This is what my anxiety feels like
Since her anxiety was diagnosed, former MP Holly Walker has had to revise her ideas about herself. It’s a strange thing to do, she reveals in this book extract.
For many years I did not think of myself as an anxious person. I’m not an excessive worrier. I’m not shy. I can get up in front of a crowd or talk down the barrel of a TV camera without breaking a sweat. Someone like me couldn’t possibly have anxiety.
The birth of my first daughter, Esther, four years ago, was followed by a series of challenging events. I went back to work soon after she was born, to a stressful and public role as an MP. Determined to breastfeed, I was pumping around the clock, expressing between caucus meetings and select committee hearings, feeling as though I was being torn in two every time I left her.
She was not a good sleeper and I was chronically sleepdeprived. Meanwhile my partner, Dave, who had taken time off work to be her primary caregiver, developed chronic pain and was unable to continue looking after her full- time. I took on the bulk of the domestic work. Things started to feel very hard. It became clear that I couldn’t continue as an MP, so after battling it out for six months I stepped down. The pressure eased a little, but the damage was done. I had severe postnatal anxiety.
My anxiety does not look like worrying. It looks like indecision, paralysis, agitation and, if poorly managed, rage and self-harm. But it is still anxiety. I’ve spent much of the last four years coming to understand this. It’s a strange thing, having to revise your ideas about yourself.
For me, it has meant learning, over and over, that I have a new set of limitations. I am an accomplished, high-achieving person. I used to pack a lot into a day. I had an accurate sense of what I was capable of, and I could almost always say yes to a request or an opportunity. Now, every decision weighs heavily on me. Can I write this essay? Can I manage this social engagement? Can I prepare this meal?
When Esther was a toddler there were things I desperately wished I could do with her, but which fear and indecision kept me from. I had visions of her playing happily in the sand at Petone Beach, dipping her toes in, exploring her local environment. Instead I trudged up and down the path parallel to the beach with her asleep in the buggy, watching families with picnic blankets, packets of fish and chips, beers, kites and swimsuits, apparently carefree.
Dave was at home in pain, with no desire to go anywhere near the beach. If I wanted it to happen, it was my job. But every time I thought about it, I became overwhelmed with all the risks I’d have to manage and the gear I’d need to take with me. I told myself we’d go another day.
These days it’s easier to get to the beach, but simple things still elude me, like enjoying downtime when I get it. It feels like time passes differently for me than for other people. Hours seem to slip through my fingers as I fret, paralysed with indecision about where to start on the long list of things I could or should be doing. The world jangles. There’s a cacophony of sound.
I am compelled to turn off household noise – TV, extractor fan, music. I walk into a cluttered and messy room (which is often all the rooms of my house) and feel overwhelmed. But the indecision about what to do first stops me from restoring order, so I can’t reclaim the space, either. I delay, and put on a podcast, or perhaps run a bath.
I could justify these things as acts of self-care, intentional relaxation, but I can’t stop thinking about the mess I should be cleaning or the words I should be writing. What should be restorative simply eats up my time – and then here everyone comes, back already.
My anxiety makes it difficult for me to spend time alone with my daughter. I love her, and when I’m not with her I miss her. Yet faced with a few hours of unstructured time together, I panic. She has an unquenchable thirst for my attention, which makes simple household tasks like cooking feel near impossible. She’ll make so many demands of me. She’ll mess up the house. She’ll yell at me from another room. Or she’ll insist on helping and break something or hurt herself. Often, she is defiant and challenging.
Thinking ahead, I’ll plan an activity that will get us out of the house together, like a trip to a playground or the library, but sometimes she just really needs to be at home. In these agitated times, I rely on the stupefying distraction of screen time to get us through until Dave arrives home. Then I feel guilty about that.
In recent months I’ve thought a lot about whether to medicate for my anxiety. Several friends have described to me the feeling of going on anti-anxiety or antidepressant medications for the first time: the quieting of the cacophony of sound in their heads, the end of intrusive or unhelpful thoughts, the wonder – is this how everyone else feels all the time? I want that feeling.
Yet I haven’t discussed medication with any health professionals. Whenever I get close, I am stopped by the same thought: this shouldn’t be so hard. My conviction that the answer lies not in mitigating individual circumstances, but in changing the societal conditions that create them, stops me from accessing the help I probably need. There’s a circularity and futility in this, I know. l
lay my experience of becoming a mother alongside my grandmother’s. So much has changed for women in 60 years. Law changes emphasising civil rights, pay equity and financial and legal independence. Social changes like the widespread availability of contraception, the creation of childcare options and the expectation that women will work after marriage.
Second-wave feminism, debunking the myths of gender essentialism. Increasing proportions of women in leadership roles across society (though by no means enough). Paid parental leave, and the understanding that this can be shared by both parents. Much better knowledge of mental illness and how to treat it.
But the similarities between my experience and my grandmother Lucy’s are undeniable, connecting us across the years. The sudden shock of motherhood. Loss of professional identity. Caring for an unwell partner. Feeling like you are doing it all on your own. Despite all that has changed for women in the intervening years, these remain common experiences.
Now it is easier for mothers to re-enter the workforce, but we are still suffering. The incidence of perinatal anxiety and depression in New Zealand is currently estimated at around 25 per cent.
I think many of the changes that have empowered women to seek experiences and careers beyond the domestic sphere have perpetuated the myth that we can do so with ease, at the same time as parenting, running a household and upholding care responsibilities. Rather than addressing the gender role assumptions and valuing and sharing this workload, we have simply added to the expectations placed on our grandmothers.
Most mothers I know feel compelled, whether by financial necessity or societal expectation, to fulfil the roles of both the domestic and the working woman. Many struggle with anxiety, guilt, depression, exhaustion. Many medicate. All wish it were easier.
A few weeks after completing the first draft of this essay, I gave birth to my second daughter, Ngaire. The birth was fast, crazy and exhilarating, and I found myself on a high for months afterwards. My anxiety receded. Unwelcome thoughts quietened, and I viewed the chaos of family life with a mixture of humour and resignation. My parenting decisions were not governed by fear, but by a strong conviction that all would be well. I found the feeling I’d been craving, the sense of calm and normalcy.
As the months have passed and the relentlessness of life with a baby and a preschooler has set in, some anxiety has returned. My new limitations are still there; I know this is likely something I’ll have to actively manage for the rest of my life. But I’ve thought a lot about what my second postnatal experience means for this essay, in which I’ve wondered about not just what might help to ease individual circumstances, but also what might help to reduce the overall incidence of maternal anxiety and distress.
It feels significant to me that this time I felt no expectation or pressure to return to work. I had high quality early childhood education for my older daughter, meals delivered by kind family members and friends for weeks after the birth, and access to a psychologist.
Paid parental leave. Subsidised early childhood education. Community support and connection. Access to mental health services. Some of these things I received by right, or by the generosity of others. Some of them I paid for. Some are near impossible for most women to access without financial support or long, long waiting lists. All were essential.
This is an extract from Headlands: New Stories of Anxiety, edited by Naomi Arnold and published by Victoria University Press. p/b, $30.
My anxiety does not look like worrying. It looks like indecision, paralysis, agitation and, if poorly managed, rage and self-harm. But it is still anxiety.
Holly Walker