I have had severe anxiety for as long as I can remember. Also for as long as I can remember, people have been pointing it out, talking about it, and telling me to stop being anxious.
It took me so long to break the stereotypes of anxiety in my brain, and now that I have, I feel so much better with myself. But there are still people out there who think that anxiety is all the things I needed to unlearn. Mental illness is JUST as important as a physical illness, if not more.
When I was young, I didn’t understand the feelings or the thoughts associated with my anxiety. I couldn’t pick up on the signs, couldn’t deal with it, and couldn’t stop it. I felt powerless and helpless—I felt weak. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t go to school without throwing up. I didn’t understand why talking to people made my head spin. I didn’t understand why my breathing quickened when the (metaphorical) spotlight was pointed right at me.
When I realized I had anxiety, I panicked…no pun intended. I didn’t know how it happened, and I didn’t know why it happened (clearly there were a lot of things I didn’t know). For a long time, I thought that this weakness of mine meant that I was broken. I thought I was damaged because of something I couldn’t even pinpoint. I was fine, until one day I “wasn’t.” When I came to this realization of my own feelings, I lost my voice, and I didn’t try to find it. I let the anxiety take over and lost myself in the midst.
Letting anxiety consume me wasn’t a good decision, however, it taught me that it wasn’t this all-powerful force I thought that it was. I quickly learned that the anxiety I let consume me was not something bad, though it was strong. I needed to take that power and channel it in a different way because when it came down to it, I wasn’t going to be getting rid of my anxiety any time soon. It was a part of me, born from within me in a way that I actually needed, once I understood the signs. Sure, there were things that made me anxious that truly shouldn’t have, but there were other things that my anxiety was good for. I lived in a state of constant nervousness for all of middle and high school, and I expected it to extend much into my first semester of college.
This wasn’t the case though. College got me out of my anxiety spiral and taught me that the feeling of anxiety wasn’t a normal part of life, but that despite having this mental illness, I could still function on a day to day basis without panic. I turned to my schoolwork and let that consume me instead; I joined clubs and took on extra tasks and overloaded my schedule with work and classes. I didn’t give myself a moment of free time, and for a while, that seemed to do the trick. So long, anxiety, see ya never!
Just kidding, clearly. While I thought my anxiety was gone, I was continuing to push off the inevitable, until one day, I couldn’t push it off anymore. Looking back, pretending like my emotions didn’t exist and burying myself in work was one of the worst things that I could have done. By the time I got to the end of my first year of college, I was tracking mental breakdowns about once a week, and this persisted into my second year. My anxiety was consuming me all over again, but this time, it wasn’t social, it was coming through the stress I was piling onto myself.
I kept persisting, pretending like the mountain of assignments wasn’t looming over me ready to crash. I got into a weekly routine: work, work, work, breakdown, sleep, work, repeat. Week after week after week I drained myself over and over again until I hit a wall.
The wall came a few months into my sophomore year. I spiraled way worse than I normally did and after a few days of not being able to function as a normal person, I knew I needed to take a step back and re-evaluate what was happening to me.
I decided to reach out to Emerson’s Counseling and Psychological Services (ECAPS) and schedule a session to speak with one of their counselors. (Sidebar: ECAPS is a confidential source on campus, and all of the counselors who work there are trained and licensed. They also have different specialties, so they place you with the person who can best work with you for your particular needs. Also, ECAPS is free to Emerson students, so if you are considering talking to someone, give them a call! They will work with you to find someone who best fits your needs no matter what your financial constraints are.) Even though ECAPS is available to Emerson students, I was extremely nervous, and kept it hidden when I first started going. I didn’t want anyone to know I was going to therapy because I saw it as a failure. I needed help and therefore, I was weak. This isn’t true, but it is how I felt especially leading up to my first session.
When I first arrived in the ECAPS office, I was severely anxious and had thought about not going. I didn’t want to be there, but I also didn’t want anyone to know that I was there. I spent the whole time with my eyes glued to the door, praying that no one I knew would walk in. When they called my name and I went into my newly assigned counselor’s office, I began to calm down and we had a conversation about why I was there.
Without going into details, I felt much more secure after being there. I set up another appointment, and planned on going back. For the first few months, I kept my meetings with ECAPS really quiet. No one knew where I was for that hour, and I wrote it on my calendar as other things like a club meeting or work shift. I was afraid that talking about the work that I was doing on myself would hurt my ability to do it, and I was afraid that if my friends found out, they wouldn’t want to talk to me anymore because I wasn’t “stable.”
This of course wasn’t true, I was stable—I was just struggling with anxiety management. In no way was my anxiety going to cause any issues to outside sources, really only myself. A lot of the time I spent in therapy taught me that I was being pretty hard on myself, and I was relaying on the actions of others to determine what people in my life would do. One of the most beneficial things that my therapist told me was that every person is different, and just because one person decided your friendship wasn’t worth their time because of your anxiety, doesn’t mean another friend will do that to you.
We also talked a lot about how my anxiety wasn’t something to be embarrassed about, and that since we had been working together for a few months, I made more progress than he thought possible. After a few months, I was coming into sessions and sitting upright, talking loudly and confidently, and examining myself and relationships with people on a deeper level than when I first came in. I made it through whole sessions without crying and was able to talk through things that bothered me without getting choked up. My counselor stopped me one day and told me how proud he was of the work I had done, and how I had taken what I was learning and applied it. He talked about how not trusting people with my anxiety was going to make my anxiety worse, and he was right.
After that, I stopped hiding my anxiety from my friends (not overnight, but gradually started talking about it more and more), and I quickly learned that they didn’t think twice about my anxiety. They checked in, made sure I was comfortable, and stuck by my side. They didn’t repeat the things I had been accustomed to with my anxiety, they took it in stride and worked around my anxiety to make sure that we were both comfortable in situations. Even to this day, no matter how frequently we talk, they still check in and make sure everything is okay. (Writer’s note: To my friends—Thank you for truly keeping my sane. I love you all and I appreciate you greatly, even when I’m too anxious to say it.)
Once I was open with my friends and had their support, my mental health shifted dramatically. Without realizing it, I had gone months without a mental breakdown, and whenever my friends noticed I was starting to go down the anxiety spiral, they made sure to step in and remind me that it was okay to take a step back and take a break. These consistent check-ins and breaks are what help me function and avoid working myself into a mental breakdown week after week. Not only that, but I get to spend more time with the people who genuinely make my day better every time I see them. Whether it is a weekend hang out, or a quick bite before class, it is a great way to take yourself out of the moment and remember that your friends are there for you, just like you are there for them.
Despite everything I have learned about my anxiety, I’m still someone who apologizes for my mental health, even though there really is no reason for me to do this (Cue my friend Sophia yelling at me to stop apologizing for the 15th time in one dinner). This reflex that we all seem to have to apologize for something we sometimes don’t have control over is part of a system that has been beaten into all of our heads that mental illnesses are wrong, bad, and need to be hidden—frankly, I’m quite sick of it. If there is one thing that I learned from my time in therapy and over the course of my life with anxiety, it’s that if people truly care about you, they will care about you no matter what—anxiety and all. If you are someone who struggles with anxiety, you know how difficult it can be to move forward everyday, especially when you are on your own. Leaning on your friends for support is something you should feel comfortable doing when you are having a really rough time, and if they don’t support you, then they really are not your friends. The people who aren’t worth keeping around are those who belittle you, or tell you that there is something wrong with you because of your illness, because there is NOTHING wrong with you.
You might be a little anxious about it, but you’ve got this!