Excitement. Motivation. Eagerness. Enthusiasm. Anxious? Woah, wait a minute. Why am I anxious? Why am I afraid? These are questions I ask myself on a weekly basis.

The origin of any person’s anxiety is unknown. The saying is repetitive and occasionally monotonous but, every person experiences things differently. A person’s symptoms and triggers can be different based on their personal experiences.

For me, I was deployed to an Imminent Danger Zone. Which means that I was not in combat, but due to the social or political environment, combat could be a possibility. I spent eight long months of my life 10,000 miles away from anyone I knew, in the middle of one of the harshest environments on Earth; the Sahara Desert. Aside from my team members that I was deployed with, I didn’t have anyone to talk to that understood what I was experiencing. I wasn’t the only one over there, so I wasn’t the only one feeling this way. But, for one reason or another, I never spoke to anyone about it. I kept it bottled up for years.

When I finally went home, I was different. I was angrier and much easier to anger than usual, easy to confuse, and some of these things I still deal with on a regular basis. I lost friends, and I experienced relationship difficulties, and I felt alienated from my family because I found it hard to communicate with them. These are only some of the things people can deal with, and this is unique to my experiences.

To fully understand anxiety, you need to know what it is not. It is not a fake illness that people make up. It is not something that can be ignored. I often hear people say, “Just ignore it!” How can you ignore legitimate fear and/or concern? That is a microaggression, and it is unfair for anyone to comment on a person’s life without completely understanding what that person is experiencing.

To comment further what it is like to experience an anxiety attack, I will try to explain. Imagine that you are woken out of a peaceful sleep with your heart racing as if you just drank four Monster Energy Drinks in a twenty-minute timespan. Before you dismiss that example by saying, “I drink more than that in a day!” You must understand that this is for an average person, not an athlete that can burn off the additional energy. So you wake up with your heart racing, and you have a cold sweat. When your heart is racing at this speed, in my personal experience, I feel legitimate terror. Many people say that they experience a “feeling of impending doom” when they suffer a heart attack. I would classify this as a similar moment. You feel as if your heart is going to beat itself out of your chest because it is so strong.

One night when this happened to me, I thought that I had a heart attack. I reported to the nearest Urgent Care center, and I was given an EKG or Electrocardiogram. My heart was racing at 130 beats per minute, while my heart rhythm was an entirely standard QR wave, albeit at a faster rate. I was experiencing a panic attack, and I had no idea where it came from.

Anxiety is not a fake illness. A person experiencing these symptoms DOES NOT need you to make them aware of it because we are EXPERIENCING it. Please don’t look at us weird it can trigger an attack. For me, when I see a person staring at me weird or when I feel that a person is trying to avoid me, then I honestly think it is happening even though it may not be the case whatsoever. When a person comes up from behind me and startles me, it can trigger an attack. It all stems from my personal experiences.

If you have a friend that experiences anxiety and you want to help, I have some advice. Treat them just like everyone else, and don’t bring attention to it. If you are with that person when an attack occurs, simply be gracious with that person. Tell them that you are there and ask if they need anything. It could be something as simple as a glass of water or a hug. With great thanks to the Mayo Clinic for providing a web page about Panic Attacks, the following is a list of symptoms commonly associated with people experiencing Panic Attacks.

Panic attacks typically include some of these symptoms:

Sense of impending doom or danger

Fear of loss of control or death

Rapid, pounding heart rate

Sweating

Trembling or shaking

Shortness of breath or tightness in your throat

Chills

Hot flashes

Nausea

Abdominal cramping

Chest pain

Headache

Dizziness, lightheadedness or faintness

Numbness or tingling sensation

Feeling of unreality or detachment

In closing, Anxiety IS REAL. It is not a made up illness, and its effects can be physically felt by the person experiencing the attack. Do not alienate that person from participating in activities. Do not treat them differently. Be a friend. Be gracious with them, and help in any way that you can. This may sound confusing, but it isn’t. Just ask what they need, and comply with their wishes.

Reference:

Mayo Clinic Staff. (2015, May 19). Panic attacks and panic disorder symptoms. Retrieved October 5, 2016, from Mayo Clinic, http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/pani...