I remember being on spring break my freshmen year when the first episode happened. It was a hot sunny day and I was supposed to come down to the beach to meet up with my family and their friends. I was the last to arrive because I had purposely taken my time. I knew there were a lot of kids down there that I had never talked to. I started down the stairs and suddenly it happened. I began to shake uncontrollably and my legs felt like they had turned to jelly. Wave after wave of fear washed over me as my heart began to race. Anxiety overtook me like I had never experienced before. I didn’t realize it then, but anxiety has afflicted me all my life. Ever since I was a young child I have exhibited signs of anxiety in one way or another. In middle school I played only with friends that I had met back in first grade. I would tend to shy away from making new friends and would quickly scurry inside if another kid in the neighborhood came over to play. I am by nature introverted and quiet so my parents would then contribute this behavior to shyness. I, not knowing any different, would tend to agree with them. After all, nothing else made sense of the feelings of terror I would experience at the thought of forced conversation with someone new. These feelings …show more content…
Change is one of my biggest obstacles. I like routine and knowing what to expect. I ignored the feeling in my stomach that felt like I had swallowed a rock and saw a therapist. Thankfully, she was easy to talk to and eventually I understood that I was suffering with anxiety. I finally had a name for the worries and fears I carried with me every day. It wasn’t just because I was shy or introverted. Most important, I realized it was something that I couldn’t control. The therapist suggested some techniques to deal with anxiety along with a treatment plan. These methods have helped me to cope and stay calm when I feel the anxiety creeping back
I had mixed feelings one time when my friend, Gracie’s, twin sister was depressed. Her name is Meghan and she is 15 years old. She was depressed because her mom, Cathy, and her step dad had just split up. Meghan and her step dad were really close, so their breakup was not that easy for her. She had attempted suicide a few times for this reason. I should have said something that could have prevented her from trying to attempt suicide again. I learned that a friend is worth more than a secret.
I never really had social anxiety until last summer. Whenever we went shopping or anywhere where there were a lot of people, I would get kind of scared or stay really close to my mom. When I started high school, it was even worse. I had a hard time looking people in the face and when we were in big groups I would cower behind. I only talked to my close friends and I even had a hard time raising my hand or talking to my teachers.
Social anxiety is debilitating. While struggling with it, stepping onto a school campus felt like death. My body would become masked in sweat and my heart felt like it would burst at any second. My classes exhausted me and I couldn’t make any friends. Everyone told me that high school was supposed to be the greatest four years of my life, but it felt like hell. Like most lonely, troubled teenagers, I resorted to escapism using the internet.
I woke up this morning readying myself to go check outside for my shadow and doing groundhog stuff when I realised that it was thursday february 2 which means that the humans are gonna be out celebrating Groundhog’s Day dealing with us groundhogs, never leaving us alone. They’re going to take me to a place called Punxsutawney Pennsylvania and put me in a “simulated” tree stump (if it’s cold or not, mind you) and say some sort of speech, or something. There is going to be lots of people there for all the festivities and there’s going to be lots and lots of noise. They’re gonna be there to celebrate this holiday konomicly named “Groundhogs Day”.
As a whole, Alternative Spring Break has radically changed my perception of myself. If not for the physical labor, I would not know how strong I was. If not for the knowledge imparted upon me by people like Abbey or Jessica, I would not be as wiser as I am now. If not for the teamwork needed to get the job done, I would not have made as many friends as I did. Furthermore, if I had not taken this opportunity I would not have made any effort to reach any of the six outcomes that were accomplished throughout this experience.
At the age of seven, my life changed forever. I was no longer living in my native country; I was now a fragment of the millions of immigrants who come to the United States in search of the American Dream. At the time, my father had recently lost his job and my mother was unemployed, which caused incredible financial stress for my family. My father decided to risk his life crossing the Rio Grande River for our family to have a better life and greater rewards.
