Anxiety and me: How sight loss affects my mental health

I suffer with anxiety for a number of reasons, some of which I don’t want to mention publicly. I want to focus on the connection between my vision impairment and the anxiety I have felt over the years due to not being able to see the world like everyone else. 

I also just want to acknowledge the fact that everyone’s story is different, not all blind/VI people will suffer with anxiety but a lot have reached out to me since the BBC news article emphasising on the importance of this topic and that’s why I want to share my story, I think it’s finally the right time for me to do so. 

Anxiety and me: How sight loss affects my mental health

I mentioned in my post about my struggle with confidence that anxiety can stem from the lack of confidence I feel when in a room full of people but that also intertwines with my vision impairment because, most often than not, I don’t have that confidence because I can’t see people around me and I feel anxious as a result of it.

I feel anxious when I walk into a room of people, not being able to see who I’m looking for. I feel anxious when I’m in a loud and dark place where I can’t hear as well as see. I feel anxious when I walk in to an unfamiliar building incase I lose my way. I feel anxious when I travel on the train incase my assistance doesn’t turn up on the other side.

And I feel anxious for a number of other reasons.

It’s not your typical bag of nerves, it’s a feeling that often leaves me shaking, I can’t concentrate on anything and most often than not, it leaves me overthinking the worst case scenario. 

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Let me take you back to the beginning.

My anxiety seemed to be triggered by my vision impairment when I was 14, a time when I suffered quite a dramatic deterioration in my eyesight. 

I managed to keep it under control but my vision continued to deteriorate as I was approaching my GCSE’s and I had to resolve to doing them through braille.

Although I started learning braille when I was in primary school, I had never done any tests or exams in that medium before so it was quite a daunting prospect especially since the exams seemed to be the biggest, most important things at that time.

So in addition to the general nerves that come hand in hand with exams, I also had additional anxiety because I was adjusting to my deteriorating eyesight but also learning braille in French and polishing my English and Welsh braille which was added pressure at times. I was worried that carrying this extra weight that came along with my sight loss would impact my GCSE results. 

Thankfully it didn’t and I managed to get grades that I still feel proud of when looking back but the anxiety didn’t stop there. 

I had a really good summer that year but when I went back to school following those six weeks, I seemed to hit a brick wall and anxiety became a prominent part of my everyday life. 

I’m not sure what changed, maybe the daunting aspects of the two year sixth form journey that lied ahead of me triggered my main worries but then I started drifting apart from some of my friends and my vision impairment was an extra worry on top of that.

It seemed to affect me more than it had ever done before. 

Sight loss caused this feeling of vulnerability, especially in unfamiliar surroundings or in a big group of people. You still won’t find me walking alone in a sea of people, it’s anxiety inducing for me even when I’m guided by someone.

I’ve never been able to spot people when walking into a room and it never seemed to bother me that much but in 2015, that seemed to change and something that I didn’t used to think about as much became one of the main reasons as to why I’d prefer to be on my own instead of walking into a room of people and not being able to see who was there. 

Feeling isolated in a room full of people became one of my main worries, it’s something that caused the decline in my mental health. Something that triggered my first panic attack.  

I walked into the sixth form block one day, it was full of people and I couldn’t see anyone, I felt overwhelmed, I felt afraid of walking further incase I crashed into someone or incase I’d fall over, something I’m prone to doing and I wanted to avoid that at all costs. 

I found myself struggling to breathe so I ran out, went to the closest toilets and locked myself in one of the cubicles which I know wasn’t the brightest of ideas since it’s such a confined space but I didn’t know what else to do, I didn’t know what was happening. 

After getting home that day, I told my parents about said panic attack but I never expressed the extent of how anxiety was affecting me and when looking back, I wish I had reached out in my time of need.

As the days went on, my vision continued to deteriorate and I felt myself losing grip of my world. 

