Were they laughing at me?

Oh man, please don't look at me. Must. Not. Make. Eye. Contact.

Guess I'm not going to get some coffee while there's people hanging around the machine.

These are all things that someone who may have anxiety would be thinking just throughout the course of just five minutes. According to Merriam-Webster.com, anxiety is defined as, "fear or nervousness about what might happen". This phenomenon is becoming more and more common among today's young people. This could be caused from anything, like doing well in school, to family, to social pressure from friends. This current generation is being pushed to be the very best at everything, as well as to fix everything that the previous generation may have done to damage the nation. How does one cope with something like this?

A friend once told me that the difference in my life between depression and anxiety is that depression is dwelling on the past, while anxiety is extreme uncertainty and fear of the future. I personally don't like not knowing things. I have to know what I'm getting into before I say, "yes", I have to know how something ends, and I have to know everything ahead of time so I know what I'm doing. It's difficult to be OK with not knowing everything about a situation.

Being incredibly afraid of the uncertainty that lies in front of us can be crippling. I've done something as silly as not thrown away trash because someone was standing close to it, or not gone to the grocery store because of the fact that there were so many people there and I may have to actually talk to someone. With all the tragedy and terrible things that happen in our world today, having some kind of anxiety has become completely normal.

In my personal experience, anxiety is something that prevents me from doing things that I want to do the most. I'd like to be able to go out and just talk to people and make friends, but I can't. I'd like to be able to just speak freely in class, but I can't. Anytime I attempt to do something like either of those, I freeze and tense up. If it gets really bad, I feel like I can't breathe or even move. It's something that I don't want to deal with, but I can't just completely ignore it either. I often feel alone in dealing with it, but I know I'm not.

When it comes to dealing with anxiety, I've had to push past it and get over the fear of what could possibly happen. My ever-busy mind is racing through all the possibilities of what could happen, and I somehow manage to push it all aside and get done what needs to get done. In having anxiety, your mind tends to overthink everything thus creating the fear of all the uncertainty. I don't think there's really a way to stop your mind from overthinking everything, but you can tell yourself that most of those things are likely not to happen and push through.

When you-know-what hits the fan, it can be hard not to be anxious about things going on around you. You begin to have questions that no one can answer, and begin to doubt everything around you. We're always going to have more questions than answers, and sometimes we have to be OK with not knowing the answers to those questions. Learning to cope with something like anxiety is a long and difficult process. I've found that talking it out with someone who can challenge you to get through it in small steps helps tremendously. Even if asking for help gives you all sorts of anxiety, taking that small step can make all the difference in living with it.

"No, don't
Leave me to die here
Help me survive here
Alone, don't remember, remember
Put me to sleep, evil angel
Open your wings, evil angel."
-Breaking Benjamin, "Evil Angel"