In My Head is a Hostile Place

Where I've Been Hiding, and Looking for "Home."

I hope this email finds you well :-)

I’m returning from a hiatus, not yet fully restored back to factory settings. This resistance is not for a lack of physical ability, but more a fear of my own thoughts. Yes, I can string together a darling gift guide, but the deeper concerns simultaneously existing within me have begun to boil over into physical anxiety symptoms, and truthfully, I am not operating at base level Ella Snyder.

I have not felt mentally equipped to write since last year. My worries raced through Fall, and haven’t yet slowed into Winter, not once rearing down enough to elaborate publicly on. Instead, I’ve watched the world carry on around me.

I’ve sat under my computer countless times, attempting to write these essays, but volatile words spew onto my page, and I realize the writing is no version of myself that I want shared with the world.

This is an important conversation I had with my mother, while visiting California for the holidays. She was appalled to see I had posted an Instagram story from the Hearst Castle, announcing the panic attack I was enduring through my tour of the property.

The infamous Instagram story…

“The whole world doesn’t need to know things like that Ella! Those are things you share with your close friends, your real life friends.”

She made a fair point, perhaps an audience of nearly 60,000 human beings doesn’t need to know that I’ve entered a crippling spiral of anxiety once again. However, I do think social media was invented for the purpose of feeling less alone, and in that moment, that’s really all I was seeking by posting that story. So, in an effort yearning for camaraderie, and for the comfort of my mother, I will spare you the most grueling details, but I will share my truth.

The initial couple months of life upon landing in New York are now behind me, and I’m settling into my much anticipated new chapter. I can’t say the transition has come with ease, but I rest assured that this uprooting does have purpose.

I am forced to confront the reality that New York has not changed my life overnight upon moving back, especially in coming home for the holidays. Everyone is curious to know how the city is treating me.

The boroughs may be as bustling as ever, but my arrival certainly didn’t shake the city in any way. My days have been quiet, writing for other outlets, attending my method acting classes, stopping by my modeling agency to remind them I exist, and that I moved here for them.

I have found more than anything, that my anxiety is creeping back, living in New York again. It starts in the mornings, on my commute to acting class, or any time I ride the subway. I feel it waiting in line to order, or checkout anywhere. It begins with my thoughts starting to move so fast I can’t finish one before worrying about the next. My muscles tense up and a steady vibration takes over my face, growing into my hands and thighs.

It’s just a sensation, I tell myself. Because it is. I’m not actually vibrating, at least not visibly to others, I hope, but that’s the sensation I feel. Often times, these mild panic attacks are manageable, I can slow myself down enough to realize what’s going on and remind myself that I am safe and I will be okay.

Most nights, I’m usually so defeated by my whirlwind days, that I melt into my couch with my roommates, watching films and avoiding ninety-nine percent of the sponsored events on my calendar. Most recently though, this sensation of panic came upon me while driving on the highway down the California coast to Los Angeles. Not one of my usual triggers, I had to pull off into the breakdown lane just to calm myself enough to drive to a real exit and walk the sensation off.

:(

It terrifies me that my anxiety followed me home for the holidays. I had hoped that being in the care of my parents would alleviate any of my fears, but they only seem to have grown. Perhaps I am dreading this new year, and how much change is still to come. Turning 26 in the city I turned 19 in, and losing access to my mom’s fabulous health insurance. Confronting what I left behind when I left town last.

My sense of home still feels extremely skewed, following my move East, and my parents’ move West. Where is home? Is this home? I know I need to get home, following my extended holiday vacation in California, but New York doesn’t feel all that welcoming in my brain right now, as I’ve found it almost impossible to quiet the constant fight-or-flightiness in my head.

I’m struggling to put into words how undeniably changed I am, from living through a global pandemic… I feel as though I’ve been in a dissociative slumber for the past four years and it took moving across the country again, to wake me the fuck up.

The lack of routine, and lack of self discipline I created for myself living in California had sent me out of orbit of any dreams I had set out to accomplish pre-covid. My photo book remains unfinished. The modeling career I thought was mine, I see handed to girls five years my junior. Nothing feels real anymore. I don’t feel real anymore. At least New York’s bitter, biting air whips me across the face each time I step out my door, reminding me I am alive.

