During the last two months of my sixth grade year, I wasn't focused on all of the typically exciting things that happen before summer for the average eleven-year-old. My birthday was flooded with feelings of fear and worry instead of glee; the entire month of April was filled with searching for the right medication to alleviate a problem that, spoiler alert, never even existed. Moreover, May allowed these anxieties to flourish as my mom and I repeatedly visited the doctor in hopes of finding an answer to this ongoing issue. Nothing came, until one day for no particular reason at all, the noise seemed to fade.

Little did I know that this saga, which consisted of perpetual waves of nausea and an intense phobia of throwing up as a result, was all caused by my health anxiety.

Health anxiety, defined by the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) as the preoccupation with the belief that one has or is in danger of developing a serious illness, has taken many forms throughout my short sixteen years on this planet. While the anecdote above was sparked by a weekend in Chicago I deemed "ruined" over a small bout of the flu, I was unable to move on from the theory that my sickness over those three days was something much more than that, prompting me to trial an influx of heartburn medications and dose up on Tums every chance I got. Mealtime became a war zone in my brain, as I would dive into any dish worrying if my self-created stomach condition would flare up and prohibit me from eating. I could never watch someone puke or even hear anyone talk about the word without glassy tears forming in the corners of my eyes, and any time that I believed an important or exciting event was coming up in my life, I convinced myself that I couldn't enjoy those events with my "condition," that there was no other possibility than ultimately feeling nauseous and being unable to participate. I even started refusing to wear shirts or whole outfits that I had worn on particularly bad days with my sickness, claiming that the germs from them would give me bad luck and manifest into further illness.

In hindsight, my struggles with emetophobia (the severe fear of vomiting) feel extremely distant, just as it seems with the anxiety I had when I was nine over some minor hair loss translating into leukemia. However, though I'm not worrying as much about those conditions any longer, health anxiety still plays a massive role in my life; now, instead, I'm more concerned with things like my blood pressure and blood sugar that developed into active anxieties after a fluke incident during my freshman year of high school.

On an evening a little over two years ago—one that is still very difficult to talk about, as it crosses my mind at least once daily—I woke up from my sleep with a bloody nose. Obviously alarmed by the bright red splotches on my sheets and fingertips, I dashed to our bathroom to grab some tissues and wash my hands, only to pass out, hit my head on the bathtub, and suffer a concussion before I could get back to the safety of my bed. It was soon determined that the fainting spell was a result of a sudden drop of my blood pressure from changing between laying down and standing up too quickly, and though the doctor reassured me that something like this was normal, especially in the case of teenagers who naturally have lower blood pressures to start with, it has served as a reminder of the lack of control I have over my own body. Just like puking, passing out is something that can happen at any moment, anywhere, without my permission first, and that concept petrifies me. Furthermore, after learning more about type-one diabetes from several family friends who had recently received diagnoses, I determined that my blood sugar was yet another thing to be fearful of, subconsciously telling myself when my blood sugar is too high or too low without any actual basis on which these ideas were developed. It isn't helpful at all that the physical symptoms of anxiety I often experience—shakiness, dizziness, and increased sweat production—are nearly identical to those of someone whose blood sugar is out of whack.

To someone without health anxiety, everything described above may seem incredibly extreme and or irrational, and in part, it can even appear that way to me as I write this. But the tricky thing about this disorder is that although I am partially aware of how unreasonable my fears can be, in the moment of a panic attack or a potentially unsettling situation, my thoughts seem perfectly justifiable, my disturbing visions of myself laying in a hospital bed or waking up after fainting converted to absolutely plausible realities. While I make significant strides towards an anxiety-free future every single day, I often remain misunderstood in the moments where grounding affirmations or deep-breathing exercises aren't enough to calm myself down. However, I hope that in writing this piece, one that feels incredibly vulnerable for me personally, I can spread some awareness about an anxiety disorder that is less frequently discussed.

In short, I want everyone to know that their struggles are valid, even if they may come off as problems with simple answers to the vast majority of the world. If we focus on sharing our stories with mental health and erasing the stigma surrounding it, we can change the narrative forever.