Anxiety.

It has always been with me and it's not going anywhere

Today in class we read a poem called Fear by Ciaran Carson talks a lot about fears and anxiety, and in my life, I am at constant war with it. The poem talks about all the fears the author thinks about in a day. During class discussion, some people thought that these fears were rational and some people thought they were irrational. However, I have a different approach.

Dealing with anxiety all my life. I know where the author is coming from. For example, when he says "I fear the bad decisions of the referee." This line is obviously an irrational fear because it won't cause him any harm, but the thought process is very intricate. All my life I would worry about the what if's, and I would sit and ponder on that for hours, and that's all I would be thinking about. I feel that people confuse fear and anxiety all the time and I believe there is a fine line! Fear, for example, is a fear of clowns; they are creepy and scary but people who say they have a fear of clowns are most likely not thinking about them 24/7. Anxiety is when you can't find a cause. You'll just be sitting in class and all of a sudden you get this overwhelming feeling in your chest and you feel like you are going to spiral out of control. I just feel people seem to make anxiety seem not that bad. People who don't have anxiety have told me to "Get, over it." "It's not a big deal" or just be inconsiderate to how I feel. This is something I feel on the daily, and I can relate to this poem on a personal level. Towards the end of the poem Carson states, "I fear the gremlins that have colonized my brain." I fully stand by this statement! The way he compared the two was spot on. For people who don't have anxiety or don't know what it feels like I feel like this is a perfect example.

From what I remember from the Gremlins movies, was when they were fed after dark and they were running around causing massive chaos. That is basically how it feels, I always feel like my mind is just a mess. I always think and obsess over many multiple things at the same time. Some of the things me and my mind obsess over can seem irrational to other people, but to me they are more than that. In the poem he talks about all the things that he fears, and some students in the class said that some of the fears would be irrational because physically they won't cause him harm. I have a different view. Some of them I could view as irrational but I wouldn't because I have been in his shoes. I know how it feels to have anxiety because I have it.