Anxiety-Personal Narrative

Has your body ever left your mind so far behind a thick, veil of the spider web you’ve woven, to escape the dreams that have become realities, when in fact, it is merely a dream and not actual fact…

Living with anxiety is a battle everyday. I wake up and I’m not sure if today will be good or bad. It can start out good, but the next thing I know, I’m having a panic attack. The world around me starts to cave in, and the noise I hear becomes static; it’s as if I’m being swallowed whole. Suffering from a panic attack is incredibly embarrassing. Nobody understands what I’m going through, they all think it’s in my head or that I’m being dramatic. What they don’t understand is that, it’s a real problem. Just like any other illness, anxiety is paralyzing; so are panic attacks. There are days I don’t want to get out of bed because I’m afraid that today is the day everything will end, so it’s just safer to stay in bed. My anxiety is unpredictable,

One of the most common mental health disorders, anxiety, has had an astronomic affect on human beings, influencing the entirety of an individual on a bio-psycho-social level. Globally, anxiety is the catalyst for the execution of specific significant political and military actions. Although, anxiety can propel one forward, excessive anxiety is debilitating and the effects are cataclysmic. Experiencing the crippling effects of anxiety firsthand has manifested to me the power and dominion anxiety can have over one's life. With the help of cognitive behavioral therapist I found the inner strength to cope and abate my own anxiety levels. My experience has not only stimulated my interest in the field of clinical social work but has also shown me the major

The anxiety started when we checked into the hotel. I was in Syracuse with three of my best friends, ready to have a weekend full of exhilaration and laughter.

My mind was going one thousand miles per hour, those words haunting my head. Hot tears flowed down my face as the words sunk in. I slumped in my seat feeling exhausted and too cold for this warm house. My father’s arms reached for me, trying to comfort me. He wouldn’t understand the mental loss that was turning into physical pain. My chest heaved for air, trying to get this drowning feeling out of these thoughts that envelope me bringing a soft cloak of anxiety. “Not again, please.”

I've struggled with Generalized Anxiety Disorder for years. It started when I was 11 years old...I bean over thinking things and became increasingly scared of social situations. In high school, it escalated quickly. I knew all too well the horror of anxiety attacks and many times I was too afraid to even get out of bed.

On our way up the stairs to our unit, a girl named Jada came up behind me. “So why are you here?” I was thrown off by the personal question she asked so casually. Only an hour prior I had arrived at the facility and was introduced to the other eleven teenagers.

This feeling was unusual because as a youngster, I spent most of my childhood going on acting auditions and

In my freshmen year, I got my first stage management job, as a production assistant on one of my school’s mainstage productions. The majority of those I was working with were graduate students and/or faculty. I was extremely intimidated and I struggled to do any task without apprehension, due to my generalized anxiety disorder. After noting this behavior, I began working on my confidence, in order to mitigate my trepidation, by way of reflection and therapy. When asked to tape out the prop table, rather than asking dozens of questions about which color of tape to use and the ideal position for the breakable wine glass, I just began the task, trusting my judgement. Sometimes I was corrected and had to redo my work, but most of the time, my work

There’s a rock in your right shoe, between your second and big toe. It hurts whenever you take a step, but you don’t mind. The sun is hot, which makes you sticky, the hill is steep, your thighs burn, and the whole business is genuinely uncomfortable, but you like it anyway, because it means freedom. Each step, your steps, take you closer to a future you’re not even fully sure of yourself, and the weight of this settles itself in the form of a pit of anxiety in your stomach, a layer of sweat on your brow. The freedom makes you giddy despite the weight, and you shrug off the thought for another 10 minutes, the absolute last second.

It was a weekday in September when I came home from school, said goodbye to my family and didn’t come back for two weeks, but that was the first time, in all I was gone for a month and a half. Abington Memorial Hospital was welcoming, but it didn’t matter how distracted I was, I couldn’t escape myself. “Life begins where fear ends”, but it was a different story for me, when the fear of myself stopped, that would be because I would’ve done what I was terrified of and what I wanted the most, to let the rain

When I was about twelve, I self diagnosed myself with anxiety. I was at a river in Austin with my mom and my two aunts. At that age, I was insecure about everything that had to do with my body. “Come on, get in!” I heard my over enthusiastic aunt yell from the dirty, brown water. I wanted to get in, but my mind was telling me, “Everyone is going to think your body is ugly”, and “Don’t get in, just sit and wait for them to come back”, so that’s what I did.

It was the day of the surgery, I was so nervous that I could have passed out at any moment from my anxiety. I felt sicker then I had in years, I would have thrown up if I had had any food to eat in the past twenty-four hours. When me and my family got to the hospital my anxiety went up another level and I was practically shaking, the smell of all the chemicals they use wasn’t helping my nausea any either. When I was in the room getting ready for surgery I was overwhelmed with what was about to happen so I ended up confiding in my mom that

Imagine living a life where you never don’t feel empty inside. It wasn’t like it just came to me one day, it took years and years for it to come to me. I was 12 years old when my grandfather died from Alzheimer’s disease and ever since that day I had thought it was just grief and the stress from losing someone who meant so much to me. It soon started to hurt me, to go to school. I had always loved school and had always loved learning, but leaving my bed made my insides feel like they were on fire and made me feel like the world would explode, leaving me helpless and alone. Everywhere I went, I felt lost and confused. It seemed like as long as I was in bed, nothing would hurt me and time could stand still. I was at battle with myself, refusing to admit I had anything wrong with my brain because only crazy people had mental health issues and I was definitely not crazy.

“Everything around me seems to have stopped. The breathing became deeper and deeper, and the heart began to beat louder and louder. Again and again I didn’t meet the deadline and promises. And then I started thinking: