Anxiety

In honor of mental health awareness week, I wanted to share my experience with anxiety to remind those who may be going through the same things as I am that you are not alone, and to remind everyone that you never know what someone might be going through. There is much more to a person than what is on the surface.

For what I can remember of my early childhood, I have always been an anxious person. I was terrified of so many things, simple things that when I actually either made myself or was forced to do them I would realize weren’t actually as bad as I had made them to be. 

They were always little things like needles, swallowing pills (though it still depends on the size), rollercoasters, etc, they instilled a constant fear inside of me, a feeling I would come to know too well. 

It was and still is a part of me I can't quite explant, and frankly, don't speak much about. 

I didn’t actually know what it was until I went to a therapist when I was sixteen after I had a major anxiety breakdown. I didn’t know anything of it. 

Sadly, mental health wasn’t really something that I was told much about as a young child, even as a young teen. It was a foreign concept to me. I knew of depression but didn’t understand its reasons and its workings. When I was diagnosed with anxiety I didn’t understand it. 

I came to know myself by it. 

I felt alone.

Unfortunately, I was only able to do a few sessions with the therapist because a month and a half after the break down, we moved. But those therapy sessions were my first experience with understanding myself and observing my feelings, getting to know what trigged the obnoxious orchestra of thought in my mind or the tightening of my chest for the grand finale, my speeding heart conducting it all. 

Moving in a way gave me a fresh start. I didn’t have to tell anyone about it—it didn’t have to exist if I didn’t want to. Though not speaking about my anxieties and struggles with being in a new environment manifested into knots and stone-muscle in my back and neck that resulted in daily headaches. 

In all honesty, I was embarrassed. 

I was embarrassed that I let so much get to me in the way I did when it seemed that others didn’t fall prey to seemingly normal challenges. I couldn’t understand why consistently fell into these moments of deep fright and panic when the world around me was still. 

I never did go to talk to a therapist again. Vaguely I spoke to my guidance counselor about the ordeal, and it seemed that my anxiety went away as my sophomore year did. 

Junior year of high school was built on a whiplash track. There were moments where I felt fine, normal as I saw it, and others where I felt like I was drowning in my own fear and thoughts. 

Around November, I began to journal. 

I cannot explain how much journalling has helped me not only with my anxiety but with figuring out who I was. I was able to document times of anxiety attacks and look back and analyze why they happened. What triggered them and what I could do to prevent them. 

The focus of my anxiety has changed in many ways. Prominently, it was a fear of death or sickness due to a frightening experience. Then caused by the overwhelming feeling of the unknown, and following was the anxiety of not knowing who I was.

There have been many times that I thought I finally had won the battle, and this isn’t to say that I have found a way, or to say that I am forever stuck in this waltz with anxiety. 

I still deal with it today in a different way. Now it’s more out of the worry that I am not doing good enough and that I won’t get what I need/want to, done. 

College has been a strange, hard transition as amazing as it has been. Being aware of the increase in my anxiety since college in no way diminishes the happiness being here has given me. 

I want to remind all of you who deal with anxiety that you are not alone. And it’s okay to not be okay. 

To many I seem like I have never seen an unhappy day— that may be an exaggeration but, I deal with times where my anxiety consumes me and I feel immobilized to do anything. There are times when I have let hours drip away unable to motivate myself to work because of how it provokes anxiety. 

We all may deal with it in a different way, experience it in a different way, but at the end of the day, you are not alone. 

Buy yourself a journal. It is one of the best things you can do for yourself. There are no limits to what you can write in it. Forget any fears about perfection, the page is a blank canvas where anything can happen, and just let it go. 

Let go and unwind. 

It takes time. But it’s the best thing you can do for your mind. 

I’ll leave you here with this little note I wrote on a post-it and stuck on my computer.

As Always, 

Rachel.