Fad: Noun – An intense and widely shared enthusiasm for something.
Growing up, I thought that I was normal. I thought that everyone threw up the morning of a big test, or had hour-long panic attacks three times a week. But after I started college I realized that maybe this was not exactly normal.
Anxiety is a popular mental health disorder across all ages, and there are over three million documented cases per year in the US. But there are still so many people who do not understand anxiety and what it really feels like, or pretend to have anxiety because they think it is the new norm.
Scrolling through any form of social media can prove this. It is as if it has become cool to have anxiety now. People who don’t suffer from this mental illness pretend that they have anxiety, so they can fit in and participate in this ‘fad’.
The first time I ever went to my doctor about my anxiety he told me that there are people who naturally are born more anxious than most, and that this was okay and that taking medication for anxiety is not something I should be ashamed of. But when there are people who pretend to have this mental disorder, it makes it just a little harder to accept medical help.
These people are magically cured of their “anxiety” instantly, but anxiety is not the type of disorder that you can cure that easily. Some people, like me, take medication daily, while others can use other methods like yoga or meditation. Watching people who do nothing and are then magically cured of anxiety makes it a little harder, at least for me, to be able to cope with taking my medication. I know that right now, and probably for the rest of my life, I will have anxiety and I will have to learn more ways to making living a litter easier.
Something that also is a little more complicated with the anxiety fad is the overall seriousness of the disorder. Anxiety can cause people to have panic attacks, insomnia, headaches, and so much more. Living with anxiety is a difficult task and having people who romanticize it certain symptoms makes it almost impossible to cope. You cannot control the fact that you have anxiety, but you can try to manage it and practice exercises that can help you feel less anxious.
Anxiety is not a fad. Mental health disorders are not a fad. Yes, these issues should be accepted into society, and people who suffer from them should be able to talk openly about their struggles and coping methods they use, but it should never be something that people pretend to have or romanticize. There are real people struggling every day, and seeing people pretending makes them feel that they cannot talk about it freely in society.