Ever since starting college, I’ve always found myself to be on the go. If you look at my planner, you will see that it is constantly filled with assignments, exams, meetings, socials, and events. I always have something going on, but you would never see me struggling to find balance in my life. You see, I thought the constant stresses in my life were everyone else's constant stresses so there was no reason to complain. To cope, I would just tell myself to keep pushing forward. Little did I know that I was pushing myself so far forward that I was about to fall off the cliff of sanity.
It wasn't until my senior year of college that I realized something wasn't right. If I am being honest, something was never "right" junior year, but I just brushed my struggles under the worry rug and plastered a smile on my face. I didn’t want to even fathom the idea of something being wrong with me.
Soon enough, senior year arrived and I knew it was going to be stressful. What I didn’t know was that the stress was going to consume me in my entirety. All it took was one article to start the downfall. One day, I stumbled upon an article on high functioning anxiety disorder.
I found that some of the symptoms of those who have the disorder include:
1. Perfectionism
2. Busyness
3. Nervous habits like picking at your skin
4. Not being able to say when enough is enough
5. Emotional compartmentalization,sleep loss,worrying about letting people down
6. Having doubts that you aren’t enough.
After reading the symptoms, I found myself relating to a lot of them which then caused me to immediately go into denial mode. There couldn’t be something wrong with me mentally. I couldn’t have a disorder. All college students go through stress like that. It was all just a coincidence. But it wasn’t.
My stress, worries, and thoughts were not the same as every college student. Not every college student would have panic attacks. My panic attacks are much more than just claustrophobia. My panic attacks are crippling. They are triggered by something as simple as my heartbeat. When I start to overthink, my heart has a tendency to beat faster than I would like. I then fixate on my ticking timer of a heartbeat. This causes my breathing to become erratic. Making my lungs feel like a punctured balloon that is quickly deflating. I can't catch my breath. I become jittery and extremely light headed as if I’m about to pass out. Deep down, I knew I couldn't just brush this off. This was not normal.
I finally hit my breaking point when a friend told me what she thought about me. She said that I always appeared confident and it looked like nothing was ever wrong with me. She even said she envied that about me. I was completely taken back by her comment. She really couldn’t tell that I was drowning in my worries. She couldn’t see me anxiously overthinking little details. She couldn’t see it at all.
So what did I do? I held it all in until I was alone and I broke down in tears. I hung my head in defeat, realizing I could no longer fight the truth. I had to come to terms with the fact that I am living with a disorder. In order to regain power over my life, I needed to figure out how to move forward. I knew my first step had to be facing my fear. I had to look my fear straight in the eye and call it by its name. I can now freely say: I have a high functioning anxiety disorder. I no longer let my disorder make me feel any less of a person.
Since accepting my disorder, I have found multiple ways to manage my anxiety. I have turned to the aroma of lavender, yoga, tea, and melatonin. But mainly, I’ve found talking about it helps. At the surface, everything may appear to be fine with me, but dig a little deeper and you’ll see that I am more than what meets the eye. Not every day is a good day for me and sometimes I need to remind myself that it's okay to have bad days. I am a work in progress and there is nothing wrong with that.
