If you look up the definition of the word “anxiety” online Google will give you this answer: “anxiety is a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome”. While Google does a good job defining the basics of what anxiety is, I’m going to go into much more depth. As someone who has dealt with an anxiety disorder since I can remember I think I am slightly qualified to talk about this topic. A lot of what I’m going to talk about is based off of personal experience so I may not hit the nail on the head completely as anxiety can be different from person to person.

My anxiety comes in two forums: the kind where I know exactly what is triggering it and can change something to make me less anxious or the more frequently experienced kind where it comes on unexpectedly with no real trigger. It’s similar to the kind that Google describes. Usually it comes on as a feeling of uneasiness but much stronger. It’s like something is physically wrong with me but my body is unsure as to what it is so everything just feels off. It’s like if someone were to move all of your furniture five inches to the left while you weren’t there. You wouldn’t know for sure that anything has changed but you would feel like something has.

Anxiety, in my case, usually doesn’t show on the outside but when it does it’s in little, hardly noticeable, ways. Usually my body will shake. It can be my hands or my legs, depends on how anxious I’m feeling at the moment. If I’m having a full-blown attack, it’ll be my entire body vibrating. Another barely noticeable way my anxiety shows is that I tend to go inside myself. I’m a very outgoing person, I’ve never had an issue with being shy or anything, but when my anxiety comes on I tend to get quieter. If I don’t know why I’m feeling anxious I’ll get quiet because I’m trying to figure out what is wrong, what is triggering it. If I know what’s going on I get quiet because I don’t know how to fix it and I'm fighting a battle inside myself to remain calm.

Anxiety attacks are the worst part. It feels like your blood is boiling and your heart is beating a hundred beats per millisecond. It’s like I forget how to breathe but at the same time I’m breathing too much. Sometimes tears will come but others it’s just silence. Other times everything becomes too much and I try to describe to others what’s going on but my mouth has suddenly turned into the road runner and I begin talking too fast for anyone to understand me. Triggers for the attacks can be literally anything. It can be as simple as someone scared me a little too much or they can just come on without any warning.

For some people, including myself, anxiety can be as simple as over thinking or worrying too much. I’m dealing with anxiety right now as I write this because so many things are going through my mind. What will people thing? What if nobody else is dealing with the kind of anxiety I am? What if people think I’m insane once they find out about this? The way I deal with this “over thinking” anxiety is by trying to distract myself in some way so that I don’t have enough brain space to over think. Sometimes even just listening to music helps.

There are little tricks to dealing with your anxiety. Little things that I’ve found to calm me down. It’s different from person to person but I’ve talked to a few other people with anxiety and sometimes the way others deal with their anxiety is very similar. For example, something I mentioned earlier on was music. You can never go wrong with music. For me, blasting throwbacks and singing along at the top of my lungs helps while for others listening to music without lyrics and just taking it in is better. Something that calms me down the most is driving. The feeling of being in control of something and being able to decide where I want to go, whether I want to turn left or right, and even being able to choose that I don’t want to have a destination helps calm me down.

There are also things that make it worse. Pressure from others to describe what is wrong makes it worse because I don’t know how to explain it in the moment. Asking me to make decisions during an anxiety attack is the worst possible thing you can do to me. Even if you’re just asking if I want water there are too many decisions, too many outcomes, and it overwhelms me even more. Another thing that really is not good when it comes to my anxiety is that people try touch me to calm me down. I’m not someone who is good with being touched. It just developed recently but I have certain parts of me that are more sensitive than others so touching me during an attack makes me even more anxious. I know it seems like it should help but it only makes it worse for me. For other cases, with other people, it helps tremendously. I'm just not one of those people.

I know this article is lengthy but, I feel like this is a topic that isn’t talked about enough, especially from the perspective of someone with the actual disorder. It’s something millions of people deal with; 3.3 million people above the age of 18 alone in the U.S. in fact. It’s also something people tend to keep to themselves. If you didn’t know me on a personal level, you would never know that this is something I deal with. I am very lucky, however, to have a good group of friends who love me, anxiety and all, and who know how to help me when I’m dealing it. If you are reading this and also struggle with anxiety and feel like you are the only one who understands what you’re going through, I want you to know that you aren’t. You are not alone and there are people in your life who you would never expect to deal with it but do. Don’t ever be afraid to speak up or to ask for help. You’d be surprised how many people will be there to lend a hand.