Many people experience some level of anxiety in their day to day lives. Some may experience more than others, however, anxiety is an emotion that everyone deals with. Generally speaking, anxiety can be defined as a feeling of excessive fear or nervousness of current and or future events. We can describe the physical symptoms as tense and apprehensive, and furthermore persistent and at times uncontrollable.
Firstly, I would like to mention that although I do experience a lot of anxiety and nervousness, I do not like to define myself and my personality under these premises. Unfortunately many people end up focusing a lot of their mental space and energy on anxiety and many people let it fester on their minds 24/7. In my experience with anxiety, most of the cause occurs right before a task that I need to complete. A common event that induces anxiety for students is obviously exams, projects, or assignments. For me, these do induce the strong level of unease and jitteriness tha anxiety produces. The worst level of anxiety that I ever experienced was when I went on my first ever date. For the entire day I felt anxious and extremely nervous and as the time approached closer to the time I was supposed to meet her, my body started to shiver like how our bodies shiver when it’s cold outside. My friends definitely noticed whenever I handed them stuff and it was very difficult to be calm. Fortunately though, the anxiety did go away during the date and at that moment I was calm again. Luckily I have been working on fixing this by talking to people more often, calling people more often (I would get very nervous whenever I needed to call someone), and being more expressive of my thoughts.
I would say these experiences of mine strongly reflect the material we covered about anxiety because my anxiety always occurs in anticipation of an event that I plan to do like on my first date, as mentioned in the powerpoint as well, my shivering and fearfulness was persistent and very uncontrollable as it happened all throughout the day up until the date itself. I would definitely define this state of mind as extremely excessive when comparing to how other people would have reacted and anticipated their first date, or any future event for that matter. Anxiety is definitely a nuisance and it hinders everyone’s interactions with the environment around them.
Hey Steven, thank you very much for sharing your story with us. I think you described the process of anxiety very well and it was really easy to understand this concept in a plain English. Additionally, you did a great job of providing real effects of anxiety in day-to-day lives by giving us an example from your own life. It was really interesting reading about your first date and how anxious you were, because it clearly represents my experience, as well. As you said, it is normal to experience anxiety in some occasions in our lives, especially before important days, such as exams, quizzes and dates. People usually stress too much about it and think about anxiety 24/7, which might cause even bigger problems. Therefore, I think, people should understand that being anxious time to time is completely normal and that everyone experiences it, and there is no reason at all to be stressed about it.
I really appreciate you being so open about your experience with anxiety, as I have and continue to struggle with anxiety as well. I tend to feel the most anxious about upcoming events as well such as exams, assignments, public speaking, and other things too. For me, the peak of my anxiety was during my junior year of high school. I was super stressed about applying to colleges, keeping up with my schoolwork, and especially having to take the SATs, as standardized testing is not my strong suit. I was also worried about silly high school drama with friends and such, but as you said those with anxiety tend to let things fester in their minds constantly. It began to really affect me, and even resulted in a couple anxiety attacks. My friends were also well aware of my anxiety and noticed that I was pretty on edge most of the time. Fortunately, like you, I was able to talk to them about how I was feeling and it would help to relieve some of the stress and worrying. Now, I continue to try to express how I am feeling as much as possible to avoid bottling up my feelings and over analyzing it. Also, I began to visit a psychiatrist and was prescribed a small dose of anxiety medication (Lexapro) to help calm me down, and it had helped my anxiety tremendously.
I love how open you are with your mental health because people need to be educated or more aware of the topic; the truth is anxiety effects many people, and it needs to be talked about more often than not to show people suffering that they are not alone. I really liked the way you mentioned how you do not let your anxiety define you because I relate to this as well. I suffer from anxiety and take medication to help, but I try my best to never let it define who I am, I am my own person outside of my anxiety and so are you.
The worst anxiety attack I ever endured would have had to be this year in march. I was a competitive dancer about to go on stage at a competition to compete my second solo of the day. This solo dance was choreographed extremely last minute causing me immense stress and anxiety. I began to hyperventilate, and had a hard time breathing. I ran to the bathroom because I thought I was going to be sick, and my best friend followed me to ensure I was okay. I ended up not being able to go on stage to perform my solo, and had to withdraw the dance from the competition. It sucked but I’ve learned from it and grew from the experience. Anxiety affects everyone in one way or the other, and mental health needs to be more addressed in the modern world.