Could you tell me a time you felt anxious?

I haven’t been able to decide if I wanted to talk about feeling anxious or overwhelmed but one is the byproduct of the other and vice versa.

If someone asked me to pinpoint the time for where I began to feel anxious, I could tell you. In May 2019, at the end of my semester abroad in America, trying to sort out what my final weeks there were looking like, my friends and I were figuring out what I had to do before I left Missouri. I started to feel this horrible tightness in my chest, I had my first panic attack that night. It lasted for hours, and the panic came in waves. For weeks I had no idea what had triggered it, I thought it was maybe a one-off thing and everything would be fine and buried the emotions I was feeling. 

I was so nervous about coming home, I slowly started to realise that while I was at frat parties living the American dream, my friends’ lives hadn’t paused while I wasn’t in it. This totally freaked me out, I was worried that things would have moved on and there wasn’t a place for me anymore. Obviously, I was wrong but I couldn’t stop obsessing and overthinking it. The snowball started there and only grew bigger until I couldn’t cope with it anymore. I was living in a flat with my two best friends, and I found myself becoming more paranoid and anxious as time went on. I was definitely difficult to live with, we would get heated over the simplest things, although we often look back and laugh now, the signs were there that something was going on beneath the surface. 

I tried to put on a front most of the time, as most people do. The reality was that most days it was a chore to get out of bed and I hadn’t even realised how long I spent feeling like that, and months were rolling by. I was in such a bubble and was oblivious to how bad I HAD gotten. It wasn’t until my mum sat me down one night. She said I had lost my usual sparkle, I wasn’t pleasant to be around, and that she didn’t know how to help me if I kept pushing away the people that were trying to help me. That made me more anxious, I hated the idea of burdening the people around me, it was such a vicious cycle. The more caught up in it the more anxious worried I would get. 

It also became clear that I hadn’t dealt with my parents splitting up and the trauma that came along with it. The situation was messy, I watched my mum go from a size 18 to a size 8 in a matter of months because she couldn’t bring herself to eat. My dad was there and then he wasn’t, I couldn’t stand to be in the same room as him. There was a lot of back of forth between them trying to sort things out and heated arguments. So much went on over a prolonged period that I began to block it out, I had to be there for everyone else, while also studying for my exams. It unquestionably affected me more than I cared to admit, even now. Things turned even rockier when I eventually got over the hate I had for my dad, I would lie to my mum about seeing him or getting in touch with him. I didn’t want to upset her; she just, unfortunately, couldn’t get over what he’d done. 

My relationship with my mum was turbulent, to say the least, I would find myself fighting to keep her sweet but also trying to maintain a relationship with my dad at the same time. I would grovel and scream at her trying to make her understand that their breakup had absolutely nothing to do with me. No matter how hard I tried she couldn’t see why I wanted a relationship with the person responsible for the demise of my family. I hated them both for keeping me in the middle. It’s become clear that’s when I really started to feel anxious and worried. 

Learning to cope with anxiety and feeling worried has been a real struggle. I’ve been on and off various medications, I’ve gone months without feeling anxious at all, and I’ve had weeks where I can’t get out of my own head. But with time, it certainly has got easier. Nearly three years on, I find myself feeling less anxious every day. Three years down the line, I’m now taking the steps towards therapy, having tried everything else, I feel that this could be the final step needed to fully understand why I have the anxious feelings that I do. That being said, I have such a good support group of friends around me who have helped when I needed them most, so I have to throw a special thanks to them in here. 

I’ve always been the one to say “It’s okay! I’m fine” but one thing I don’t regret is reaching out and getting help. Although I felt like I was admitting defeat, it was by far the best decision I’ve ever made, and if that pushes you to do the same, then I am wishing you all the best. You are stronger than you know.