Today I had the opportunity to support another woman in my class, someone whom I really don’t know, and all it took was a smile.
This semester I am taking Fundamentals of Oral Communication, essentially speech class. There’s a lot more that goes into it than just speeches, but for everyone that’s typically the most nerve wracking part. I liked to joke that I had a speech in middle school so I would ace this class, which is why I put it off until my Junior year of college. I loved speech class in middle school, however I have something now that I didn’t back then: an anxiety disorder. Anxiety has been a part of me for a long time, and mostly concerning my academics. I’ve always had pretty good grades, I graduated High School with honors and am in the Honors Program now at Kutztown, but I’ve always kind of thought it was because I am so scared of failing that I work really hard not to. It works as a blessing in disguise, because that motivation to *not* do badly results in me doing fairly well.
Part of what made me suffer in school was the fear my anxiety brought to the table, as well as what I call the ‘Depths of Despair’, stolen from “Anne of Green Gables”(If you knew, then we may be kindred spirits). The Depths of Despair is a giant hole in my head that I can’t escape from during an anxiety attack. My anxiety manifests by creating these wild situations where I get attached to an anxious thought like “What if I go talk to them and they just laugh in my face?”. Typically thinking something like that would send me down that deep hole because then as much as I may want to do something, I decide to listen to the bad voices and follow my fear. What this really is, is an unhealthy coping mechanism that I trained my brain to follow for so many years. Humans are creatures of habit, and that is particularly true with our brains. Our thought patterns are exactly that, patterns, and we follow whichever ones we nourish. We nourish these thought patterns by the amount of mental energy we put into them; to put it very literally, the more we think about something a certain way, the harder it takes for us to stop. Our neural pathways that we send these messages along become strengthened over time, which meant that by continuously allowing myself to give in to the anxiety I was gradually digging the hole deeper and deeper each time, making it harder as time went on to find a way out.
For years I let myself repeat the same thought patterns that lead me to feeling miserable. It was easy to break this habitual thinking, and there were a lot of small steps that lead to me to my great discovery. One day last year, I realized that in (most) every circumstance you are in, you are in because of a choice you made. That’s not something a lot of people want to hear, because blaming our problems and our moods on others is a lot easier than taking responsibility for your thoughts and subsequent actions. When I was stuck in that Depth of Despair, I was there because I had made a choice to listen to those negative thoughts, and when I followed my anxiety I was choosing fear. I have to fight the anxious voices, question their validity, and that’s the only way to find myself out of the hole. Every time I fight against an anxious thought about being late, looking stupid, or making too much noise, I fill up that hole. I find myself no longer stuck because I’m realizing how much choice and power I have over my own thoughts. I used to sit and find myself falling deeper and deeper because I didn’t know how to get out. I was looking at how far down I had fallen, but I had forgotten that I was able to fight my way out, if only I could look at it the right way.
All of this leads up to this past Wednesday, and the presentations being done in my Fundamentals of Oral Communication class. I had originally been number four in the lineup, however I switched with a girl who was going on a fieldtrip the day she would have presented. She became number four, and I became number twenty two. So Wednesday it comes time for number four to present, and she gets up. She begins with her intro in which she quotes her boyfriend’s mantra that helps bring her down from any anxious thoughts. It already seemed super cute, and I was excited to hear but she suddenly stopped, looked at our teacher, and asked to step in the hall. He clarified that if she did that, this would count as her one re-do. She nodded that she understood, and then quickly excited the classroom. I felt bad, because I knew partially that she was only in this position because of me. Every urge inside me was telling me that I needed to go talk to her, to make sure she was okay. I resisted, and sat through most of the class thinking about her when my teacher called over to me to check and see if she was okay. I immediately got up and went to search the hallway for her, thankful I’d gotten a chance to help after all.
I found her in the bathroom sitting on the floor with her arms crossed over her legs and head resting on the tops of her knees., I recognized this all too well from my own time hiding in bathrooms. I approached her gently and asked if she was okay. She opened up to me pretty easily and I soon figured out that as I had suspected, she had let the nerves get the best of her. Not only had they forced her to leave her speech unfinished, but they had kept her stuck in the bathroom in that same Depth of Despair I was familiar with. I know this because she told me, told me how she could feel herself being pulled back into a familiar cycle where she psychs herself out, hides from a situation, and can’t find the energy to go back. There were so many worries she told me that felt like echoes of thoughts I’ve had, to the point where I felt like I was speaking to myself. I suddenly felt like I had been through what I had just to be able to help people, in moments like this, just by being able to empathize with them and share with them steps I’ve found to be helpful. Everyone has their own mental health journey, but if I can be even the smallest piece of the puzzle for someone, all of my own bullshit will have been worth it.
Before we had to leave, because college is college and we all had places to be once 9:50 hit, we talked about how next class she would have to give her presentation. Although she’d gotten a pass this time, she was going to have to face it. She remarked that in her high school speech class she also had issues with her nerves, and at least in that class she had known people to keep her grounded. I looked her in the eye, and I told her that now, she knew me. If she wanted to get up there and look at me, even if she looked at me 90% of the time, I told her that I would be looking right back, giving thumbs up, and smiling loads because she got this!! We parted ways, and I hoped that on Friday she would believe in herself as much as I did.
Friday morning came, and as we were all settling into our seats waiting for our teacher, I felt a pair of eyes on me. It took me a second to look over, but when I did I saw that it was her, with wide questioning eyes meeting my own. As soon as I met her gaze I smiled and mouthed “you got this!”, I saw the tension leave her face and she took a deep breath. Once our teacher settled in and called her name to begin, I watched her walk up to the front, set her gaze on me, and absolutely crush her entire presentation- and all it took was a smile.