It's All In Your Head

As a person who has battled anxiety and depression for most of my life. I have to often remind myself that these fears and these ideas about everyone hating and judging me harshly are more often than not all in my head, that it is most likely that no one is judging me, as harshly as I am judging myself. Those anxiety monsters scream pretty loud and can pretty hard to ignore, though. Sometimes they shriek so loud and bring some many companions with them, that it can be hard to breathe as they taunt my senses and distort reality in a crippling way.

I grew up in a very rigid belief system that was very much fear driven and had a heavy emphasis on perfectionism, amongst having a very unstable home environment. Letting go of thought patterns and mindsets that have been etched into me from this period in my life hasn’t been easy, but as I am learning to let this fears go I have become a healthier person for it.

When I first started out in college, I was absolutely terrified of people, I couldn’t ask for help on my homework or talk to a teacher without assistance. Anytime I was called upon to speak in class I would nearly have a panic attack and would end up shaking terribly and would have to take a nap to recover from the experience. I would send in homework in late or not all, because I didn’t want to send in something that was not up to my standards of quality. It was also the same with hand written letters and notes, I literally had hundreds of messages and letters that I’ve written, but never sent to friends because they weren’t perfect enough. During freshmen year I went to bed around 1:30am and would wake up around 5:30am to get myself ready for the day, even though my first class was at 9:30am because I was so f****ing self conscious about my appearance. I somehow, for reasons I don’t really understand I attracted a number of stalkers and I started to notice I was being followed by more than one person. A couple times a guy tried to talk to me in the dark, without showing his face or me knowing his identity trying to convey interest, which did not help me feel comfortable being outside. I couldn’t eat comfortably, I became suspicious of everyone in the cafe and it got to the point that I couldn’t get food while there was a crowd in the cafe so I would only get smoothies, because they were the easiest to grab. Since, waiting in a crowded line for long periods of time easily triggered panic. I hated phones, (still kind of do) every time my phone would ring it made me panic and would take me a while to answer. I was terrified of my classmates, because I truly believed that I was terribly inferior to everyone else in my class intellectually, because I hadn’t really had a formal education other than starting out at college,since I was self taught from 4th grade and only had a 1.5 years of high school education and a GED. Because of these anxiety monsters, my life quality wasn’t what it could have been as they stole energy, sleep, friendships, and peace from me.

Late freshmen or early sophomore year, at the suggestion of my room mate I started going to cognitive behavior therapy for my anxiety.  It wasn’t a quick fix, but it gave me tools that I could use to combat an unhealthy thought system to give me some order and rationale, while dealing with the monster invasions. Also, having someone go through and dissect my thought processes with me helped me put things in perspective to understand the source of many of the these monsters, which could help find the right weapons to use to fight each one. I used have weekly panic attacks and more if I had to speak up in class or be stuck in a big crowd, this year I have had only two. Which, is definitely a big improvement I can say. Other things that have helped, is getting a job in retail, where I had to greet customers I am doing much better now, though the monsters and habits aren’t yet completely gone, things are definitely much better and happier now. I wish I had tried to start tackling these issues earlier in my life, I feel that I’ve missed out on so much, because I’ve let these monsters hold me back, so many friendships that could have been had, opportunities taken, and beautiful memories missed because of these guys. But I’m not going to let them deprive me any further, that’s what I’ve decided.

If you are struggling with any sort of anxiety issues I encourage you to find help maybe in a friend or family member to help sort out your thoughts or if you don’t think that you have someone to go to  like myself, I went and got help and no I am not ashamed of doing something to get some control over my life and neither will you be, I promise.