personal essays on anxiety

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Best Personal Essay ever- My Struggle with Anxiety

I’m Justin Stewart, a junior that attends Science Leadership Academy. During the first quarter of my junior year at SLA, my class and I would take vocab quizzes every other week.  It sounded easy to most people but was it really easy? For me, it was a struggle because of the anxiety that I have. Anxiety is a mental health disorder characterized by feelings of worry, anxiety, or fear that are strong enough to interfere with someone's daily activities. My anxiety first started in fourth grade. We had to do group presentations about what we found while researching how light bulbs worked. It was my groups turn to go up and that’s when my anxiety kicked in for the first time. “Justin lets go” my friend said as I continued to stare at everyone in the classroom. At that moment, I came up with an Idea. I decided to pretend that I was sick and ask to go to the nurse. Surprisingly It worked and my teacher let me go to the nurse.

Before every vocab quiz, we had to write down the words that she posted on canvas in the back of our notebooks. Then we had to find the definition and write a sentence for the word.

On the very first vocab quiz, I was feeling confident because I spent that whole week studying. I thought that I was going to pass it by getting a 10 out of 10,but I was wrong. As my teacher, Ms. Pahomov, wrote the words on the board, I felt really nervous and was afraid to take the test. There were some words that weren’t coming back to me. “You may begin” Ms Pahomov said. I spent the first 20 minutes just staring at the paper. I couldn’t believe that I forgot the words so quickly and so easily. After about 20 minutes, I began to try my best. I started with the words that I remembered then tried to figure out the ones that I had forgotten. Before I had known, time was up. “Put your test in the middle of the table” Ms Pahomov said. As I put my test in the middle of the test, I realized I did it with fear in my eyes. I knew that I didn’t do too well on the test. We then were asked to grade our classmates papers as well, and as we started to grade each other’s quizzes,  I zoned out. I couldn’t focus on grading the test that I had. All I could focus on was who graded my test and what they would think of me.

The next day, I went on canvas to see if she graded the quizzes and she did. I got a 5 out of 10. I did better than I thought I was going to do, but it still brought my grade down. “How can I bring my grade up?” I thought to myself. I then thought about the 2fer essays that she assigns us every week, the weeks that we don’t have vocab quizzes. The 2fers could be about anything as long as they weren’t in first person. I took these essays as opportunities to bring my grade up. Completing  one of the 2fer essays, and I got an 18 out of 25. It wasn’t too bad, but I knew I could do better.

The week after the 2fer, we had another vocab quiz assigned and my anxiety immediately kicked in. But this time I wasn’t scared, I was just nervous. I wasn’t afraid to take this test because I knew some of the words already. So I was even more confident than before,ut I slacked the whole week and didn’t study a lot. When I walked into the room, all I could hope for was the words that I knew were on the quiz so I could at least get some credit on the quiz. When Ms. Pahomov wrote the words on the board, none of the words that I knew before the test were on there. At that moment, every last bit of nervousness crawled back into my body. My hands started to sweat and my heart started to beat really fast. “You may begin.” Ms. Pahomov.” It felt like deja vu all over again. I couldn’t believe that I was getting nervous again. While I was taking the test, the words were coming back to me, or I thought.

The next day I went on Canvas again to see what I got this time. This time I was even more nervous and scared to look at my grade than before. I haven’t seen my grade yet, but I already knew that I did worse than the first quiz. I got a 4 out of 10 and my grade dropped again but not as much as I thought it would. I then thought of the same method I used last time. I then started thinking about my next 2fer topic. I worked even harder than I did on my first 2fer and I did slightly better than I did last time. I got a 19 out of 25. It was better than last time, but once again, I knew I could do better. I had no anxiety when it came to writing the 2fers. I began relying on them to bring my grade up.

The week after our second 2fer was the week for our third vocab quiz. When Ms. Pahomov revealed the words in class, I felt even more confident than the first two vocab quizzes. I felt like the words were easier to remember.  I spent that whole week studying and this time I made flash cards to help me remember,ut they still didn’t help. By the time I got to the classroom, I forgot some of the words. Now my anxiety was even more intense than last time. “You may begin” Ms Pahomov said. As usual, I started out with the words I knew.  That brought my confidence up. But then the words I forgot took my confidence away. I felt like it was happening all over again. Me being somewhat confident in myself, only to get let down in the end. I was tired of it. By the end of class, I was so depressed that I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I went straight to advisory and sat down.

What I learned from this experience is that quizzes are not my strong point.  No matter how much I prepare for them, they will always be a struggle for me because of my anxiety. My anxiety has been going on since fourth grade and I still don’t know how to overcome it. It would prevent me from being comfortable with talking to some of my classmates and doing presentations in front of them. Over the years my anxiety settled down a lot. But it’s not fully gone. When I first started school in Kindergarten, I didn’t talk to anyone because I was afraid to. But now here I am in 11th grade and I am more comfortable when I am talking to people.

