Living with anxiety isn't something most people are quick to talk about. Most anxiety sufferers keep it to themselves and pretend like nothing is wrong to the best of their ability. Anxiety is debilitating at times, it can consume you, and make the simplest tasks seem impossible to complete. Depending on the specifications whether it is generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety, or anxiety that is triggered by different things, it affects all of us in very similar ways.
Anxiety is a constant battle against your mind, and our minds affect our bodies. You may be well aware that what is making you anxious is irrational, but you can't stop your mind from sending you into the downward spiral of an anxiety attack anyway. Your chest will start to feel tight, your palms get sweaty, your heart races, your hands or your legs might go numb and tingly, you feel like you can't breathe, and you might get light headed and dizzy. You feel a general sense of panic rushing over you. In the moment, it feels like it may never stop.
There are techniques we are told to calm ourselves, like to focus on your breathing, four to six breaths per minute, and to try to focus on other things, distract yourself, anything that can make you aware of your surroundings again. But in the moment of a panic attack, it isn't always as easy as it seems. When it comes to generalized anxiety, you never know when it may happen or what may cause it. You could be in the grocery store, sitting in class, or driving down the highway. In any setting, it is more difficult to manage than most people think it is.
While dealing with anxiety is hard enough by itself, what is even more difficult is trying to explain it to those around you who have never experienced it and don't understand. You'll get the people who completely brush it off and tell you to "just stop worrying" or "everybody gets nervous sometimes." These are the most ignorant and uncomfortable things you can say to someone who is suffering from anxiety because odds are it took a lot to get us to let you into our heads to try to explain what is happening, and we're probably too embarrassed to continue to explain it, and we'll have anxiety about that too.
To those who glorify anxiety, who don't understand it, and think it's something besides nervous to say in an uncomfortable situation, you are the reason that people do not take it seriously.
If you're lucky enough to have people in your life who want to understand what your anxiety feels like, and want to try and calm you down in the moment of an anxiety attack, it can be challenging to try to describe the feeling. Even though we may feel it every single day, multiple times a day, it's not always something we can put into words.
The way I've tried to explain the sensation you get in your stomach that accompanies all the other symptoms of anxiety is like when you reach the top of a hill on a roller coaster and you're about to go over the drop. But it never goes away, you don't feel the release of when you finally take the drop. Or when you send a risky text message and you hear your phone go off with the response. The quick fluttering you feel then, but that feeling also does not go away. It's unsettling and puts your body in the fight or flight response, but to something that isn't a real danger.
Regardless of if you are an anxiety sufferer or not, it is important for us to realize that even though it may be our minds that cause us to feel the awful effects of it, what we are feeling is very real, and what we are anxious about is real to us. You should never tell yourself or someone suffering from anxiety that it's "all in your head" and "just get over it."
Just because you cannot understand it, doesn't mean it isn't real.
