What Anxiety Feels Like: Season 1, Episode 12 of My Life as an Ansari
I get a message with an ultimatum.
Here is Season 1, Episode 12 of this article series — the story of my personal experiences and struggles as I became an Ansari (Helper) of Gazan refugees (Muhajireen). List of all episodes can be found here.
Fear. Dread. Stressing disproportionately. Anxiety, in the long-term, can be a downward spiral of increasingly horrible feelings and symptoms. It can come with short-term symptoms like a racing heart, body feeling acidic, thoughts getting scrambled by fear.
Persisting long-term with anxiety causes more serious bodily damage: various psychosomatic symptoms manifesting (hair loss is the simplest one), the ability to focus itself becoming scrambled, the brain re-wiring, and one’s health and well-being generally decaying. Plus there are psychological harms too, like obsessions. Overwhelm. And relationships can suffer.
The thing is, anxiety can become one’s norm. A way of viewing the world. An unhealthy psychological and emotional state of being. Stressing becomes a habit. One lives close to the brink of fear, easily toppled into it. Anxiety becomes familiar. Anxiety becomes the default. Anxiety becomes home.
I reached out to one of my contacts, who lives in the West, about Egyptians For Palestinians. I shared an introduction about Egyptians For Palestinians, their Instagram link and the donation link, requesting them to donate. In response, this contact of mine shared some gentle feedback about not wanting to send money except to a legally registered charity, or on a reputed crowdfunding website (they happened to name the same charity aggregator whose founder I had reached out to previously about the charity consultation).
I forwarded this feedback to Hafsah. It might not be the most encouraging feedback for her to hear, but I wanted her to know — this might be a detractor for potential donors. I padded the message by telling her that I totally understood that they were currently grassroots and in the process of maturing / legalizing, that I was sharing this for her attention, knowing that these things take time.
Hafsah’s response was positive. She shared that they were in the process of setting up the official fundraising link. My contact could wait for this fundraising link, or if they preferred, they could sponsor a family directly; Egyptians For Palestinians could directly connect them.
May Allah bless their great work.
(Note that this was way back in July 2024, while Egyptians For Palestinians were still getting set up. Soon afterwards, for a long time now, Egyptians For Palestinians partnered up with Amos Trust, a legally registered UK charity. Feel free to donate to them now: link)
Remember those 4 standard attachment styles? Secure, anxious, avoidant, and anxious-avoidant. If you’ll remember, I’m anxious-avoidant — nice to meet you. The anxious-avoidant attachment style is also called the fearful avoidant attachment style, or the disorganized attachment style. Fearful avoidant, and disorganized. Those are actually very apt names for the anxious-avoidant attachment style. Anxious-avoidants tend to both desire and fear closeness with people they are attached to, and tend to have a negative view of themselves and others. They often have difficulty with emotional regulation, behaving very disorganized and impulsive when dealing with stress.
Sounds familiar?
My days continued to pass in a blur. In addition to my full-time job and other responsibilities, I dabbled in Gaza activism without much restraint throughout the day. I was doomscrolling on social media left, right and center, keeping up with the anxiety-inducing news mindlessly. I was also texting around Egyptians For Palestinians here and there, trying to support them in terms of spreading the word, and trying to reach out to connections who might be able or willing to help them. And I was also occasionally texting my brother in Gaza, my brother in Cairo, and a couple of Gazans who reached out on social media for support. Indicative of weak impulse control, my reckless texting and doomscrolling throughout the day were killing my focus, exhausting me, and contributing to my increasing fatigue and anxiety.
Around mid-July, I received a text message from my bank, saying that I needed to visit them to update the details regarding a bank transfer of mine. Otherwise, my transfer would be cancelled within two days.
Wait.
Which transfer? What transfer? As far as I remember, I had never before received a message like this from my bank. And my bank’s transaction history had lots of various GoFundMe online payments and other transactions that were done for helping various Gazan refugees on the ground and in Cairo. This was something that I was obviously not keen to highlight too much, and would rather keep a low profile about with the banks and with the powers that be — those powers that were allowing this genocide to proceed unabated.
Which transaction was being highlighted? It was possibly one of my GoFundMe transfers. Or one of my online wallet transfers. Had one of my transfers gotten flagged, and raised their ears? Was I on some sort of radar — for helping Palestine too much?
I tried calling my bank. Multiple times. Navigating their calling system and choosing call tree options was not the most fun, but over the next day or so, I kept trying to call them, stumbling around their calling system, or talking to their call center representatives, trying to figure out what was going on and which transaction had been flagged.
