You know what makes me anxious? Life…life makes me anxious…so does this blog
post. As a kid, I was the nervous Nancy
of the bunch. I worried about my
parents, my dog, my outfit that day, my everything basically. I, Ashley, am a worry-wart. For some time, I didn't understand it…I guess
no one else did either. It frustrated my
parents to no end, mainly because no one could figure out how to calm me
down. I was even anxious about
sleeping. Seriously…sleeping. I was so afraid that I would wake up and
nothing would be like it was the day before.
That’s exhausting just thinking about it because that’s what life is all
about…change.
As I grew older, I suppose I found ways to tackle the
intense anxiousness that I felt…or maybe I just grew out of those worries and
moved on to other ones. Regardless, for
a good portion of my life, my anxiety did not affect me in a debilitating
way….and then I went to high school.
As a junior, I remember waking up one morning and thinking
“oh crap, I’m gonna die.” It felt like
someone was sitting on my chest mixed with the worst stomach ache on the face
of the earth. I had felt like this
before but it had been a while. I lived
like that for many months and then one day I just woke up and was okay
again. Granted I had been teaching
myself ways to deal with it, but still, it went away. I thought, once again, I was anxiety
free.
I moved on to college “anxiety free” until my junior
year. HA. Apparently junior year is a curse, but
whatever. I had the same intense anxiety
I had in high school, except worse. This
time though, I couldn't put my finger on why I was feeling this way, as I could
in high school. I had a fantastic
life. My frustration only made the
anxiety worse and both the end of 2012 and start of 2013 were plagued with this
debilitating anxiety. What I grew to
realize is that my anxiety never goes away, it’s a part of me and if I don’t acknowledge
it, it builds up and hits me like a ton of bricks.
At first I hated the idea of it. How much does that suck, realizing that you
have anxiety, like all the freaking time.
I struggled with that for a really long time and then I just woke up one
day and realized it wasn't worth it. If
I’m going to live with it I might as well learn to cope with it! Thus, I've been on a journey to love,
understand and most importantly tackle my anxiety all the while trying to just
laugh about it. So, that brings me to
the reason I’m even sharing this…welcome to The Anxiety Diaries.
At the end of the day, the things I worry about are very
real to me. Sometimes I become consumed
by them…sometimes they even ruin things for me.
BUT, if I come to love it and understand it all while trying to tackle
it, then, you know what…I got this! I
think anxiety is something people don’t like talking about, God I know I
don’t. Yet, for as uncomfortable as it
is to acknowledge, there is great understanding once you do.
So, let’s just laugh about all of this, let’s say once a
week. Let’s be more serious some days
and not so much on others. Welcome to
The Anxiety Diaries and most importantly, welcome to From Scratch.
**I am not an expert in anxiety and if you are feeling it
intensely, please seek help in some way!
This series is not meant to be anything other than my experience with my
own anxiety. I hope it provides everyone
a little laughter and a lot of relief.
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