The background hum: living with anxiety that never fully switches off

If you ask me when my anxiety started, I'd have to think about it for a long time. Because the honest answer is: I'm not sure it ever wasn't there.

There's situational anxiety — the kind that spikes before a presentation, a difficult conversation, an unfamiliar place. I have that too. But underneath it, there's something else. A background hum. Low, constant, present even when there's nothing specific to be anxious about.

The background hum sounds like this:

•        Waking up and immediately feeling that something needs to be done, before I've even remembered what

•        A vague sense of being behind, even when I'm on top of things

•        Difficulty fully relaxing because my brain keeps generating potential problems to solve

•        The feeling that I've forgotten something important, even when I haven't

ADHD and anxiety are deeply connected — and not coincidentally. When a brain struggles to regulate attention and impulse, the emotional and nervous systems work overtime too. My anxiety isn't separate from my ADHD. In many ways, it's a product of it.

Years of being told to try harder, years of falling short of expectations, years of not understanding why things that seemed easy for others felt so hard for me — all of that accumulates. The anxiety becomes baked in. It starts to feel like personality.

I used to think this was just who I am. Maybe it partly is. But there's a difference between temperament and a nervous system that has been running on high alert for decades without understanding why.

The hum doesn't have to be permanent background music. Sometimes, it just needs the right explanation first.

I'm still waiting to find out how quiet it can get.