Personal Essay Example about Anxiety

I have anxiety. I know this isn't unique, or a selective experience, but it certainly did affect me. 

I remember learning about stranger danger when I was little. But how was I supposed to tell them apart if they looked the same? My easy solution? Avoid everyone. It was safer. That is what adults teached me after all, isn’t it?

My first day of kindergarten I just assumed no one would want to sit next to me. But my first day I went and sat down in the middle of the commotion. The next day the second I got there, I went to my own table. I figured they didn’t want to be near me. I wasn’t good at socializing anyway. The school was all about learning the basics, not communication. So silent I stayed. I was learning, just my own way.

Then whenever I was out in public I would be weary of the glances people took, or if people had been behind me for too many turns. Stranger Danger. Can’t be careful enough. Stopped going out into public. 

I may have gotten too carried away with it. When I talked to people in my grade, friendly people, I just assumed they were talking to me out of pity, not because they wanted to be my friend.  In public I would get this feeling of impending doom, that something bad was going to happen if I talked to people. I’d somehow overshare and they’d get my personal information. So my family did all the talking for me. 

One of my first days of 4th grade one girl ran up to me and announced she wanted to be my friend. As I was utterly perplexed, the only reason I could create why, is that a teacher asked her to. I was her friend, but I wasn’t really there. Mostly in the background. Never in the middle of the action. 

I was mostly like this all my life. I never wanted to talk, but I admired people who could do so fluently and flawlessly. Then in 8th grade my brother just announced “You have anxiety.” What? At first I was a little offended. He thought he could make decisions about me, but then too many things started to line up. Absurd things started falling into place hearing this. The stomach aches, trembling, and stuttering when speaking to strangers but not family. I knew anxiety was a thing but I never knew it was what I felt. 

I did research. To convince myself, really, that I had anxiety. Symptom after symptom started lining up, and so I got help. Medicine, therapy, they all worked. I realized my stranger danger had gone wayyy too far. 

Now, this wasn’t about ‘stranger danger isn’t real’, more so about pushing your comfort zone. You’ll hear “do whatever you’re comfortable with” a lot. Ignore it. I was certainly not comfortable existing in the same room as others, but we have to push out of our comfort zone to excel. This wasn’t the most uplifting story, I know, but sometimes our comfort levels aren't keeping us safe, but pushing us back. It’s important to go beyond them.