Generalized Anxiety Disorder In The Lake Isle Of Innisfree

As a child, it is surprisingly unapparent to you that certain things you go through are not always considered normal to other people. In my case, overwhelming nerves about everyday situations have clouded my judgement for as long as I can remember. Having your mind fill with irrational thoughts and your body flood with nausea because of a constant state of worry is not a something that many people experience. However, I did experience this, and for the majority of my life I was unaware of the silent war my body was waging against itself. The war is ongoing because of the disorder I have, which is known as generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). The disorder is very common, but it is also very real- and very brutal. When I first put a face on the

In The Lake Isle of Innisfree, the author writes about a haven, a lake, that he escapes to when the stress of everyday life is weighing on him too heavily. The speaker uses descriptions of what he sees when he visits the lake to paint a picture of peace, not necessarily for the reader but for himself. He even states that he “...will find some peace there, for peace comes dropping slowly…” For a while I was looking for something, or someone, or some place that I could run to and count on to completely rid me of the complexity of my emotions, similarly to how the author of the poem had this place with Innisfree. I unexpectedly found my place while sitting on the beach alone during a family vacation, breathing in deeply and reading a book. Therefore, similarly to how the author uses Innisfree to keep himself calm, I use the images in my mind of the sun beaming down and the waves dancing along the shore to bring myself into a state of serenity when I feel as though nothing else

I see my Innisfree as the private beach in Destin that my family and I used to visit often. Imagining myself alone in a beach chair, accompanied only by the sound of waves batting against the shore, is an excellent technique I use to reverse the symptoms of an anxiety attack. This image is readily available to me, as it is stored in my memory and hopefully will be for forever. In the last lines of the poem, Yeats states: “I will arise and go now, for always night and day / I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; / While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, / I hear it in the deep heart’s core.” A brief analysis of these lines tells the reader that the lake is always with him, that he hears the sounds of it in his mind and can return to his safe haven always. By giving a description of both the grey pavements and the singing crickets, he offers an element of contrast between his everyday life and his “happy place.” This also suggests that in his daily life he may feel exactly like I do. He sees that the average parts of the world are not ideal places for someone who has seen places as beautiful as Destin and Innisfree. This insight into how the speaker’s mind works gives us not only descriptions of his safe place, but of his day to day