This world is full of people who are living with anxiety. Anxiety is a nervous disorder that causes severe uneasiness, worry, fear, tension, stress and many other emotions as well. It’s a feeling of wanting to jump out of your skin in order to avoid doing a task. It’s the feeling of wanting to run and hide in order to avoid talking to someone. Anxiety makes you think differently; it makes you doubt yourself and worry about being embarrassed or making mistakes. It’s a terrible feeling when you are always in distress about every little thing. You could be sitting alone in your room and an anxiety attack can happen just by thinking about the littlest thing, which causes it to spiral out of control. Some people may show more symptoms than others, but just because you appear to be calm, cool and collected doesn’t mean you aren’t dying on the inside.
I have anxiety.
It may not look like it on the outside but I do. There are many different types of anxiety: generalized anxiety disorder, anxiety attacks, obsessive-compulsive disorder, social anxiety disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder. My whole life I have been dealing with social anxiety. When I was younger, I refused to sleep at someone else’s house. I would feel my heart start beating, and my stomach clenching. My hands would start sweating and I’d feel like I’m overheating. Tears would brim my eyes, and I’d start panicking. I’d feel like I couldn’t breathe and that the walls were closing in on me. I’d convince myself that if I didn’t get out of there I was going to suffocate. I would start panicking and call my mom in the middle of the night to come get me. It was the worst feeling, thinking that your friends are going to hate you because you can’t sleep at their houses. I would always beat myself up about the fact that no one wanted to be my friend because I was the weird kid who has panic attacks whenever they go to a sleepover.
Anxiety is a terrible feeling; it makes your body work against you. Your mind starts to wander and when the anxiety hits it spirals into oblivion, making every situation seem 10 times worse. So many people believe that it’s nonsense; that telling yourself not to think that way can fix it. That’s not how it works. It’s so difficult to try to rewire your brain. It’s so hard to make yourself stop thinking about something once it’s already begun its downward spiral. When you are going through a panic attack you can’t always convince your mind to stop panicking and being so afraid of experiencing life.
There are so many different situations that can cause an anxiety attack. Talking to new people, going new places, not having a familiar comfort, and so many more. Going to college was a trigger for me, it brought along so many new worries and fears. It made me have to branch out of my comfort zone, which made my mind wander and go over every situation I could possibly encounter. What if I couldn’t live with my roommates? What if I don’t make friends? What if I can’t handle the coursework? So many questions were running through my mind.
Once I got to college the thoughts didn’t stop either. They just brought along so much more worries with them. It began adding up until I thought I was going to internally combust. It was hard to get through every day worrying and panicking over every little thing. I doubted myself and everyone else, I didn’t believe that people would actually want to be my friend; I just thought that they were using me. When in actuality that wasn’t true at all people did want to be my friend I just would overthink every situation and make myself out to be this crazy person that I wasn’t.
Going through this tough time I learned ways to help me cope when the panic set in. Every time I’m going through an anxiety attack I need to sit back and breathe. I count to 10 and listen to my heart, and this would help slow my heart rate down. Then I would focus on unclenching my stomach, to relaxing the muscles and continue breathing deeply. After that I think about what caused me to panic, I go through numerous steps in my head about why I was panicking and I think of other ways to go about the current situation. I breathe, in and out, till my nerves are calmed and my heart is settled. I also write about what it causing me anxiety in a journal. It allows me to write everything down and think through it easier. It is hard living with anxiety but there are ways to cope with it, you just need to try different methods and see what works for you.
