This is not going to be an article that sums anxiety up to be some beautifully tragic, black and white photograph of a girl crouching with her head in her hands.

Actually, I’m quite sick of the terms ‘anxiety’ and ‘panic attack’ being throw around so loosely; and I know for a fact that the community of people who live with mental disorders are sick of it too.

I am not a scientist but, I am someone who lives with this disorder for over ten years and I am not embarrassed by it. I do not and will not glorify anxiety in any way. I refuse to romanticize a disease – yes, a disease – that, in some cases, can lead to the death of a human being.

I am aware that people die of or are effected significantly by cancer, lupus, heart problems and a multitude of other diseases every single day. My point here is that no disease or disorder is better or worse than the next. At the end of the day, these are health problems that threaten, worsen or take away the lives of people. They all deserve and need to be taken seriously and treated as appropriately.

Living with Anxiety

I was about eight years old when I was diagnosed with anxiety. For a while, I didn’t know that anxiety was all that important. I say this because I was often looked at as “just being nervous”.

Let me tell you something.

Everyone gets nervous. Everyone panics. In fact, you have probably experienced anxiety before. All of those things are normal. When panic begins to control your life and anxiety begins to effect the way you function – that is when the behavior begins to be considered abnormal.

There is nothing beautiful or unique about that.

When the average person experiences regular, day-to-day anxiety, it usually goes away after a short period of time. If you have the disorder, it’s not going away. Anxiety will effect your sleeping and eating habits every single day. The worrying and the terror doesn’t stop. It is constant.

In other words, anxiety is not just excessive worrying that cannot be easily controlled. It’s when that worrying prevents you from living a normal life.

To put it in context, an anxiety disorder does not just make you nervous before playing in a big game. An anxiety disorder may be the reason you never joined the team in the first place.

A person with anxiety will imagine the worst possible thing that can happen. ALL THE TIME in any given situation.

Something that may seem miniscule to you may seem like the end of the word to someone with anxiety.

Panic Attacks

How many times have you heard someone say something along the lines of, “Oh my God, you almost gave me a panic attack!”?

No. No. No.

Just no.

If your heart starts racing because someone jumped out and scared you, that is not a panic attack. If you are panicking and nervous while waiting to be handed a test result back, that is not a panic attack. Those things may induce panic and anxiety in you, but does not necessarily mean you are having a panic attack.

Panic attacks are extremely scary. In some cases, it may cause the person to feel like they are having a heart attack.

Often times, during a panic attack, the person may start shaking uncontrollably. They may begin to feel very sick and even begin vomiting. That person may not be able to breathe and may feel as if their chest is tightening. A sensation of extreme fluttering in the chest is also a symptom of a panic attack.

Newsflash: Telling a person who is having a panic attack to ‘stop’ or to ‘calm down’ is not going to make it go away. You need to understand that this person is most likely not even registering what you are saying.

People cope with panic attacks in different ways. Some need to lay on the floor and others may need to start rocking back and forth in a soothing motion. Some may need a tight embrace while others may need you to clear the room.

The bottom line? It’s not a joke. Panic attacks can be traumatizing and are extremely draining.

The Truth

Anxiety has been linked to chemical imbalances in the brain; thus making it a mental disorder. I’ll briefly explain what happens in the brain regarding anxiety.

Your thalamus will receive a certain stimulus, and then send that stimulus to your amygdala where danger is scoped out and registered. If you are someone who lives with an anxiety disorder, your amygdala is constantly scoping for danger; hence the excessive worrying. You will tend to analyze every situation whether it is a good or bad.

This is common knowledge that you can look up or read in a textbook.

There are also neurotransmitters that are associated with anxiety disorders. One that you may have heard of before is serotonin. This is where the chemical imbalance in the brain begins to effect the person. Axons in the brain connect to dendrites, delivering neurotransmitters like serotonin. People with a mental disorder have a lack of certain neurotransmitters. This is science, I am not making it up.

Again, I’m not a doctor and I’m not a scientist. I didn’t come up with these ideas! I’m only a junior in college who has been living with this disorder for most of her life. I took on a psychology minor to help me better understand what is going on in the brain and this is what I have been learning and studying.

I speak solely from experience.

Look, I am just sick of anxiety not being treated like the disorder it is. I’m sick of hearing that it isn’t real. If we want this stigma against mental illness to stop (and yes- there is in fact a stigma) then we need to begin taking mental illness just a little bit more seriously.

Just because you can’t see the disorder, doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Anxiety isn’t this scenario where your boyfriend or mother or anyone holds you and calms you down. Instead, it’s the people you love becoming helpless and frustrated with the fact that they cannot fix what is going on inside of you.

That being said, people with anxiety cannot use their illness as an excuse and crutch. If you are aware that you are suffering, then you need to take the necessary steps to cope in a healthy way. I say this as someone with the disorder. There are many things you can do to help your anxiety.

Talk to a counselor. Look into total body relaxation exercises and practice them daily. Get a notebook and just write a little bit every day. Different things work for different people. Getting help is NOTHING to be ashamed of. The first step is the hardest. When you don’t want to help yourself it’s hard to take initiative. You have to find a way to help yourself because we need to fight back against the stigma!

Think about it. If you’re sick and have symptoms you aren’t familiar with, you typically see a doctor and talk to them about what to do.

How Can You Help?

If you know someone with an anxiety disorder, the biggest thing to remember is this: what may seem irrational to you may be making sense in the mind of someone suffering.

What I mean by this is that because people who live with anxiety disorder worry excessively, what they are worrying about may seem absolutely ridiculous to you.

Instead of getting angry with that person who is panicking, talk to them calmly. Ask them what exactly is bothering them about that particular situation. Ask how you can help. Listen and be patient. It’s not easy on any end, but it is a way to help the person with anxiety build trust and return to a more calm state of being.

This isn’t a problem that is going to be fixed overnight. But here’s my advice to help get the ball rolling:

Stop glorifying mental illness.

Mental illness is not beautiful. These people are sick and suffering. It’s not a Hollywood movie.

Anxiety doesn’t make you dark and mysterious and it certainly isn’t ‘cool’ to have trust issues and have difficulty living a healthy and happy life.

Be a stigma-fighter. Speak up, because no one fights alone.