No clarity.
They were asking me to come to the bank to resolve this transaction under question. My imagination zoomed into overdrive. Was I under the spotlight for sending a lot of money to support Gazans in need? Obviously, one needs to keep a low profile while doing so. In the country where I happen to live, as in most parts of the world, one needs to be careful about such things.
Would they confront me about my online spending, and ask for explanations? For details? If they asked me, in person, questions about why I was sending money to these links, I imagined myself responding like an offended customer. How could you treat me like this over some innocent transactions? I want to close my account at your bank!
Imagining scenes of confrontation can be stress-inducing. Maybe more so when your attachment style is fearful avoidance.
Normally, the body’s physiological stress response includes symptoms like a rush of adrenaline, increased heartbeat, and a temporary tensing up of muscles. After the stressful situation goes away, the body begins to relax and recover itself.
But as for people who are trapped in a cycle of long-term anxiety, they can be overly-sensitive to stress, more easily triggering their body’s stress response. And this stress response can be extra-high too, with the anxious person perceiving an exaggerated threat by over-thinking and being overly fearful — a lot of cortisol along with adrenaline, heart pounding fast, and so on. And because such people mentally remain in a state of high alert, without calming down, their bodies remain in this state of stress response too, e.g. keeping the body on high alert with increased cortisol, and blood pressure remaining elevated.
Eventually, their body adapts and normalizes this unhealthy state of stress, making it the norm. And it keeps getting worse as time passes, the body getting hardened up to normalize living at higher and higher levels of stress response as the norm.
Exhaustion starts to take over the body in the long run. Elevated stress levels result in lowered immunity and the body getting increasingly damaged. Psychosomatic symptoms manifest, raising alarms for increasing risks of stress-related illnesses.
With time, my long-term psychosomatic symptoms persisted and slowly deepened. Around mid-July, my hair loss was accelerating, and like never before, my hairline was receding. Close to a year had elapsed since my wrist had originally been injured, and had never since fully recovered / stabilized. The health of my eyes was being impacted too. I kept living with these psychosomatic issues, wanting and struggling to turn things around, but slowly sinking deeper.
I decided to respond to my bank’s summons, to their ultimatum of them reversing this unknown transaction, unless I showed up and shared some information. Whatever it was, I needed to face it and try to sort it out.
In the short-term, there is a threshold to acute stress, beyond which your body’s stress response gets triggered. A person who lives with long-term anxiety and long-term psychosomatic symptoms can, at least at times, feel it in their body when this delicate threshold is passed. Their body goes into stress response, and short-term psychosomatic symptoms get activated. For me, with my unhealthy stress levels, when I get stressed and this threshold is crossed, I feel various symptoms at times. Something happens in my stomach, and I burp. My eyes / vision get affected. Some of my muscles can start to feel weak or tensed up. My body feels … acidic.
Of course, I didn’t mention anything to my family about my fears regarding the bank’s summons being about my charity donations for Gaza. In the car, while travelling to the bank, I seem to remember trying to avoid over-thinking. It can be challenging to control an anxious, fearful imagination.
Don’t stress, don’t stress, don’t stress.
I didn’t want to cross the threshold of stress response activation, and have the short-term psychosomatic symptoms begin.
Keep in mind: this current ceasefire is not the end of it all. Our Palestinian brothers and sisters are still under apartheid. As we speak, the West Bank (i.e. the other “side” of Palestine, besides Gaza on the west and the occupied land in the middle) is being raided and our brothers and sisters are being viciously harassed and murdered by the barbaric occupiers.
Even within Gaza, our brothers and sisters are still very much imprisoned in the world’s largest open-air prison (Gaza itself), at the mercy of the heartless, arrogant supremacists. Our Palestinian brothers and sisters are still occupied. Still under the boot of the colonizers. Still starving. Struggling for basic necessities. But always holding on to their Islam, to their dignity and self-respect.
Reviving Gaza is active on the ground, helping get desperately needed resources to people. They recently provided clean water to 4 camps in Mawasi Khan Yunis inside Gaza. Be a part of this — invest for your afterlife — by clicking here.
Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah.
It turned out that the transaction which had been singled out at the bank, had nothing to do with Gaza after all. It was related to another service subscription I was paying for. I spent some time at the bank that day, providing them the requested information regarding the purpose of that payment. And that was that. Alhamdulillah.
