anx·i·e·ty
noun: a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.
Anxiety is not being nervous for an exam. Anxiety is not getting butterflies in your stomach before you call your crush. Anxiety is not the rapid heartbeat you get during an interview. Let’s get something straight, just because you get nervous, that does not mean you have anxiety. General Anxiety Disorder, or GAD, is a chronic disorder characterized by long-lasting worry about situations, events, people, objects, ideas, theories, and basically… everything. Anxiety is crippling. Anxiety is terrifying. Anxiety is a monster. I am living with this monster.
anx·i·e·ty
Psychiatry: A state of apprehension, uncertainty, and fear resulting from the anticipation of a realistic or fantasized threatening event or situation, often impairing physical and psychological functioning.
This is what I mean when I say “I have anxiety;” I have a mental illness, and guess what? That’s okay. With the help of medicine, patience, therapy, family and friends, I’ve been able to control many symptoms that are associated with my anxiety. Before, everything was completely out of my control: I would cry during tests, feel faint before I went out with friends, panic when I realized I didn’t do my homework, get dizzy at a party, avoid going out with people because I assumed they “didn’t actually like me,” shake when I didn’t understand math, and scream as if the world was ending just because I didn’t understand.
I didn’t understand that this wasn’t normal. Frustration? Normal! Worry? Normal! Shaking so hard you can’t write a cohesive text message? Heaving for breath? Heart beating out of your chest? Mind going completely blank? Feeling like you are going to vomit? Getting dizzy? Not being able to see straight? Uncontrollable tears? Keeping yourself awake at night? Not being able to let something simple go? NOT NORMAL!
Living with anxiety has been one of my greatest challenges. It affects how I view myself, my world, and my life, and more importantly, it deeply affects many close relationships.
Again, I’ve gotten much better, especially recently, and I'm so incredibly proud of how far I've come. However, although the physical symptoms are no longer present (or as noticeable), the mental symptoms are, and they can be just as debilitating.
Why, you ask? Because constantly having thoughts racing through your head is exhausting. I constantly feel like everyone is against me, no one likes me, and that affects how much (or how little) I like myself. I can over think a minor situation that happened for days, looking at every detail, analyzing everything I could have done better and what I did wrong. I keep myself awake for hours thinking about how much I don’t want to go to something and of all the people I don’t want to see.
Anxiety is so much more than people think. Please make sure you do your research, and if you know someone with any form of anxiety disorder, give them a big ol’ hug, because they struggle every single day just to make it to tomorrow.
