Anxiety Feels Like...

Anxiety feels like...

That initial feeling of dread when you realize you lost your wallet or keys, but that feeling drags on for hours. 

Forgetting to breathe, realizing that you aren't breathing, then panicking and breathing deeply only to cause yourself to get dizzy.

Hearing the voices of people you know saying negative things about you that they have never said, and you can picture them saying it in your head.

A hazy mist of tense and stressful thoughts swirling around the brain causing problems with attention and memory.

Migraines that feel like all the muscles in your head are doing somersaults under your scalp.

The constant expectation of something horrible happening in your life, causing it to turn completely upside down.

Feeling like no thing is stable or trustworthy.

Fighting daily not to surrender to helplessness, despite feeling completely powerless and out of control.

Thinking that death sounds blissfully peaceful compared to the storm inside your brain.

Replaying all the mistakes you've ever made in your head over and over again and analyzing every move and how it should have happened.

Reliving every uncomfortable moment until your present gets ruined by negative emotions from the past.

Wanting to quit everyday because everything is so hard but expecting too much of yourself to ever quit.

Always having the feeling like you are missing some big, critical idea or task.

This is my own experience with anxiety, each person with anxiety feels it in a different way.

Having anxiety is like fighting a constant battle in your head. The problem is, if people don't talk about their anxiety then no one will be able to understand. Having a mental illness is supposed to be something you are ashamed of and don't publicize. I'm tired of feeling shame and trying to hide what I deal with every day. By sharing my struggles with the world, I hope that someone out there will be able to relate and find comfort in the fact that they are not alone. Not only that, but I believe that by talking about insecurities and imperfections openly, I can balance out the perfect image of myself that has been manufactured on the Internet. Online, it is way too easy to make it seem like your life is perfect. We all need to start portraying an image that is a little more flawed, and maybe in that way we can rediscover our humanity.