Before last year, I had gone my whole life without knowing I had anxiety. I don’t recommend doing that. All my life whenever I got nervous before a test or audition I thought that was what everyone went through. My heart starts to pound and I get light-headed, and worst of all I get too into my head. I think of ways things could go wrong and come up with the craziest things that would NEVER happen. But I knew that people get nervous before tests and that it was normal so I didn’t think anything of it. I thought it was the pressure we were under as kids or students.
When I got a little older I started to realize that I ‘freaked out’ about things more than others did. To me it seemed like I was the weird one who freaked out over stuff that other kids wouldn’t break a sweat over. That only made me more nervous because then I thought something was wrong with me. I thought that I couldn’t handle the pressure as well or I wasn’t as smart as the other kids. But then that didn’t make sense either because I knew that I was as smart if not smarter than most kids in my class.
This went on and on for years before last year I finally realized something might be really wrong. So I went to get tested and it turns out I have anxiety. Now my anxiety is pin pointed as performance anxiety but mine is finely tuned. I get anxiety over things that are very individual: tests, auditions, races, games, etc. Which is one of the funniest things to me because I am an actor so I am constantly under pressure and stress to perform. But I think I lucked out because I know other people that have it way worse. And I am here to say: anxiety is just as serious as a physical disease.
Anxiety is something that can affect every moment of every day. One minute you are fine, but then you think of the audition on Friday and your whole body seizes up in terror. It can be a crippling experience for some, ending up with them not being able to leave the house. So yeah, anxiety is just the same as any other disease. It can take months or years to heal, and even that is not guaranteed. Relapse for anxiety and depression can happen in the blink of an eye. I have just begun my journey to try and deal with this issue and it has not been the easiest thing to do.
It is so easy to fall back into old habits rather than rise above and pull through. So before you think that anxiety isn’t a real disease. Don’t. Because it is very much an illness like cancer or diabetes, and the people that fight this uphill battle every day are the silent soldiers. This inner struggle is what people don’t see. And if you can’t see the illness it doesn’t exist right? Wrong. This disease is real and hurts as bad as breaking a bone.