I was missing a lot of school at the time because of my chronic illness but my anxiety added to that and on the days I was able to go to school, I didn’t want to because I was losing focus on everything around me and I’d sit outside doing my work on my own, even in the freezing cold winter months because I wanted to avoid the possibility of a panic attack which could be induced by being anywhere apart from on my own.

I lost count of how many panic attacks I had whilst at school and I was still confused by why they were happening so often.

I felt this anger towards my vision impairment for making me feel the way I did and focusing on the positives seemed to be more of a difficult thing to do. 

The anxiety still persists today, sometimes I’m too anxious to go to new places because of the unfamiliarity, I see staying at home as the easy option, somewhere I’m familiar with, somewhere I feel comfortable and safe.

You see, when opportunities just aren’t the same and when you’re made to feel different, it can take it’s toll and it did that for me in the form of anxiety. 

I am, of course, no expert, I can only narrate my own story but by talking publicly about my experiences then maybe even just one person realises that they’re not alone. I’ve learned that there is no weakness in asking for help and I hope others know that too.

I think that normalising the anxiety we can feel surrounding sight loss and making sure we acknowledge those kind of emotions can go a long way in terms of helping others. 

It should be recognised that sight loss and mental health issues can be interlinked and although they can be separate for some people, they can come hand in hand at times and it’s important that people are given the support they vitally need. 

I think the connection between sight loss and its possible impacts on someone’s mental health needs to be better understood. 

Of course, there are people out there who can help, charities such as the RNIB offer a counselling service which I did reach out to at one point because I realised I needed to talk to someone who could understand the situation I was in and the unwanted feelings that were constantly rushing through me.

And it did help, it put a lot of things into perspective for me and helped me to better understand some of what I was feeling and how to better control my anxiety when doing things such as travelling independently.

But obviously, everyone’s experiences with these things are different and unique. Something that works for one person might not help the next so it’s about finding what’s best for you.

Now, even though a lot of things still make me feel anxious, i try to face those situations head on and try my best to do the things I’m afraid of. 

Sometimes, I might not be able to manage that. Walking into an unfamiliar place or a room of more than a few people who I can’t recognise will always mean my anxiety is sky high but I try my best to manage it and talk openly about the things that make me feel this way.

It takes a lot of hard work and it probably will for years to come.

It’s never easy but it’s also never impossible to get through a scenario you’re terrified of, getting through the things that make you feel anxious can create an indescribable feeling. 

In the last year, I’ve been able to make better decisions for myself, I’ve said yes to things that I never imagined myself doing, things that I thought anxiety might prevent me from doing.

I’ve travelled on the train independently to Manchester and Milton Keynes more than once and I even went on my own on the bus to my local town, something which I’ve put off for the last 4 years because of an experience I had where the driver’s attitude towards sight loss left me avoiding buses at any cost because of the anxiety it caused me.

Sometimes it’s the smaller achievements that need to be recognised the most.

It hasn’t been and isn’t an easy road by any means but I think it’s a necessary one in terms of helping me to feel mentally stronger after such a long time feeling defeated. 

Quite a few people have reached out to me this week expressing some of their personal stories with sight loss and mental health and emphasising that it’s important to highlight the subject. This is a sign that we need to keep talking about mental health as a separate topic but also the impact sight loss can have on it. 

The stigma that so tightly surrounds these topics needs to be addressed.

We should all have access to support and tools to help us work on the things that make us feel broken because whether we’ve been dealing with whatever issue we have for a short time or for a number of years, it’s equally as exhausting and everyone deserves support to get through it and hopefully come out stronger on the other side.

For anyone who might need support, please reach out, it’s okay to talk about your problems and whatever it is you’re struggling with. There is always someone out there who is willing to listen, take it from someone who knows.

You are not alone.

Do you think that your disability or any specific aspect of your life impacts on your mental health? What helps you to manage those overwhelming feelings or is it something that you’re working on right now like I am? I think we can all benefit from finding reassurance from others and knowing that we’re not alone. 

Elin x