Living With My Very Scary Anxiety, You Are Not Alone

If I am going to write about something so serious, I should keep it 100 percent truthful. I've seen my sister go through what I thought was extreme anxiety and she became a hypochondriac as it went on which added even more anxiety. She always asked me "Do you have this too?", "Is this normal on my arm?", or she would always just freak out about small things. It breaks my heart to say, but I never took it seriously. I always told her to get over it. Besides my sister, the only way I heard about anxiety was through Twitter. Everybody kept tweeting about how they have anxiety, and their anxiety doesn't let them sleep.

All my views on anxiety changed once and for all one specific day after school. I had a half schedule, so I went to my friend's house which was walking distance away from my school. We were just hanging out with two other people from my school, when I get a text from my sister. There was not much to think about, I was texting her anyway so I just thought she was replying back to me. I opened the text, and there it was. The text that has caused me trauma, depression, and anxiety for almost a year now and will be with me for the rest of my life. It was a picture that said my grandpa had passed away. It had a picture of him, his birth date, and the date of when he had passed away.

All of a sudden the room started spinning, my heart was racing, I couldn't even think. I didn't know if I should be worried about the room spinning, if I was going to die, or what I just saw my sister text me. For once I understood my sister, because everyone that was with me in that room was laughing at me. They didn't know what happened because I didn't get the chance to tell them, they just thought I was trying to be funny. I can't even describe what it was like. I couldn't stand up, my chest was hurting, heart beating so fast I thought I was going to die. I kept putting my head down and closing my eyes trying to stop everything from spinning, but that made everything so much worse. I kept telling my friend, "this is a dream", "this is not real", it got so bad that I asked her to spray me with water to make sure I was awake. I had little brain zaps/shocks every time I moved my head so I had to sit still, because it hurt so bad. The only person I wanted was my sister, I told my friend to tell her to come and she apparently came within 10 minutes but it seemed like it took forever.

I finally calmed down a little, and at this point I was just worried about going home... I didn't want to see my dad crying. We went home eventually and my dad was already crying, I ran straight to my room (I am really bad at comforting) and went to take a shower. I kept thinking in the shower like what the h**l just happened? I got out the shower, took a nap, woke up, and I was perfectly fine (obviously sad but the anxiety or whatever that was, was gone). Everything was fine for a couple days. Then one day I was just laying down, on my phone when all of a sudden my heart started racing and I started getting hot and sweating. I got up so fast and ran to my parents room, but it seemed so far when in reality it was only about 10 steps away, I thought I was going to faint before I got there. I told them how I felt, they saw how much I was shaking (I was not in control), and how white I was turning. They said I was going to be okay (something about Middle Easterners and not believing in mental illness). Ever since that day, I have had non stop anxiety from the time I wake up to even when I'm asleep.

It wasn't that bad in the beginning but as time went on, since I didn't get a therapist and didn't go on meds, it got worse. I started having a phobia of going to school (agoraphobia?). Every morning when I was walking to school, I would start shaking, crying, getting nauseous. It was so bad that my counselor had to give me a flash pass (meaning I can leave the class whenever I want and go somewhere where I can calm down and come back). It was very helpful but at the same time it wasn't. It helped me get out of the big classroom full of students (I also became scared of crowds, I used to love crowded places), but I was still in the building that I was scared of. I don't exactly know why I got anxiety when I was in school or in large crowds, it was very weird. Still to this day I haven't taken any meds, I got a therapist a couple months ago but there was no connection... I didn't feel like she cared enough so I stopped going to her.

Because I didn't "take care" of the anxiety, I started to get even worse and scarier symptoms which still scare me, because I can't seem to find someone with anxiety that has the same symptoms. Everyone has the basic ones, but no one has the ones that I have. The only scary one that I know other had is derealization, which is basically a feeling you get that seems like you yourself are not here in the world, but more like you are watching your life from within your body, but you have no control. You can look at your arm and it won't even feel like your arm. It was truly one of the scariest because I felt dead already, this feeling made me so depressed because I couldn't feel anything (but I did feel depressed lol), I didn't know if I was really here or if it was all a dream. It eventually passed because I read that if you don't pay attention to it, it will go away, and yay it did! but a symptom that is stuck with me is this floating feeling... Sometimes I could just be sitting there hanging out and all of a sudden I will feel like I'm rocking back and forth, or if I'm standing it will feel like the floor is moving up and down beneath my feet. It's honestly so scary.

Anxiety also, like my sister, made me a hypochondriac. I have been in and out of the doctor's so many times, my record probably looks ridiculous to them. I have gone in for brain tumor, blood clots, etc. Anxiety has ruined everything for me. Even though it is getting better now, I just know it will get worse when college starts this fall (I don't know why school makes me feel like this). My anxiety caused me to get the lowest GPA I could have ever gotten. I couldn't eat for a while, because I thought even if I haven't eaten all day, if I eat maybe a carrot I will get so full that I will start having shortness of breath and faint... that was how my thinking was. Maybe this was all karma, maybe it was just life, I don't know and I can't figure any of it out. If you suffered with anxiety and somehow ended it, you're so lucky but I am so proud of however you did it. I don't want meds because it's just a temporary help... I can't rely on pills forever.