To most people, anxiety is a feeling you have for a moment. It’s the nervous feeling before you give a presentation, or the knot in your stomach when you’re about to meet a blind date. Or when your palms start to sweat before a big interview.
Then it’s over. Your anxiety is gone, and everything is back to normal.
When you have an anxiety disorder, it’s something you live with. It doesn’t subside. It stays with you day in and day out. It can take over your mind, body and life. It’s more than just a tense feeling that eventually eases away. It’s constant.
Anxiety is not “just another word for stress,” like some people try to downplay it as. It’s something you carry around with you. It is a weight on your shoulders you didn’t choose to take on. It can make you feel insecure because of the stigma that surrounds anxiety and mental health in general and you find yourself hiding it from people because no one wants to be known as crazy, but really you need to embrace it because it’s part of what makes you human.
Some days anxiety has a tight hold on you and sometimes it doesn’t. Those days that seem normal are what make you feel crazy on your days with anxiety. This is because you don’t have those normal days every day. A day doesn’t go by where you wish you could live a normal life and cope with your fears better.
An anxiety disorder is something that cannot be controlled. When people ask “about what triggers your anxiety, sometimes you don’t even know. Some days you can wake up feeling fine and other days you wake up with that tense feeling in your chest. It causes you to be on high alert and makes you overthink everything.
People experience anxiety differently. Symptoms can range from minor to severe and can really depend on the situation you’re in and how strongly the anxiety has a hold on you. There are feelings of panic, irritability, hyperventilating, nausea, and there can be panic attacks. There’s also problems sleeping, chest tension and pain, lack of concentration, not being able to sit still, and much more.
As someone who suffers from general anxiety, it’s important to have the courage to speak up and tell people what’s going on. Don’t hide behind your anxiety and let it control you; take control of your anxiety.
Some advice for those who know people with anxiety: if someone comes to you about their anxiety, listen. You don’t need to fix them, you just need to be there for them. Know that they are the same person you have always known, they just have given you some justification for the times that they have seemed “off.”
Your mental health matters, you matter, and you deserve to live the life you want, even if you have anxiety.