Catherine Kamau opens up on battle with anxiety disorder

By Diana Anyango | 3yrs ago | 3 min read

Catherine Kamau has disclosed that she suffers from anxiety disorder. Opening up on the condition for the first time on social media, the actress revealed that she had the condition for a while but kept it under wraps for fear of being dismissed by society.

“So I asked you guys to ask me questions about me and one of the questions was that I tell you something you don’t know about me. Well I responded by saying I suffer from anxiety disorder and most of you were like, ‘What is that?’” she wrote.

In an attempt to shed more light on the condition, the mother of two invited Sophie Muriuki, a clinical Psychologist to discuss different types of anxiety and help netizens understand the condition and how to deal with it. In the recently uploaded YouTube video dubbed, ‘coping with anxiety disorder,’ Kate admitted to Sophie that her anxiety has gotten to the point where it prevents her from giving her best at work. In her explanation, she stated that she tends to procrastinate certain obligations and ends up running behind work schedules or worse off, cancelling entire projects.

“It is so bad that it even affects my work. In that, I’m thinking about doing something but I am so anxious about it I end up procrastinating, overthinking about it and then end up not doing it. This results in me running behind on work schedules. When you explain to someone how you feel they will be like, ‘this one nowadays has white people’s problems,’ you know,” she explained.

According to the clinical psychologist, anxiety is only normal up to a certain point in humans.

“If it makes you physically sick or mentally withdrawn, you need to seek professional help. There is the anxiety which is the anticipation of something versus the emotional part of anxiety which is now where fear comes in. In this case fear is the emotional expression of that anticipation. When you are feeling anxious, there is something you are waiting to do. In your instance you have talked about it affecting your work, meaning you have planned to do something but you keep pushing it back, so you engage in avoidant behavior. Another thing we need to consider is, how do you feel when you think about that thing you want to do. Are you sweating, are you shaking, are you feeling like you heart is beating so hard? Are you having difficulty breathing?

“You also want to look at your thoughts, so now because of the way you are feeling physically, it is going to affect how you are thinking. For a normal case, when you are going for a job interview, for exams, you get nervous, you are worried, maybe it even motivates you to do better. But if it gets to appoint where you can’t even leave the house to go and do that thing you need to do, then you need to seek help. There is nothing wrong with it, sometimes our bodies just need help to function,” she said.