For most of us, anxiety comes without warning and always overstays its welcome. Anxiety feels like someone is slowly adding more weight to your chest. Suddenly it begins to get harder to breathe and no matter how much you try to remove the weights there is always more.

You aren't alone, those feelings of not understanding what's wrong but feeling like something is wrong. Having cancelled plans because you feel so impossibly overwhelmed and feeling hurt and sad... You're definitely not alone, I've been there and sometimes I'm still there. I've encountered people telling me multiple times that I need to just "be happy" or to "relax" but if you're anything like me those words cause more harm then good.

I don't wake up every morning "choosing" to be anxious, overwhelmed, or moderately panicked. These feelings happen without warning and can be triggered by the smallest thing, the weather, work, or friends are a few examples. I know a majority of the friends and family that tell me to just "be happy" and "relax" mean well but the thing about anxiety is that it's not some switch that I can turn on and off when I please.

To everyone that thinks anxiety is a choice and we have power over it, you're wrong. I think I can vouch for everyone when I say if we had a choice with our anxiety you best believe we would choice to be happy. So when we are anxious it's not some act to get more attention or to get out of doing things, it's a silent cry for help. We need to shine more light on anxiety not being a choice and understand anxiety is trap.