Personal Narrative: Stress And Anxiety

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,

That was the phrase that had been assaulting my ears for the last half an hour. Although it wasn’t odd that someone was telling me that specific phrase, this time it was different. My grandmother, whom I thought had understood my problems, had just proven to me that she actually didn’t. At the age of 12, I was heartbroken.

“Chantelle! Come over and see this,” my mom whispered as she glided past me towards her client’s chair. I unfolded my nine-year-old self from under the empty hair dryer and gingerly walked over. While peering skeptically at the child’s scalp before me, I began to note tiny bugs crawling by the roots and my eyes followed my mother’s comb tip as she pointed out several nits. This was definitely one of the worst cases of lice she had shown me, and I had seen quite a few by then! As the daughter of a hairstylist, my exposure to skin and hair started at an early age. Growing up in a salon allowed me to observe first hand how significant an impact looking healthy on the outside had on a client’s everyday confidence and self-esteem; a lesson that was later reinforced during my acne ridden teenage years at an all-girls high school. At the salon, I always enjoyed being called over by the estheticians and hairdressers to view interesting cases that ranged from alopecia and cystic acne, to severe foot fungus and poliosis. Since my mother and her employees always recommended physician follow-ups when they spotted something suspicious, I was always left wondering what happened on the medical end of the spectrum. In high school and college, I began to fulfill this curiosity by reading about the science behind skin, hair and nail disorders.

Well, I would have to say you’re doing good job of hiding it because I don’t think anyone else knows besides me, and you have my word I won’t tell anyone. Can I ask you about it or is that a no zone? How are you feeling tonight? The reason why I told you about me is because that was the first time in a long time that I had a full-blown PTSD problem come up and I felt I needed to explain myself because I directed my anger out on you and I don’t want you think, I am someone who I am not. That day I hit a low point that came with consequences, but I believe I brushed myself off and moved past it for now.

My whole life, I had always thought that people reacted the same way I did in stressful situations, and the people around me experienced emotions and thoughts the same way. The realization that I overreacted and suffered immensely because of it made me feel isolated and seemed daunting, as if I would never understand or be able to fight the feeling of hopelessness that overwhelmed my system.

I used to see the world behind a lens of insecurity. When you are not comfortable in your own skin, it affects every decision you make. What changed me and saved me from this, however, was my activity in drama productions. I got a very small role in a play during my freshman year, and that prompted me to get more involved over the next few years. I got to learn from upperclassmen and got to see how everything fits into place if everyone works hard for the outcome. During my last two years at a different high school, I sought out more backstage work because the department badly needed it. All my experiences in drama productions have been positive, and all have helped me develop a healthier self image that enables me to focus my energy on other people, instead of myself.

Passing the end of the cold winter, Cherry blossoms and flowers are blooming. We were sitting under the flower rain. It was spring.

After the incident, there were multiple Acute Critical Stress Symptoms that have occurred. Upon discovering the hole on the fuel truck, I froze and slowly climbed down the truck, myself and the driver of the truck assumed that the mortar round was inside the truck (it turned out, the mortar round hit the tank and ricochet and hit the ground, leaving an 8 inches hole). I have been thinking about the incident and the what if scenario kept playing on my head. There were a great deal of questions, such as, exposing my team to danger, to include the considerable amount of what could have gone wrong that could have loss many lives that night. I woke up several times with a cold sweat, nightmares, difficulty sleeping and fear of event repetition.

All my life, I have suffered from generalized anxiety disorder, which can make it difficult to do mundane tasks and educational requirements. For example, giving speeches, taking exams and quizzes, and having to communicate with other students that I do not know. I have been sheltered most of my life, which causes things that would be considered basic to other people to scare me. After analyzing my anxious tendencies, I came to the conclusion that the root of my anxiety comes from having seperation anxiety from my Mother after my Father passed away, which made me scared to talk to people, resulting in speech anxiety. My main fear with my speech anxiety is that I will receive a bad grade on my speech or not do well enough academically. I strive

What will it take for them to realize what truly goes on inside our brains. Sticking out like a sore thumb or a lost shoe in the center of the highway. Anxiety is like not being able to breathe even being outside. I wish I could somehow explain the science behind how they make me feel. I got my first dose of anti-depressants when I was twelve years old. An artificial happiness that “worked”. The drugs never worked. But doesn’t mean a goddamn thing about being depressed! Sometimes the medications didn’t work because I was already happy, but people have to dig deeper to find out what the problem is. When someone takes their own life, how are we supposed to react? Are we supposed to think it’s just sad? Taking your own life is an ugly side of

It was an oppressively hot and humid day (as usual) at Academy at the Lakes, and Mrs. Starkey was giving a tour to a group of august looking potential investors for the next fundraiser. As she approached the ‘infamous’ Room M-32, she began to feel nervous, and she began to speculate about the devastating possibilities, an idiosyncratic habit of hers. With sweat in her hand, she grabbed the door handle, and she, reluctantly, opened the door. Utter chaos. There were mad kids screaming at each other, and kids hitting each other; the class behaved like a stochastic fractal. Some kids were severely injured with broken bones and traumatizing hits to the head, and other kids were defenestrated. Mrs. Frizzle was out of school (so was the magical school bus), but her students were still in the classroom.

\The book I have chosen for my essay is a simple one, very understated but near and dear to my heart, All the bright places. Just about all my life I have struggled with some form of depression, it has been a never-ending battle for years. It has consumed every part of me and my life I had to drop out of school at the age of seventeen due to unforeseen circumstances, I lost every one of my friends because I was dragging them down. My life has been a never-ending reminder that I am not god enough. In the book there is this boy named Theodore he is a person who is surverly sad, the medical term for it would be manic depression. Theodore does these things that no one knows he does he stays under water for a bit longer then he should in the bath,

After being hospitalized for meningitis when I was eleven years old, I began to struggle with anxiety and a stutter. Although I did not have these problems before my illness, no one is certain that meningitis was the cause.

I collapsed to the floor as my lungs shrunk two sizes and my tears couldn’t even be released due to my inability to breathe, let alone stand. This was my first real panic attack, and my body had succumbed to my mind. Backstage, just minutes before my first play, I began to think about all of the improvisation necessary for my role, and how I had to be in character continually (so as not to ruin the play for everyone else), and I couldn’t handle it. My lines had been erased from my mind, and my vision went blurry from tears and fear. Just then, two people had surrounded me, squatting to get on my level. Dizzy and ready to faint, my two best friends had helped me get a grip of reality again. They reminded

INTRODUCTION: Even though stress negatively affects physical and mental abilities. Stress is the cause of tensions, overwork and increasing demands. Generally, the Anxiety is a part of our life. We live with it, manage it, or more all stress over it. Our lifestyle, the region in which we live, the economy, and our occupations can result in a lot of anxiety. Not everybody manages the same level of anxiety and there are a few elements that can affect our lives and reason us to have higher or lower anxiety levels. (Feldman, 2009)