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Baylor | Wellness > Mental Health

Anxiety on My Shoulder: My Daily Experiences with Anxiety

Blakeley Potts Student Contributor, Baylor University
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Baylor chapter and does not reflect the views of Her Campus.

As soon as I wake up, tasks of the day swarm my mind. It is instantaneous: little tasks build up to become a big plateful and I can only eat a small piece at a time.​​ This all pulls my stomach into minute knots and I begin to fear if I can actually do it all. It is only eight AM, but my anxiety is unbounded, never reliant upon a clock. 

Living with anxiety constantly infects my social and academic life. No exam of mine has gone without the activation of my sympathetic nervous system leading me into fight-or-flight mode. I study tediously for weeks all for the test to be ruined by the anxiety on my shoulder. In social scenes, the back of my mind screams at me that everyone is judging me. One moment when I think that it is doing well or ceasing, it comes right back up like it never stopped. 

With this foe of mine, and for many others, it gets to be too much. Tasks become enormously daunting and even fun events like getting coffee with the girls take on an anxious energy. I am by no means an expert of combatting this, as I constantly feel defeated by anxiety, but I try to take steps everyday to evict this foe. The most valuable asset has truly been my friends and family and, while this may seem cliche, it is vital to lean on them. The counseling center here at Baylor also is one of my favorite tools to utilize. Realize that your anxiety does not have to be a silent battle and one needs others to help. For more help, contact the Baylor Mental Health Services. 

Baylor Counseling Center phone number: (254) 710-2467

Suicide or Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988 for immediate help

Blakeley Potts

Baylor '29

Blakeley Potts is a new writer at the Her Campus Baylor chapter. She works closely with the editor-in-chief and other writers to produce articles pertaining to the subjects of wellness, entertainment, and current fashion trends.
Beyond Her-Campus, Blakeley has worked for four years as the editor-in-chief of her high school newspaper, overseeing the layout and composition of each online edition. She is very adept in the world of online newspapers as she converted her high school newspaper from paper copy to digital. In Blakeley’s work with her high school newspaper, her group has received a general excellence award by her state scholastic association all four consecutive years. Blakeley currently is a freshman at Baylor University, majoring in Neuroscience with a minor in English on the pre-medical track.

In her free time, Blakeley is always down for going on a run with friends and shopping for things that she definitely does not need. She considers herself to be a female “performative male”, never being seen without her wired headphones and a matcha in hand. Her goal in life is to be the chicest pediatric neurologist that the state of Texas has ever seen. She joined Her Campus to fulfill her Carrie Bradshaw dreams whilst meeting other women who share the same love for writing as her!