When I left for college last year, it was the first time I wasn't home for a long period of time. I didn't know if I would be able to live without my family. I would be moving to a new city and be surrounded by people I didn't know. For the first time in my life, I would have complete responsibility over myself. I needed to make sure I ate, got up in the morning, went to class, cleaned my room, showered, and did laundry. I can do all of these things on my own of course, but there would be nobody there forcing me to do it. These tasks may sound childish; of course, an 18 should be able to basically take care of themselves. For me, however, I didn't know if I could.
Going to college with an anxiety disorder means worrying about and overthinking every single thing. When anxiety gets overwhelming, which happened several times during my high school career, I could completely shut down, which meant that doing simple tasks such as brushing my teeth or my hair could suddenly become very difficult. Getting out of bed could be difficult. Going to college, I now had to be responsible for myself.
Now in my sophomore year, I can gratefully say that I survived. Actually, I didn't just survive, I thrived. Getting through my first year of college was difficult at times, but I just needed to find new ways to cope and get through it. That's what it's like living with anxiety; there is no pill or coping method that makes anxiety disappear. There are only ways to deal with anxiety to make it more manageable. This was one of the toughest things to learn when I started trying to treat my anxiety. I wanted there to be some magic cure, and then I could function in the world as a regular human being. That isn't how it works. Rather, I needed to learn how to ease my anxiety. I needed to regard it more like an annoying friend than my entire state of being. For example, if my anxiety was telling me that all of my friends secretly hated me, I would pretend that my anxiety was an annoying friend telling me these things, and I would 'speak' to them and tell them all the reasons why they were wrong. Trying to remind myself my thoughts were not irrational helped.
College provided plenty of new opportunities for anxiety. What if I didn't make new friends? What if people thought it was strange that I sit in the dining hall alone? What if I forget a major assignment? What if I didn't study hard enough? What if nobody likes me? What if I somehow fail a class? The thoughts didn't go away, but through time I was able to learn to live with these feelings, because I need to function, anxiety or not.
