Living With Anxiety Essay Example

Once you grasp your anxiety in a tight clutch, you begin to take control of your life and see just how big and bright the world is. Anxiety is an underlying illness that many may not know they have. Just like me at one time, many believe that anxiety is only an issue when you have to present or are stressed in school. Being younger I could never really understand what anxiety was and believed only adults could live with such a disturbance in their life. Man, I was wrong. It was like the more I was comfortable in an easy class, the more an anxiety monster wanted to control my life. Living life fearful of what might happen only made my life worse. Today, I can say that although I may not have gotten over my anxiety and its triggers, I am more aware of what anxiety is and how it has affected me, and what to do when an attack sneaks up on me.

When I was in the third grade, my teacher taught how to present in front of the class and what is required to make a good presentation. Being as I was so little, I did not think anything of it until I heard those horrendous five words trickle out of her mouth. “You will present next class,” Mrs. Keefer said. As soon as my brain registered what she had said, my heart dropped to the floor and I could barely breathe and keep myself together. The more I thought about presenting, the more my breath began to be taken from me. Soon enough I could not breathe and panicked and burst into tears and ran to the bathroom to calm down. Zooming into the bathroom, I was finally able to catch my breath. As I calmed down, I questioned myself on what I had done but had no answers. After the chaos, I thought I was fine, but that seemed to only be the beginning of the winding roller coaster.

Leaving elementary behind and proceeding onto middle school, anxiety did not leave my side. I never imagined living my life worried that my own body would betray me so badly, but that is exactly what it did. Every day seemed to go on like a never-ending nightmare that I could not get out of no matter how hard I tried. Finally, after getting tired of not being able to put a name to my issue I looked up my symptoms and one taunting word popped up: anxiety. Now that I had a name to what I thought was a disease, I was ashamed. I felt weak and out of control of my own body, so I hid the problems from my family and teachers. The second I would feel my stomach tense up and feel my breath get ripped away from my throat, I would ask to go to the bathroom where I would have the worst anxiety attacks that seemed almost never-ending. When they came on, I could not stop and did not know how to prevent them. The feeling of being alone with my problems overwhelmed my mind and caused me to have low self-esteem and begin to hate myself more and more each day. With every gruesome attack came more embarrassment of being me. Continuously I would ask myself, “Why me? What did I do to deserve this?”

As my little blue wings transformed into mighty orange and black, I became an Oriole in what seemed like a flash. Anxiety had already taken my life over and I waved my white flag to surrender to the demon. I was getting so good at hiding my anxiety and the abuse it put me through to where I could put my head down on the desk and an attack would happen during class and no one would notice. When sophomore year came around, I noticed my anxiety start to grow rapidly. Random attacks would happen almost every day and the side effects would worsen. Simply getting into my car and driving became a nightmare when a random attack would hit and I could only pull over and let it control me. The more I let my fear control me, the more insane it felt like I was going. Random eruptions of anger and agitation would burst out of me uncontrollably to the point where I could not take it anymore. I started to confide in my mom about the problems I have been facing and now it has been affecting my mental health. Without any judgment, my mom took me under her wing and gave me coping strategies to ease the anxious feeling brewing inside.  

Strategies are not always fun or something anyone would be interested in, but I was tired of being a mess so I gave it a try. The next time I was in a class and I felt the sudden urge of panic I remembered what my mom had told me. “Focus on your breaths. Count them up to 10 then back down again and repeat,” she said. With every number I counted, the more my body started to relax again. Although focusing on how many times you breathe sounds easy, during that time, it feels like your world is going to cave in. The more I practiced this technique, the easier it was to handle my anxieties. Soon after I learned how to count my breaths, my mom and I focused on what triggers my attacks and how to prevent them from occurring. Using items such as a stress ball to fidget with to take my mind off of stress and the triggers made my mind calm again. Working on strategies was a challenge I did not know how to handle, but took good practice and has helped me focus on other things than my fears. 

Letting your fears and anxiety control your life makes you live in a cycle of doom that will continue forever. Anxiety is like a snake preying on its meal ready to strike and ruin your life. It is hard to understand anxiety and its symptoms since everyone is different, but it should never be taken lightly. The more I hid my anxiety, the worse it was and it grew into a storm that I could no longer control. Taking the power away from that horrible monster inside of you will make you live life again. I have learned to never let your fear or anxiety throw your life away. There is more to life than what you are worried about. To this day, I continue to fight the anxiety monster and not let it win so I can live my life to the fullest just as I am supposed to and you can too.