Remember when you were a little kid and your favorite people in the world were your grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings and, of course, your parents? Remember holding onto their legs, looking up at them with your best puppy dog eyes, begging them not to leave for work, run errands, anything? Most kids did this purely out of love for these people. But what if you didn’t want them to leave because, in your mind, you didn’t think they would ever come back? Separation anxiety is very real, and it affects every thought you have every single day. All anxiety does. And being a college student suffering from anxiety, I can tell you it’s not easy.
Most people don’t comprehend what goes through the head of someone who is suffering with any kind of anxiety, let alone separation anxiety and generalized anxiety. “Why are you having such a hard time saying goodbye?” “Why are you crying?” “Why are you still so sad about that?” When the answer is “I just am,” nobody understands. But the fact of the matter is, we don’t want you to understand, we don’t need you to understand. There is nothing more flattering than someone who wants to know everything about you because they are that interested. However, for people truly suffering from anxiety, sometimes it’s refreshing to just take a step back. Not worry about your internal issues for once and live in the moment. It’s rare we recognize “the moment” because we’re always focusing on what’s next.
The future is a scary thing for anybody. School, marriage, babies, health, death, anything really, generally strikes a concern in all of our minds. We don’t want to think about that stuff, not while we’re in college having the times of our lives, dating, becoming delusional from staying at the library too long, drinking every weekend, scraping up enough money for that midnight Whataburger meal. But what if your mind never turned off the part of your brain that thinks about the future? What if your mind never turned off the part of your brain that thought about the past? What if your mind never turned off the part of your brain that thinks about everything? And your mind just never stopped. Ever.
It’s hard for you to put yourself in our shoes. We understand that entirely. Being a college student with anxiety, it’s an everyday struggle. It’s not like back home where you grew up with your entire senior class. You’re meeting new people every day. And no matter how “normal” your emotions seem, there comes a time when the anxiety shines through. There’s nothing to be ashamed of when you have anxiety; it happens. Sometimes its genetics, sometimes it is trauma in your early life, and it could even be stress-related. However, telling someone new about your anxiety usually runs the risk of them thinking you’re broken, damaged, or just plain crazy (nine times out of 10, we completely admit to being crazy). Worrying about what other people think of you is always a good way to get an anxiety attack going.
We know everything we worry about is extremely irrational. We get it. There’s absolutely nothing worse than knowing in the middle of an anxiety attack that there is absolutely no reason to be freaking out, but you just truly lack the capability to shut your emotions off in that very moment. I bet none of you hear sirens and automatically start thinking, “What happened? What if that was someone I know?” Those are the thoughts of someone with separation anxiety. It’s not uncommon to assume every disaster involves someone you know. Can you imagine how exhausting that gets?
Every day is something new, though; some days are better than others. With time, I believe you can grow out of anxiety. It’s physically and emotionally stressful on your body, and after so much time, you begin to decide when enough is enough internally. No, it doesn’t go away. Not all at once, not forever. It gets better, though. You start to realize what is worth worrying over, and you can start to choose not to. This is when you begin to manage it, and this is when you begin recognizing “the moment” and learn to just breathe and live.
