Anxiety, we all know what it is, and we all think we understand it...but trust me you don't. Anxiety to the average person is just a feeling you get when you afraid to do something, but it is much more than that. Anxiety is a completely overpowering and unrelenting disease that only those who truly have experienced know what it means to have anxiety. I find the easiest way to define anxiety is this, imagine for a second that you are in the dessert and a lion appears from around a bush 10 feet in front of you. Now, I want you to think about how you would feel, scared maybe hopeless? Everyone's first instinct would be to run, but for a person with anxiety it may feel as though they cannot run and this is where the problems arise.
A little backstory about myself, I have had anxiety since the age of 9. I started to be so afraid to go to school that I would cry and do anything I could to avoid that place, but this was only the beginning. I soon became afraid of everything, from having to go to science class, to germs. My anxiety disorder turned into a case of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). The overwhelming fear of germs I had caused me to relentlessly wash my hands or use hand sanitizer, to the point where I had chemical burns from the alcohol in the sanitizer.
My disease did not stop there, from the age of 9 the disease began to grow steadily until middle school when I felt that I had exhausted all my options and I knew that I would just have to deal with this for the rest of my life. If you have anxiety you know the feeling. I hit rock bottom...I remember thinking "How can I go to high school and deal with all that stress, I could barely get myself to walk into a crowded room!" Then I realized that I could no longer let this feeling control my life, I HAD to make a change.
This is where I hope I can help you if you are struggling with this "monster." I know how you feel, and I know that you've all been told to "just calm down" or "you're fine," and I know this doesn't work. I do want to tell you that you are OK, people tell you that all the time but "they don't know"...am I right? Well I do know and I know that I can tell you with 100 percent certainly, you will make it through. No matter how much you feel like there is no way you will be able to conquer this, just remember...tomorrow is another day, and you are the only one that can make it better than the last.
You can't rely on someone to make you better, you have to make yourself better. This is sometimes hard to hear when you feel like you are facing a lion, but it's the truth. I do not mean you need to go out and be a new person tomorrow and never feel this feeling again, but rather, I want you to go out and make small changes in your life and trust me you will start to see a change.
I started with the smallest changes, if I always avoided answering questions in class because I was afraid of being wrong, I went to school the next day and answered every question I thought I knew the answer to. With these small changes, you'll start to see yourself morphing into a new person...and you will most definetly be thrilled with the results.
Now get to it, I believe in you!
