Being a teenager is hard, no denying it. You have to deal with school, friends, your first clumsy attempts at romance, and through it all trying to figure out who you are. When I started showing symptoms of anxiety I thought it was just what everyone else felt like, because no one suggested otherwise until I started opening up about how I felt on a daily basis. I am not the only person to go through this and am not even remotely the worst case of anxiety you could find. This is a call to raise awareness for anxiety disorders, so that you can help yourself or people in your life to get help sooner.
I had been a fairly shy kid since middle school. The nervousness I felt in the beginning of my freshman year of high school was not a surprise to anyone. I was on the cross country team, which I enjoyed even if I had a hard time interacting with my teammates. That was really where my shyness started turning into something more serious. I liked my teammates, and I remember that I desperately wanted my teammates to like me too. Every time I said something or did anything that drew attention to me I felt sick, I got sweaty, and my heart rate would increase. I assumed that this is just how I would feel from now on; no one had ever explained the concept of anxiety to me.
As the year continued I started having digestion issues. I would have stomach cramps during class, and I remember standing up during art because being in a sitting position hurt. Sometimes I couldn't sit down during lunch because I would get a pins and needles sensation all over my skin. I started feeling like I was really stupid for the first time in my life and I was sure that people hated me, I hated me. My grades dropped. I was moody and aggressive at home and I slept a lot. The only person I was consistently talking to was my best friend, which is how I found out that what i was feeling was definitely not normal. Shortly after that conversation I had a terrible anxiety attack at her house, which left me shaking and laugh/crying (which can be a somewhat alarming response for everyone) and needing something in my hands to fidget with, which meant that I organized all her bracelets by color until I had calmed down.
My anxiety started to get better after that. I began seeing a therapist (a story for another day I think), I began recognizing negative thoughts and did my best to rationalize them and cope. My anxiety by no means went away, but I had a name for what those "other" thoughts were, and I think that knowledge saved me.
If there is anything that I think could have made a difference it would be having more (or any) conversations about mental illness growing up. Sometimes I wonder if I had caught my anxiety earlier maybe I wouldn't struggle with it as much today. I wish I had known that worrying too much was a reason to go to the doctor, and that I didn't have to be suicidal to get help for what I was thinking. I would strongly urge anyone to include mental illness in their conversations about health, especially with children. It is a part of life that they will almost certainly encounter whether it is personally or otherwise. I think that kids deserve to be able to go to someone with any symptom, and understand that is an option.