-Who does not remember when Drake dropped his iconic single “Summer Sixteen” and how he started the summer with good vibes. It is actually so funny to me how almost everyone can remember summer ’16 so clearly because it was that iconic. Well at least it was for me. In my culture, every summer all Eritrean soccer teams from different countries all over the world meet in one city in the United States for a week-long tournament to prove who is the best. July 2016, it was in Oakland, California and luckily for my first year attending I had my squad of friends with me. They were Simon, Filmon, Aman, Bana, Senait, Mereb and my older sister, Mical. I have never been on vacation, the type of vacation where you leave your home state, without my parents so I had no idea what this trip
I had a great fun winter break I was a little boring but mostly fun. First, I spent time with my friends right after school. For example, I went to the park with my Katelyn, Sophia, Nathan, Ethan, Christian, Martine, And Rustie and played on the jungle gym. Then I went to my best friend Serena´s birthday party a couple days later. We played with balloons and ate a lot of cake and ice cream. We both got really bad stomach ache after eating all that cake and ice cream. Second, I spent time with my family and went to a lot of places. For instance, went to Big Bear and we played in the snow. We played in the snow for at least one or two hours. After we played in the snow we got hot chocolate and went home. Last, I did a lot of shopping and went
In school there’s cliques, there’s bullies, there’s always going to be people that hate you and people that love you, but sometimes it’s hard to find who’s who, and on top of that, there’s additional stress around deadlines and assignments and balancing social stress and stress from assignments, on top of having anxiety is my own personal hell. It sometimes weighs me down so much that it’s hard for me to merely raise my hand in class to ask or answer a question, introduce myself to someone, give a presentation, whatever situation you can think of, my anxiety makes it worse by tenfold. It took me about four and a half weeks into sixth grade to find one of my best friends, which was a record time for me, and I was ecstatic. We had the same interests, we got along well, and she was in my social studies class and we sat together at lunch. Like all friendships, it was awkward at first, and I told her about my anxiety and it was like a door had opened up for me, she was understanding and really patient with me and learned about what works best for me really quickly, which is something I couldn’t be more grateful for. No one has been that supportive of me. I met so many people through her also, and I’ve become a little more easygoing than I was a year ago. My friend group is larger, however not by much, and I’m 100 percent okay with that now. I have a wonderful support system and I love all of them dearly. I still am absolutely terrible with
I remember when summer was three months full of free time and having fun with your friends but as we grow up those days seem to thin out! This summer went by really fast for me. It seems like just yesterday we were finishing up the last day of my junior year. Although my summer was super busy I still had a pretty good time!
Just because I’m anxious sometimes doesn’t mean that I have anxiety, but when that anxious feeling henders my daily life does mean I have anxiety. I love people, and I hate people, but I’m mostly anxious around large groups of people. When it’s just me and a group of people I already know, I’m ok, but I can’t meet new people in a large group setting. I trouble cultivating friendships because of this. I want to have a group of close friends, but I’m never the first person somebody thinks about to hang out with because I’ve said no so many times due to my anxiety surrounding the situation. A friend recently invited me to attend her youth group with her; but I had this ball in the pit of my stomach, my heart started beating really fast, and my breathing started to get uneven all because I thought about the size of the group I would be in. I genuinely felt trapped because I wanted to go and hopefully grow closer to this person, but my body was protesting it. I didn’t feel any sort of relief until my mother told me I couldn’t go because she didn’t want me driving in the forecasted weather. I wasn’t the one to say no, therefore I didn’t have to explain my unseen
Anxiety disorders are genuine mental illnesses, and should be treated as such. Modern society doesn’t comprehend them as significant matters, and doesn’t understand how horrifying it can be to have this condition. A lot of people don’t fully grasp the severity of having this disorder, and thus are not sure how to help someone who is suffering with it. I was officially diagnosed with an anxiety disorder during my last year of high school. I was struggling to graduate because my nerves were taking advantage of me getting an education. I would stress out about minimal issues and would purposely skip school to avoid my negative feelings. I always thought I was simply too shy for my own good and overanalyzed everything, but I realized it is more complex than that once it was affecting my schoolwork. My family didn’t believe anything was wrong with me, so it took a long time for me to receive any sort of treatment that would benefit me in the slightest. I was on medication for it until I could no longer afford it. Now my only option is to deal with it to the best of my abilities while having assistance from my family. Having this disorder has limited me to a very sheltered and dull l...
Living life with an anxiety disorder is the most difficult thing that I've personally experienced. An Anxiety Disorder is a mental caused by feelings of worry, anxiety or fear that are sometimes strong enough to interfere with an individual’s everyday life according to (gastatic.com). Anxiety is one of the most common mental disorders that affects more than 3 million Americans each year (gstatic.com and the American Psychiatric Association) and I just so happen to fall into that 3 million Americans. Dealing with anxiety hasn't been easy for me due to the complexity of this disorder. The complexity of anxiety result into having many different types of anxiety such as: Generalized Anxiety which is the "display of excessive anxiety or worry for
The proper definition for social anxiety is, “It’s the extreme fear of being scrutinized and judged by others in social or performance situations…” (ADAA) This can often be seen as shyness because the person often shows traits of shyness even though there is a lot more going on than meets the eye. Some of the most common causes of social anxiety is childhood abuse, loss of social interaction as a child, or it can even be inherited by either genetics or it can be a learned behavior. (Social Anxiety Fact Sheet) There is also the possibility of the person’s brain structure being a key role on if they have social anxiety or not. Not all cases of social anxiety are caused by childhood development. Someone can live in a normal household and be outgoing most of their lives but develop social anxiety as they grow up. They can develop social anxiety by being too outgoing in their early years and be out casted by their peers and become a more reserved and gain less friends. Later on in life they can become more reserved and lose more and more friends to where their social anxiety becomes more of a problem. Seeing as their few friends were their only real comfort zone, once they lose that they no longer feel safe in social situations without that friend by their side. Then because of this problem, they have an extremely difficult time making new
When I was a Child, I have never stopped wondering what it would be to fly in the sky. I had tried to jump from sofa or bed with an opened umbrella in my hand，and imagined myself as a flying bird. As I grow up, those wonderful fantasy become faded in my brain. I still like flying, and I had experience something like helicopter tour, but never a real fly. I always have the thoughts to explore life, to experience