it was for the weak. I didn’t want to be weak in anyone’s eyes.

This is when my loved ones expressed their support in my journey, even if it meant taking prescribed medication. I needed this support and because of it I went on medication that helped me slowly overcome my insomnia, which eventually helped me take control of my anxiety.

I still get anxious from time to time, but now I have the resources needed to halt my old friend from sending me spiraling into toxic patterns.

While my story is one of success, that is not the case for everyone. I am aware of that. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, “Research shows that mental illnesses are common in the United States, affecting tens of millions of people each year. Estimates suggest that only half of people with mental illnesses receive treatment.”

That statistic has always scared me. Only half of people with mental illnesses receive treatment.

That means countless people are stuck suffering just as I was. While I can’t ever fully know what their battles are like, I try my best to do my part by making myself emotionally available to others who experience similar struggles and battles.

Through it all, I found my passion for both compassion and for storytelling. Sharing stories is a therapeutic form of bonding for me. My passion for storytelling stemmed from this experience because I saw how it had helped me.

I am now a fourth-year visual journalism major at Western Washington University and plan to graduate in spring 2022. Throughout my time in this major, I have made it my goal to create meaningful bonds and relationships with every source I interview by simply showing up and taking the time to really listen to their story.

Because, at the root of it all, you never know how big an impact one small act of compassion, such as listening, can have on someone’s life.

I always felt people heard me but weren’t really listening. My goal as a visual journalist and as a human being is to provide a compassionate ear to listen to those that want and need to share their stories.