Living with anxiety is difficult enough on its own, but living with anxiety in college is even worse. There are many people throughout the world that have been diagnosed with some sort of anxiety disorder. These people know the difficulties that I am talking about. But for those that don’t know these struggles, let me walk you through my day.
I wake up, having only gotten about four hours of sleep. Sometimes, if it is a good day, I will feel a pit in my stomach, which is my body’s way of displaying anxious feelings. On a bad day, I will be woken up by my anxiety, usually in a cold sweat and shaking. After waking up, I will usually lay in bed for a while. On a good day, I will lay in bed for a solid twenty minutes thinking about the day ahead. On a bad day, I will think myself into a pit of despair. Many times, this ends in not getting out of bed at all.
If it ends up being a good day and I get out of bed, I will spend a solid twenty minutes deciding what to wear. When you have anxiety, every decision you make feels like it is life and death. What if people stare at me? What if my clothes don’t match? What if I’m not dressed casually enough? What if I’m not dressed up enough? What if I get too hot? What if I get too cold? It’s a life of constant indecision and questioning. After getting ready for the day, it will take me a few minutes to convince myself to even leave my dorm room. As someone who has been diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, I constantly feel like something bad is going to happen, so some days, leaving my place of comfort is genuinely terrifying.
I go to class, which is usually not anxiety inducing for me. If I am having very anxious thoughts, I find it difficult to focus during class, so some days are just lost to my memory. After class, I may get lunch. Sometimes this doesn’t happen because if I am too anxious, I will lose my appetite. Other times the thought of that many people in the dining hall is too overwhelming for me, so I avoid going.
My evenings usually consist of doing homework. While this is happening, I go down a rabbit hole of anxious thoughts. What if I’m doing this work wrong? What if I’m actually not good at my major? What if I’m not good enough to get into grad school? What if I never find a job because I don’t get into grad school? What if I end up living in a refrigerator box on the street? These are all questions that go through my mind almost every day. Sometimes, doing homework ends in tears because even the thought of doing the simplest task is too overwhelming.
Most nights, I would like to be in bed by 11 o’clock, but this rarely happens because I overthink my homework for so long that it is never finished by the time I would like it to be. In addition to that, if I have to go to work that day, I have a lot less time to do everything that needs to get done. It usually doesn’t matter anyway because when I try to go to sleep, I have racing thoughts that keep me awake until 4 o’clock in the morning. I will eventually fall asleep, and then wake up four hours later, ready to do it all again.
Some days are worse than others. Many people don’t realize how debilitating an anxiety disorder can be. To an anxious brain, everything in life is perceived as a potential threat, even if it isn’t logical. Sometimes these anxious periods will last for months. It’s exhausting and it’s scary. Sometimes, it makes you feel like you would rather just die than to experience this anxiety for one more day. Anxiety is a constant struggle for so many college students. So my parting thought on this is: College students with anxiety, you are not alone. There are resources available for you, there are people that love and care about you, and you deserve to get help.