On my first day in my new apartment, I slipped on my suitcase, my ribcage catching my fall on the ledge of my windowsill. That same day, however, Willa Bennett (newly appointed Editor in Chief of Cosmopolitan and Seventeen) messaged me, asking me to write for her new Cosmo! In seething pain, I wrote back a quick brainstorm of column ideas, delighted by visions of a trans Carrie Bradshaw. The perfect example of the paradox that is my life currently!

I wrote an essay for Cosmo (my first of many, hopefully) about dating while trans, and how I navigate coming out, again, and again, and again. It’s running in the Spring ‘25 print issue, so I better see y’all at the newsstand checkout with a copy of your own. I would be happy to sign it ;)

UPDATE: My essay has also been syndicated to Cosmopolitan Italy so readers can enjoy it in Italian as well!

I also spent a month back in the method acting intensive I once loved. I wrote an unpublished newsletter about how it went, but for many reasons, I’m extremely hesitant to publicize that writing. The gist of it is that I didn’t commit myself in the same way I did in Los Angeles classes, and because of that, I didn’t have as great of a takeaway from class, or as great of a breakthrough in my acting. I left the month with the feeling of breaking away from a cult.

Weeks ago, I sat at my desk, with my phone propped against my desktop, and I spoke through the screen to my therapist I’ve been working with since sophomore year of college. My eyes beginning to well with tears, though none had yet fallen, “nothing in my life feels real right now,” I told her. My voice breaking, as I finally said aloud the thought that had plagued my fears since landing into my new chapter on the east coast. Solution brained and recognizing the precursors to my panic, miss therapist immediately jumped to how can we get you to feel grounded in the present?

She’s not wrong in her attempt. I am severely uncentered. Carrying worries for Trump’s second presidency, the uncertainty of my old home burning down in Los Angeles and watching it happen to others, over and over again on the news, and certainly the reoccuring, ego-centric worries, that I am somehow not okay.

After four long weeks visiting friends and family in California, I sedated my agoraphobia with the aid of benzodiazepines, and boarded my flights (yes, plural) “home.” The nine hour travel day was almost completely free of my physical anxiety symptoms. I’ve been home long enough now to remember that I am capable of taking care of myself, and that my support system here functions just as well as my parents on the opposite end of the country.

For a long time, I too, carried the stigma that looms over Big Pharma. I didn’t want to rely on something “artificial” in order to feel better, nor did I want to build a tolerance to something I would eventually need. I’ve surrendered to that ideology and the anxiety can never be fully killed off (the way I would like it to be,) but instead can become much more manageable when I’m willing to do the work.

Medicating doesn’t have to be scary, or feel like a crutch, sometimes I just need it. But it has to be in conjunction with cognitive behavioral therapy, regular check-ins with my prescriber, and my own will to change. I know that I can’t simply medicate and wait for things to feel different. I still have to battle my desire to bed-rot, and thrust myself outside each day to conquer some sort of exposure therapy. Some days it’s just the grocery store, others it’s a full day on set or back-to-back castings all over midtown (my personal Hell.)

For any readers out there fighting a similar battle, I’m writing this for you. You’re not alone. It feels deeply concerning to admit this, but I’ve actually found quite a sense of community on Reddit. The R/agoraphobia community is bustling with humans not unlike myself, pushing themselves each day to leave home and rejoin society one baby step at a time, sharing both their victories and failures. I’m what they deem a “lurker,” someone who doesn’t post, but is online, reading through the forum. The community discusses exposure therapy, medicating, bad days, and so much more. Faceless strangers raise my hopes through the screen, that I too can ride the subway again one day with ease, and that the TSA line will eventually not make me feel like I am going to lose consciousness.

While I work to trace the root of this dilemma, and process whatever unresolved trauma is causing this mental block, I know I must keep writing. I must keep creating. My biggest goal of this new year is to consume less, and create more. I know that I am an artist at my core, and I won’t experience a deeper level of fulfillment until I am creating work that I feel proud of. I also know I couldn’t access the creative state of being I needed to enter, until I got all of this off my chest. So, with this, hopefully I am free. Unchained from the shackles restraining my imagination, I’m feeling eager to return to my lighthearted writing.

Until next time,

Take care of yourselves and each other…

Ella

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