Comments (6)

I remember reading this and watching this earlier this week because you got it done early and was super impressed. We are super close and hang or at least talk every day and im not gonna lie it shocked me a bit. I always knew you were quiet but didnt know you had anxiety. But none the less I am still very impressed with what youve done and think that everything worked well in your essay. Plus this tpic is very relatable LOL

you are stronger than your struggles

From reading this essay, I was able to learn more about your thought process when you feel nervous about a test. I think that the repetition did a good job of bringing the reader back to the first moment that you felt anxiety over the test.

I did not know you have anxiety; You used repetition, this worked for your you essay

Repetition- I repeated the phrase, "you may begin" Anecdote- The story is about my anxiety

I like how you kept bringing back the scene of the vocab quizzes and 2fers. That kind of repetition worked really well for this essay.

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By Lauren Oyler

In her short story “Five Signs of Disturbance,” Lydia Davis writes of a woman who is “frightened”:

She cannot always decide whether what seems to her a sign of disturbance should be counted as such, since it is fairly normal for her, such as talking aloud to herself or eating too much, or whether it should be counted because to someone else it might seem at least somewhat abnormal, and so, after thinking of ten or eleven signs, she wavers between counting five and seven signs as real signs of disturbance and finally settles on five, partly because she cannot accept the idea that there could be as many as seven.

I would have thought it’s normal to be weird about a few things, but being confronted with such a perspective always makes me doubt myself. I, too, wonder constantly if the things I do and experience are normal. But I have many more signs of disturbance than ten or eleven. I think.

I could say I’m sleeping badly, but it’s worse than that—I’m sleeping incorrectly. When I lie down, I don’t actually rest my head on the pillow; instead, I hold it slightly aloft, so that it touches the pillow but, instead of sinking into the soft material, remains hovering above it. To an observer I would seem to be lying down normally. I tell myself to relax—among other issues, I’m worried I’ll develop a thick neck. When I do, I’m shocked at how much I had just moments before been not relaxing. This is sleep , I think. This is what going to sleep actually feels like . But soon I find my head has risen above the pillow again, and I must admit to myself that I don’t know what going to sleep actually feels like.

From this you’d think I have trouble falling asleep; not so. I’m usually exhausted. But I almost always wake up too soon. Sometimes for no reason; sometimes by a tingling in my ring and pinky fingers, which I experience because I hold my arms tense in sleep, often with my hands in fists so tight that they leave marks from my nails on my palm. I learned the tingling is caused by the ulnar nerve, from a masseuse who observed my posture; she also intuited that I had been born via C-section and was thus likely dealing with an original sense of having been forcibly removed from a place of safety. The clenching, broadly, leads me to grind my teeth, which I have done for at least ten years, and the grinding, probably, leads to the tinnitus, which is relatively new. One of these things might also be at fault for what’s known as exploding head syndrome: at night, I sometimes see flashes of light behind my closed eyes, as if there are fireworks outside my window, and hear mechanical sounds that aren’t there. Despite its spectacular name, the condition is “prognostically benign,” accompanied by no pain or immediate threat to health. The fear I experience along with these hallucinations inspires a series of logical justifications: it’s all in my head, which is, of course, exactly the problem.

Trouble sleeping is certainly normal, but it doesn’t help the project of being awake. While socializing, I am cheerful, gossipy, and quite fun until I’m sleepy, but sometimes I catch myself doing artistic things with my hands and posture—fidgeting, wringing, clenching—even as I engage charmingly (I hope) with my interlocutors. Other times, I will look down from a conversation and notice, Oh, the fist again; because I can laugh at myself, I hold it up to show my friend, as if it contains a surprise. I do not pick or bite my nails, but in groups or alone, at home or out, I cannot keep my shoulders down. (Large deltoids—almost as bad as a thick neck.) Twice now, at parties, men have come up behind me and attempted to physically correct my posture, followed by a little lecture. Never mind the cell-phone addiction, the laptop that sits on the table so that I must look down on it, the ambient tension of contemporary life, when I must be on guard against men who randomly correct my posture. The slouch, they say, is the result of my failure to accept myself as a tall woman.

I honestly don’t think that’s it, but should you really take my word for it? I sometimes feel strange pains in various parts of my body, just fleeting ones, which I then waste a lot of time thinking about. I have occasionally fainted for no reason, and more than once broken out in hives. I get sweaty, feel anxious about being sweaty—about the sweat becoming visible to others, disgusting them—and get sweatier. After I go in the sun, I experience what I call a sunburn neurosis, my skin burning and tingling, though I remain, owing to anxious sunscreen application, as white as a Victorian ghost; I haven’t had a sunburn since I was a teen-ager. Acid reflux can last for weeks. I often find it difficult to eat because I am nauseated due to stress.

