College is a stressful time for everyone. It's a new environment that everyone adjusts to in different ways. There are classes that require a conscious effort to attend, laundry that won't do itself, and the concept of making a whole new group of friends can also be stressful for some people.
But college is especially hard going into if you have an anxiety disorder. Multiple studies have shown that, in the United States alone, 40 million people ages 18 and older struggle with at least one form of an anxiety disorder.
In all, there are six types of major anxiety disorders. These include generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, phobia, social anxiety disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. In addition to that, everyone handles their anxiety differently and the list of things that can trigger anxiety can seem endless.
Often, people that don't struggle with clinically diagnosed anxiety think that it's just something that people can talk themselves out of. This is understandable. Like depression, it's hard to understand and fully grasp what goes on in someone else's body if you don't struggle with it yourself. Also, because mental illnesses affect everyone differently, sometimes one person's anxiety can affect them differently than it affects others. This makes treating anxiety tricky.
I'm not talking about regular anxiety and stress like when you have a major test and you're worried about your grade or what's going to happen to your social status in college if you're an introvert that has a hard time talking to people. Those are things that many people worry about and it's not what constitutes an anxiety disorder. Don't get me wrong, those fears are completely valid and could certainly be included in an anxiety disorder, but odds are if your worries stick to practical things like that, you probably don't have an anxiety order, but rather just anxiety produced from stress.
Having an anxiety disorder while in college can be interesting. Some days are good and others you wake up and you just feel on edge or depleted even though you just woke up. And sometimes even talking about it doesn't bring much of a change.
Going through college with an anxiety disorder can be difficult, but anxiety doesn't have to define your college experience. I've had anxiety since I was a child, anxiety that has taken different forms in different stages of my life. But surrounding myself with people who encourage me was a necessity. Maybe they can't completely relate, but they have helped to lighten my mood when I'm having a bad day internally.
It is normal for someone who struggles with anxiety to wonder when life will get better, but maybe we're taking the wrong approach. Maybe instead of wondering when our anxiety will end completely, we need to think about the good days in between and embrace those so much that, when we have a bad or an anxious day, we can draw strength from the good memories.