My Anxiety Story

My earliest memories of my childhood aren't pleasant ones. I mostly remember my mother and father always screaming and throwing things at one another while I hid alone in my room, waiting for it to stop. I was around five years old at the time, but I remember this feeling of overwhelming sense of worry and fear. I couldn't identify it at the time, but I now know that feeling to be anxiety.

As I got older, it only progressed. In fourth grade, around age nine, I remember being so anxious in school that I told my teacher I couldn't go up in front of the class to speak. Fortunately, she was understanding and let me have an alternate way of getting grades for public speaking. However, I still had no idea what these immense feelings of dread were that were really starting to affect my life.

Within the next few years, I started having panic attacks. I would cry and shake and hyperventilate. I still had no clue what was happening to me or why, and was too afraid to tell anyone about it and how much it was really tearing me apart. Soon enough, I started doing my own research on it around age twelve or thirteen. I thought that maybe I could have anxiety, but with that thought came the thoughts of how having it would make me less than the other kids at school, or how it made me weak.

Alongside of my anxiety also came depression, but that is a different monster that perhaps I'll tell a story about later. With both of these mental conditions slowly tearing me apart, I decided to finally tell a few close friends in hopes of lessening the burden on myself. It made me feel so much better, my friends were accepting and understanding and were helping me get through it.

If you get anything out of my story, please let it be that if you're struggling with a mental illness, you need to speak with someone, anyone. As difficult as it is, once you pass that obstacle, it becomes so much easier to accept your feelings and really understand yourself.

Soon after telling my friends, I told my mom, and my doctors, who confirmed my self-diagnosis. However, I refused to go on any medication, I didn't want to rely on a pill to be content. This meant that I had to learn techniques to help myself cope with my feelings and be able to function in everyday life. One of the most helpful techniques I found sounded ridiculous to me at first. It's called 7/11 breathing, where you breath in for seven seconds and out for eleven seconds, really focusing on the counting.

I remember thinking, "How can counting and breathing help me when they are such basic practices? But that is exactly why it worked, focusing on both of those basic practices at the same time didn't allow for you to think about other things, while physically calming down your body with the long breaths.

After the issue of learning to cope, came the issue of learning how to tell other people coming newly into my life about my anxiety. By this time, I was just starting high school, a time where new people are constantly entering and eating your life. I thought that my anxiety would scare off potential friends or keep me from being in a happy relationship with a boy. It was extremely difficult at times, but I eventually learned that real friends wouldn't care if I had anxiety, it didn't define me as a person. Perhaps one of the biggest challenges I faced was telling a boy I liked about my anxiety and how much it really affected me. At the time, we were already pretty close friends, he knew I got "nervous" sometimes but not necessarily that I had an anxiety disorder. I remember thinking that it was a huge deal, and that he wasn't going to see me the same, and was going to think I was weak. But when I told him, he didn't even regard it as a problem, he was really accepting and comforting. I was, and still am, so happy to have supportive people like him in my life. And I guess my anxiety has never posed an issue to him, as we've now been together for years.

While I still struggle with my anxiety, the techniques I've found have helped me to cope and feel content in my own body. I've also learned to surround myself with positive, supporting people, because it makes all the difference.

What I learned throughout my journey of dealing with my anxiety is that mental illnesses do not make you weak. You don't need to let anxiety, or any other condition, rule over your life or control your happiness. But the biggest lesson of all, my anxiety doesn't define me. My compassion, kindness towards others and my understanding defines me. What defines you?