Anxiety From the Eyes of Someone Who is Not You.

This is my second year studying psychology at college, and my 2nd month on anxiety/ depression medication. I started recognizing signs last year as a freshman, but thought weekly therapy appointments and a summer vacation would help. I came back to my dorm this semester and had felt worse than ever. I was getting heart palpitations, sometimes feeling like I was having a heart attack, having difficulty breathing, and such a hard time going to and staying asleep. This post is mostly just whatever thoughts come to my head as I write this and things may not be in order, because I’m having a difficult time getting my thoughts in line. But why am I even writing all this out? Will this reach anyone and make a difference in their life? With how small I am on this website, most likely not, but I’m hoping at least one person can see they’re not alone.

Anxiety is such a difficult mental disorder to diagnose, because you can’t tell if you’re just having a few bad days, or even just being irrational. But when the physical symptoms start, you begin to realize something may be wrong with you. It’s funny how our society takes priority over the physical symptoms someone has over their mental symptoms. Why might this be? Because as a whole, this world has been known to stigmatize people with mental disorders as being “crazy”, when that simply isn’t the case. As a heart may get heart disease, the brain can get anxiety. The brain is an organ just like anything else.

The biggest thing that set me off to write this was that a few days ago, I misplaced my daily morning medication of Citalopram. “Where the hell did I place it?”, two seconds after not finding it. “Oh my God, what if I don’t find it, can I just go to CVS and tell them I lost it?”, 6 seconds after I couldn’t find it. “Oh God, is it in this bag-?” I had found it, 15 seconds after misplacing it. Seeing how terrified I got after not being able to find my medication after 15 struck me as a moment of complete and utter vulnerability and a sense of dependability, and this put me at ease. But, why? That moment made me realize that as any human, I have something that made me vulnerable, that I was dependent on. Sure, I may dependent on my medication to function as normally as I can day to day, but it made me realize I was human, alive, and pushing on to survive and keep helping myself get better with this medication. In short, I guess, there is nothing wrong with needing to take medication for anxiety, and any mental illness in general. It was honestly one of the best things I could do for myself at this point in life.

-Briana