ANXIETY / My Story & How I Deal With It.

Hey Everyone! Today I thought I'd share with you a more personal post. I completely understand that this may not be for everyone, but nevertheless I know a lot of you can relate. It took a lot to properly put this into words so let me know what you all thought after giving it a read. I've lived and dealt with anxiety for the majority of my life, and if you don't know what anxiety is let me quickly explain. Anxiety is described an unpleasant feeling that we can all experience at times, where you feel tense, nervous or panicky due to a situation which may have occurred or any stressful life events. Alongside that you also may experience a handful of physical symptoms too. Such as palpitations, sweating, feeling faint, having a dry mouth and difficulty breathing. Anxiety is a horrible emotion to feel, something you have very little control over and can effect you at any time, in any place, when you least expect it. For some it can also lead into having a Panic Attack as well.

For me and I know for a lot of people anxiety can vary from lasting a couple minutes or hours throughout the day or from the moment I wake up to the second I go to sleep. I've always been told I'm incredibly shy, for as long as I can remember. This is where a lot of people get confused between simple shyness and social anxiety, two completely different things. Social Anxiety is a form of anxiety in which one can feel discomfort or fear whilst in a social situation or interaction, it is much more than just shyness. Social Anxiety effects me in a good few ways. The main one being talking on the telephone. People close to me honestly don't understand why I never answer my phone and only really ever text. I can't explain it in any other way but feeling beyond overwhelmed, sweating, heart pounding, hands shaking and completely forgetting what I was going to say in the first place. I'm constantly being told by my parents, you need to ring this person back, ring the doctors back etc, but I go out of my way to avoid them at all costs. At almost 21 years old I still get my mum to make my doctors appointments! Funnily enough, I honestly hate ringing in sick for work and you'd laugh if you saw how many missed calls I have on my phone. Other times my social anxiety would effect me would include in school answering questions or doing presentations in front of the class, meeting new people, going on dates, answering the door to strangers and much more.

Back when I was in primary school around the age of 8 or 9, I used to have anxiety attacks almost every morning for a solid couple of weeks. It would happen at the same time every single morning when my mum or dad would go to drop me to school. They must have thought I was being a typical child not wanting to go to school but really It was much more severe than that. I hated the place, everything about it made me so uncomfortable and tense, to the point where I'd cry for a straight half an hour, my heart would pound in my chest and I'd refuse to get out of the car. This is the earliest experience with anxiety that I can remember. For me I was always a very anxious child and have now grown up to be a rather anxious adult. I was always very self aware of how I acted around other people as well as being very self conscious over how I looked. I was your typical geeky child, being constantly told by classmates that I was ugly or weird, yet they were nice to me when they wanted to copy my work! My time throughout secondary school was a very dark period for me, being bullied in an all girls school definitely did not help. I went through a lot during my time in school, which I won't go into now but it definitely caused a increase in how often I was feeling anxious. People would never understand that when they asked what was wrong and I simply replied that I have anxiety, so I'd constantly make up excuses or lie about why I couldn't come out after school or why I was upset before class. School honestly without a doubt made my anxiety so much worse.

I still deal with anxiety and social anxiety on a daily basis. I decline offers on a daily basis to go out or meet up with friends, simply to stay in bed on my laptop or sleep. I avoid telephone calls at all costs and making up excuses on why I didn't pick up. I'm always making plans that I can never end up sticking too. If I'm feeling down or anxious about anything I find that just relaxing and deep breathing can help. I tend to listen to music or watch something and relax in bed until I'm feeling better. There is also a lot of great anxiety related relaxation apps for smart phones, I have a few just in case I'd ever need them. I'd love to know if any of you have any effective methods to relax and calm yourself when an anxiety attack strikes. It is really difficult for me sometimes and I do struggle in explaining how I'm feeling to people close to me, I'm one of those people who'd rather keep it all bottled up. Anxiety effects so so many people nowadays, so just know that if you also suffer that you're not the only one feeling this way.

Let me know if you also suffer with anxiety and how it effects you. Thank you so much for reading and please let me know if you enjoy these more personal posts. Talk soon xx ❤