Recently I have noticed that “having anxiety” has become sort of a trend. What I mean by this is people are claiming to have anxiety in an inappropriate manner. I do not believe people realize how serious this mental disorder actually is. Being diagnosed with anxiety panic disorder has completely affected and changed my entire life in unimaginable ways. The story of my life with anxiety is one I am reluctant to share, but I think would be beneficial to help others understand what I go through with this disorder. Not all anxiety is the same and can be very complicated to understand.

Before the diagnosis:

When I was a young child, I had noticed there was something different about me. Basically I was afraid of everything: bees, dogs, thunderstorms, and pretty much anything and everything else. (I eventually grew out of this and lost all fear for anything). Being scared of everything as a child really restricted my life. I would not go outside because I was so afraid; I remember sitting inside watching my family have fun at a picnic while I was alone in the house. I missed out on so much and some of it still haunts me today. I did not have a normal life, I was not a normal child. I remember I would never button the top few buttons on my pajamas just because I was afraid somehow my pajamas would choke me in my sleep. I remember lying in bed and feeling a strange heart palpitation which made me expect my heart was going to stop. The thing with anxiety is that it is not just as simple as fear, the worst part is the constant paranoia which lingers in the mind day by day. The paranoia was exhausting, it haunted me in the day and in my dreams.

The Diagnosis:

I was only 11 years old when I was officially diagnosed. I was at an amusement park with my family, we got off a ride and all of a sudden I couldn’t breathe. The clouds were grey and it was approaching night and all I could hear was people laughing and screaming and my family asking me, “What’s wrong, what’s wrong?” I could barely speak but I tried to tell them I couldn’t breathe and warm tears began running down my face. My family tried to tell me, “Calm down, you’re fine,” which ended up being the words I would dread my entire life. At the time I was young and had no idea what was going on so I cried and fell to the ground. Before I knew it there were two paramedics with a wheel chair coming to my rescue. They sat me down in the chair and wheeled me to the medic’s office at the park. I remember all of the people we passed just staring me down like I was some freak or wondering what had happened to me. I have never liked having a lot of attention on myself. Once we got to the medical center the doctors performed their tests on me and discovered I was perfectly healthy. Honestly, I was extremely confused and could not understand why I could not breathe and I was sweating and my chest felt so heavy as if I was drowning. My family did not really understand either, but all I remember is a lady telling me I had an anxiety attack and the rest of the night is a blank.

After my first official anxiety attack, more problems continued to arise. I would wake up in the middle of the night crying and panicking full of confusion and fear. I would run and wake up my mother telling her I couldn’t breathe feeling dizzy and tired. I would be doing normal things such as playing games with my sister and suddenly feel the attack coming on; I would try to run away because they didn’t understand and kind of made fun of me for it. So many tears were produced from my eyes and so many breaths of desperation. After so many times of this occurring I just knew there had to be something wrong with me. Were my lungs about to collapse? I had no idea what was wrong but I was convinced I was close to death. I began forcing my mother to take me to our pediatrician for checkups because I knew something was just not right. The trips became more frequent which landed me at the doctor's at least two times a week. I was thoroughly disappointed when the doctor told me I was in perfect health. Now I felt that no one would believe me when I couldn’t breathe and everyone thought I was making it all up. Now I felt like I had nowhere to turn to. I realize now my mother was just trying to comfort me at the time, but when she said “Jordan, calm down, you are fine,” I felt like she just thought I was lying.

Finally, after numerous trips to the doctor, I finally received some sort of result: I have Anxiety Panic Disorder. This was a surprise to me because I expected to hear I had a terminal illness or some sort of impending doom. Since I was young and didn’t understand this disorder, my doctor suggested medication or therapy. My mother didn’t want me taking medication because she thought it would change me too much. I went to two therapy sessions before she told me I was fine and didn’t need to come back unless absolutely necessary. She taught me some coping mechanisms for when I felt an attack. Some of these methods consisted of talking to someone, drawing, writing, or basically doing anything to distract my brain. The most difficult part is the attacks are completely random and were mostly triggered by nothing. People would ask me, “what’s wrong” or “what are you afraid of” and every time I would tell them I don’t know and nothing is wrong. I never had any clue why an attack would start.

Other issues came along with my panic attacks later on. I would usually have the worst of my anxiety issues during the summer because I didn’t have school to distract me. I remember one summer I began having eating issues. I had an extreme fear of choking on the food, so I basically didn’t eat the whole entire summer. I would barely eat anything except maybe some soup or jell-o or basically anything that was nearly impossible to choke on. I had to constantly worry about going out with my family or friends and having to hide the fact that I was too afraid to eat. I was stressed, depressed, and hungry. This issue seemed to go away as school started again, but as the next summer approached I was afraid of what was going to happen. The next summer I did not have issues with eating, this time it was with sleeping. I was afraid of dying in my sleep or something awful happening, but it prevented me from sleeping much at all. It was another difficult summer of being exhausted and hopeless while waiting for school to approach again. The following summer I had issues with eating once again, but thankfully after I reached high school this summer disaster finally ended.

There were other odd things my anxiety brought on, as well. I used to click my throat just to make sure I was breathing. If I could physically hear myself breathe it would put me at ease. My anxiety became less severe after a little while until the summer of 2015. I had a horrible relapse with my panic attacks and had to begin medication to lessen the severity of my panic attacks after one landed me in the hospital.

Although no one probably read my entire story, it feels good to share my story in case someone experienced something similar to what I did. I just wish people would watch what they say when they talk about mental illness or anxiety.