Recently I admitted to myself and a small group of others that I suffer from performance anxiety. I was very reluctant to do so--it wasn't easy to embrace the fact that there is something fundamentally different about the way my body handles stress. But I did, and I feel so much better having shared that piece of myself with those that I trust. I feel like I let them know me better, and I also feel as though I know myself better.

How did I get to this point in my life/ I'm glad you asked.

It started with a few small observations.

When I was in high school, I struggled with public speaking activities. I've always been introverted, but I haven't been genuinely shy since I was in elementary school, so I couldn't figure out why I had this issue. Mentally, it didn't seem difficult at all to stand in front of my peers, most of whom I was friends with, and talk. But every time I would experience an increased heart rate as well as a temperature spike, causing my face to turn red, my palms to sweat, and hives to break out on my chest. The worst part was the tremors. My hands would shake so badly I could barely read my note cards. It was horribly embarrassing, and I genuinely didn't understand why it was happening to me. To say that I had a phobia of speaking in front of others felt wrong. I could best describe it as feeling as though my body was reacting of its own accord. In my mind, I always felt perfectly fine.

This problem became less overt with time, and now it's hardly noticeable to others--but I still feel the same squeezing in my chest every time I give presentations or even just answer questions in class.

I began to realize that I felt similar symptoms when participating in other activities. Visiting the doctor, for example. I have no mental hesitations when it comes to physical inspections, but every time doctors try to record my temperature, blood pressure, etc. they ask me if I'm nervous, and it's because my body is telling them that I am. It's so bad that I can't donate blood, because whenever I try the nurse tells me that my temperature is too high and that I'm 'probably too sick to donate'.

There are smaller indicators of my performance anxiety, too. I often stress myself to the point of illness over class projects and future commitments or obligations. In my mind I'm being proactive and planning ahead, but it's not healthy to the extent to which I do so. It's my mind's way of anticipating future potential sources of stress and obsessing over them, making them today's problems instead of tomorrow's. Yeah, I know, I'm a head case.

I don't like to feel like there's something wrong with me, but I'm coming to realize that being open about this part of me is only going to do me good. Problems such as anxiety are dangerous to suppress because they can intensify easily during difficult times. They also often go unnoticed because it's easy to just say that you're stressed, when in reality the problem is much more serious than that.

Thanks to long conversations with my boyfriend and my roommate, I was able to get to the point where I could admit to my performance anxiety, and be okay with it.