My Experience With Mental Illness: Anxiety

Before we start, I suggest taking caution when reading this post as it may contain content that is triggering for those who may be going through something similar. The content in this post is about my experience with mental illness, specifically anxiety. I am sharing my journey with anxiety to help spread awareness about it.

Nowadays, no one wants to talk about feelings or emotions. Basically, all the things that hurt. In my 21 years of being alive, I have learned that it is important to talk about these things, to be vulnerable. I would like to point out that being vulnerable is not being weak or less of a person, even though it may feel like it. In fact, it shows how strong you really are and that you can overcome these things.

I have dealt with my own demons for as long as I can remember anxiety being one of the worst. Having anxiety is like being an introvert but with extreme measures of worry. You’re shy, but you also have these feelings like something disastrous is going to happen, you can’t control what you worry about. I’m using introvert as the base of explaining what anxiety is because that’s what people used to call me an introvert, when in fact I was just a very anxious person.

I had my first attack when I was 10 years old. Around this time my mom had started a new job which was graveyard shifts. So my grandma would drive all three of us to school on most days (I have two brothers). We’d all get up at the same time to drop my older brother off at school. He went to a school around 15 miles from our house and every morning there was traffic. I guess being in the car, in traffic, every morning was extremely stressful for me at first because that is where I had my first attack. I remember the feeling as if the car was caving in on me, getting smaller and smaller. I remember having this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach and feeling that something terrible was going to happen and I was going to die. But nothing happened. I was so overwhelmed by all those feelings I was kicking the dashboard in the car, I was sweaty, my heart was racing and I couldn’t breathe. I ended up not going to school that day and to the doctors instead. One of the mistakes I made that day was not agreeing to see a psychologist after that first attack, but I was young, scared, and did not know any better.

After this day everything seemed to have gone back to normal. But now when I look back at it, it had slowly progressed into something worse. I don’t know exactly when it happened but I had turned into that person that could not ask for extra napkins in a restaurant or phone order a pizza. I refused to walk into stores first or I’d walk around with earphones in my ears, even if the music wasn’t playing. I’d do anything to avoid talking with anyone with the fear of something bad happening.

Anxiety had turned me into something that I was not, It turned me into a person who always worried about things that did not matter. I feared that people were always watching and judging me. I felt as if people were always talking about me even if I had never met them before. I had let it take over my life, I became triggered by everything. An example, when I was a child, my father was abusive. Since then, when people would raise their voice or a hand was lifted towards me, I’d panic. I am not going to lie though, it still scares me when people do raise their voices with me, but I have learned ways to cope and get through the anxiety.

It had affected my social life and relationship with my family. I had learned to push everyone away because I felt like I was a ticking time bomb. Having anxiety is like having a full-time job. Constantly worrying and stressing about things that don’t matter is time-consuming and exhausting. I’d say no to going out with my friends thinking that they secretly didn’t like me or really want me to be there. I felt like I was a burden to everyone around me. I would not go to family get-togethers with the fear that I would just embarrass myself in front of everyone. It also did not help that since I was one of the few girls, I felt as if more was expected out of me and I’d never reach those expectations.

I officially got diagnosed with anxiety and agoraphobia ( agoraphobia is a type of anxiety disorder in which you fear and avoid places or situations that may cause you to panic or feel trapped, helpless or embarrassed) in 2016, my senior year of high school. I had also gotten diagnosed with depression and PTSD, I will talk about them in another post though. I was embarrassed the way I had been diagnosed, I had tried to commit suicide. After that, I had agreed to go and see a psychologist and had quickly learned that it is more than OKAY to ask for help when you need it, it is better than suffering in silence. I learned to not care what others think. It’s my life and if I need help then I should get it.

I apologize that it took so long for me to get this post out and that I did not go into further details about different situations with having anxiety. It was just as difficult writing about it as it is talking about it. I have much more to share later and will be making a post of “How To Cope With Anxiety”, so be sure to keep an eye out for that!

Thanks for reading!