Not for the first time, Satan had been whispering thoughts of anxiety to me — nudging me to stress over imaginary scenarios that were not real, never did actually come to pass, but were perfectly crafted to fit my fears. And I had unfortunately been playing along, imagining these scenarios, stressing out as if they were real, and damaging my health in the process.
If you are someone struggling with anxiety, know that Shaitan enjoys himself by knocking you over into stress over and over, whispering intrusive thoughts that keep messing you up inside. Our enemy gains happiness by nudging us to remain emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually low. Shaitan loves this for the believers.
There’s nothing more beloved to Shaiṭān (the devil) than the sadness of a believer.
— Imam Ibn al-Qayyim
During this time, it’s not that I wasn’t doing any dhikr, or that I had zero tawakkul (trust) in Allah. For sure, stronger tawakkul helps: had my tawakkul been deeper, it would have helped me cope better, maybe even solving the issue completely. On a deeper level, focusing more on my blessings and being more grateful would likely have made things better. But we’re not perfect: I was stuck in a bad habit. What made the opportunity golden for Shaitan was me letting unhealthy thought patterns become an unhealthy default state for my emotions and my mind.
Anxiety is an emotional / psychological issue that needs to be dealt with — I do not pretend to downplay it and act like anxiety isn’t a real issue. Consider how, in the case of a physical illness, Allah wants us to do our best and take the means (e.g. medicine) while putting our trust in Him (tawakkul). Similarly, for emotional / mental health issues, we also need to do our best and take the means (e.g. beneficial knowledge, counseling), while putting our trust in Him and understanding that all healing ultimately comes from Him alone.
While I struggled with my unhealthily high anxiety levels, Alhamdulillah I managed for a few days to string together a few wins with some routine daily goals. My recent uptick in actually getting a basic morning routine done, Alhamdulillah, continued for several days. I am underweight and usually seem to eat less than my required caloric intake (despite trying to gain some mass), but during those days around mid-July, I began a streak of eating more. Alhamdulillah for those wins.
Sleeping on time and sleeping enough has since long been one of my biggest and most important struggles. I’d often procrastinate and delay things during the day, and keep urgent things pending until I’d have to sacrifice my sleeping time to get things done. But during those days, my sleeping improved a bit, Alhamdulillah. It was not perfect, but I definitely improved overall in terms of sleeping more on time.
One night, some time beyond mid-July, I stayed up late working on some visa-related work for my family members. I was feeling stressed due to some issue I had faced during that work, and by the time I finished, it was around midnight.
After that, I began doomscrolling. Devastating, harrowing news of the genocide. Heart-breaking. Stress-inducing.
And then I saw it.
I think it was his sister who had posted it. In Arabic, if I’m not mistaken, it mentioned his last name — their family house. The news that the occupation army was targeting their area. Possibly their very building.
My brother in Gaza.
I had already been stressed. Now panic built up inside me.
I texted him. Are you ok? I think they attacked your area. Are you and your family safe?
I waited. And I waited.
No response from my brother.
The night was not over yet.
Continued in Season 1, Episode 13: Bombed. Before you continue, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to support and to stay tuned:
From the morning and evening adhkar:
اَللّٰهُمَّ إِنِّيْ أَعُوْذُ بِكَ مِنَ الْهَمِّ وَالْحَزَنِ ، وَأَعُوْذُ بِكَ مِنَ الْعَجْزِ وَالْكَسَلِ، وَأَعُوْذُ بِكَ مِنَ الْجُبْنِ وَالْبُخْلِ ، وَأَعُوْذُ بِكَ مِنْ غَلَبَةِ الدَّيْنِ وَقَهْرِ ال
O Allah, I seek Your protection from anxiety and grief. I seek Your protection from inability and laziness. I seek Your protection from cowardice and miserliness, and I seek Your protection from being overcome by debt and being overpowered by men.
Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī (raḍiy Allāhu ʿanhu) narrated that one day, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ entered the masjid. He saw a man from the Anṣār called Abū Umāmah (raḍiy Allāhu ʿanhu). He ﷺ asked, “What is the matter? Why are you sitting in the mosque when it is not the time for prayer?” He replied, “Never-ending worries and debts, O Messenger of Allah.” The Messenger of Allah ﷺ then asked, “Shall I not teach you words by which, when you say them, Allah will remove your worries, and settle your debts?” He replied, “Yes of course, O Messenger of Allah.” He ﷺ said, “Say in the morning and evening [the above].” Abū Umāmah (raḍiy Allāhu ʿanhu) said, “Then I did that, and Allah removed my worries and settled my debts.” (Abū Dāwūd 1555)