Rotem Metfield
Rotem was diagnosed with anxiety and depression in 2012, her diagnosis changed her life and sent her on a life long journey to understand her diagnosis and help others. Studying a ...
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What are the symptoms of your anxiety?
Okay, so my anxiety really changes every time. So it's really hard to understand exactly what are the symptoms every time. But I can tell you that right now I'm really anxious and I can feel that I am overthinking everything. I am analysing everything in my head, which means I can't really say anything from start to finish. I feel my breathing is really, really high and I even hear my voice is not the same. It's higher pitch than I normally speak. I sometimes hyperventilate because I breathe really, really quickly, take a lot of air, and I would feel in my body as well that it's not grounded. So I would feel my body kind of like maybe wobbly, maybe pins and needles. It really depends on when I feel my anxiety, what's the cause and how long I kind of set with it. But I can say that right now the symptoms that I am experiencing is mainly bodily experience, the bodily symptoms, if that makes sense. So breathing, just numbness, and then inability to be coherent when I speak, which is really difficult and that impacts my mind as well.
What does your anxiety feel like?
So my anxiety feels overwhelming in terms of feelings. I would kind of feel like I have one side is how it impacts my mind, my thoughts, and the other side is how it impacts my body, my physicality. So when I'm very anxious, I would feel in my body, I would feel like I'm struggling to breathe. I would feel really, really fast, heartbeat. I can feel it right now. And this is why also, I'm trying to actively slow down how I speak because my whole body wants to run. So naturally I would now speak really, really fast and I would skip words. I would jump into another sentence. I would think about something and then jump to another thing. But now I'm actively trying to kind of slow myself down. And then this is the feelings in the body, but then also the mind. As I said, it's really, really quick. It almost doesn't finish any current thought. It would jump from one thing to another. It would feel like I'm at the edge of a mountain. I'm almost falling, but I'm not completely falling. So it's this feeling of almost falling, but then you keep yourself back. This is what I can describe now, but there is a lot of other symptoms obviously.
How anxious are you right now?
I am very, very anxious. We are just in the beginning of filming and I'm very aware of the camera. I'm very aware that I'm still not lending. What I mean by lending is when I get to a place and I feel comfortable and I feel at ease, that I can kind of just let my body slow down, get comfortable, get grounded, feel the ground. I'm not there yet, so my anxiety is quite high at the moment. Okay.