This is an opinion piece. All thoughts and views are the author’s.
So often, I hear people casually throw the word “anxiety” into a conversation, like it is simply a feeling before a big test or crazy week, that is there for a little while, and then leaves. People throw the word around so much, that we often forget its meaning. Anxiety is a disease. It’s an illness that many people, including myself, have to live with. It’s not something that we can take some cold medicine to fix, sleep off, or put a cast over. It’s something that you have to cope with, get out of bed every day and live with.
With dealing with my anxiety, I have learned that so many people do not fully understand what it is like. They compare my anxiety to the anxiety they feel before a big event or test, when that comparison could not be further from reality. But anxiety is so hard to explain, so I could never fully get across to my friends how I felt in the midst of an anxiety attack, or any day when I felt the weight of anxiety on my chest. One day I came across a YouTube video, made by Meghan Rienks, that perfectly described how I feel everyday, and thought it just had to be shared. It was SO comforting to me to realize that I was not alone, and someone completely understood how I was feeling, and even felt the same way. Meghan put into words what I couldn’t.
One line that really summed it all up for me was, “it doesn’t add up like it did in high school mathematics, I can’t carry the 1 and find the square root of the problem, because most of the time there is no problem. There’s no life or death situation, there’s no rhyme or reason, there’s just feelings, and I’m feeling all of them at once.” Whenever I panic, friends ask me what’s wrong, but so often I could not give them an answer. What many don’t understand is half the time, there is no problem, but anxiety messes with your brain and makes you feel like the world is crashing down around you for absolutely no reason at all. It’s one of the worst feelings in the world; you feel so helpless and alone, and so many have to experience it regularly.
Everyone should watch this video, whether you have experienced anxiety or not. If you have, you might find it comforting like I did, hearing someone put into words what you feel every day and feel so alone in. If you have never experienced anxiety, this video can help you more fully understand how your friends that do feel. It can give you great insight, a peek into someone’s mind, on how anxiety really feels. Anxiety is not the same for everyone, and it’s more severe for some, but no matter how bad someone has it, it is a major challenge to live with. My hope in sharing this video with more people is for those with it to feel like they are not alone, and those who do not have anxiety to get a better understanding of it.