I don’t have any phobias, but I do feel afraid. When I’m particularly stressed, I sense movement out of the corner of my eye and jump, like an animal preparing to fend off attack; there’s nothing there. I hold my breath, make little noises, sing little songs, shake. Sometimes I perform feats of what might look from the outside like symptoms of very mild obsessive-compulsive disorder: checking more than twice that the front door is locked; changing the combination on a locker at the gym or a museum multiple times, because I am afraid someone saw me set it. I am hesitant to even mention this one, knowing, because of my years-long Internet addiction—which I would attribute to, among other things, an attempt to escape my anxious, spiralling thoughts, or maybe to externalize them—that if someone claims they “are O.C.D.” about facts of life, such as cleaning the kitchen, people get mad: perfectionism, neuroticism, and thoroughness are not O.C.D. In my defense, I never clean the kitchen.

My work suffers, of course. How could it not? I’m sadly not a perfectionist but, rather, an avoider and a regretter. There are periods when I will respond to e-mails at a reasonable pace, and then there’s the e-mail about a potentially lucrative project that I ignored for months. I haven’t even opened it; I don’t know what it says. Since childhood, I’ve had versions of “the packing dream,” in which I am surrounded by clothes strewn chaotically around the room, and I cannot choose what to bring on a trip. I may have enough time to finish packing, or I may already be too late. Whatever the scenario, it’s never one of those dreams about physical impediments, in which you try to move but can’t; the obstacle is always only my own mind, my own incapability, and that is the torment—that I’ve done this to myself. (I have never actually missed a flight.) As for work, I always manage to “get it done,” though I don’t know how. It’s probably a reasonable enough fear of failure—or fear of failing to achieve the impossibly ambitious vision in my mind—that is my obstacle. Even worse is the possibility, floated by sanguine meditators and accepters of things-as-they-are, that I may need the anxiety, and the promise of eventual relief from it, to do anything at all.

What about panic attacks? I’ve never had the kind of panic attack that people mistake for a medical emergency, but sometimes I become very still, sort of unable to move, for, I don’t know, ten to twenty minutes to an hour, and my muscles are sore the next day. There are the usual racing thoughts: love, squandered potential, unlikely vanities, loss of income. Injustices committed against me; chores. Will I get cancer? Knowing that everyone worries they have cancer helps only a little bit. My ultimate anxiety is not that a certain fear will come true. Rather, I experience panic as mostly meta: the horror of being trapped, in this mind-set, for the rest of my life.

Naturally, I am not merely anxious; I am also very sad. The two are, for me, inextricable: I get anxious that I’ll get sad and sad that I’m so anxious. It’s harder to describe the depression, and the fear of it, because fewer physical symptoms are involved. Weeping, that telltale sign of sadness, is usually cathartic, a response to a specific buildup of identifiable issues, and thus not involved in what I can’t help but think of as the true suffering, which recedes and returns, recedes and returns. People often talk about being unable to get out of bed in the morning. What if you can get out of bed—after about an hour and a half of lying awake in it, thinking about how you should get out of bed? What if you can get out of bed but find it beckons you back throughout the day? What if you are, owing to your difficulty sleeping, just tired? Which comes first, exhaustion or depression? Does it matter?

Even knowing that “normal” is a nefarious construct, used to shame and control, there’s something about these symptoms that makes me want to know how many people have them; they mean nothing to me alone because none of them is so unusual as to cause alarm, or even merit comment, and so they might mean anything. Is it really such a big deal? I don’t know where to put the emphasis, how to tell it, and this is particularly disturbing because knowing where to put the emphasis is my vocation, which is also bound up with, I’ll admit, my “sense of self.” “You don’t seem anxious,” friends will say, surprised at my competent narration. This is not the response I want. How competent could it be if no one believes what I’m telling them?

I can shift the blame. As with anything that matters, the language we use to describe “mental illness” is all wrong. Mental illness is “real,” as real as a tumor, but not the same kind of real as a tumor. Its effects are measurable, in blood pressure or hours slept, or noticeable, in weird hand gestures or an erratic mode of speaking, but mental illness has no shape or volume; its size cannot be conveyed through comparisons to fruits and vegetables. It becomes real in the description of its effects, in the naming of everything around it, rather than in attempts to define it, though we have many words and phrases that approach the task. “Disturbance” is funny, and accurate, because it refers both to the internal condition and what it produces: behavior that might unsettle oneself or others. I become “nervous” in small-stakes situations of short or predetermined time frames; “nervousness” no longer describes the anxious disposition, as it did in the past, but the feeling of being anxious about a specific thing that is usually imminent. I’m “neurotic” because I know the basics of psychoanalysis and am a fast-talking big-city professional; I’m “neurasthenic” because I know the word. My mother used to call herself, as well as me, a “worrywart”; to “worry” is to fidget with something in the mind. “Panic” is acute, “attack” is very acute, and a “fit” is a cute version of a “panic attack”; “throwing a fit” is what children do and what adults do when they are “freaking out” while simultaneously making childish demands. Like “freaking out,” “going insane” is applicable as a joke in retrospect, though it became too popular on the Internet and lost its edge, particularly because the sort of people who said it were just the sort who ought to be arguing that the usage stigmatizes people with mental illnesses. I still indulge in “crazy,” which is classic, and permitted, I think, because I am. “Distressed” is the joke version of nervous, though someone “in distress” is being euphemized, as is someone “behaving erratically.” A “crisis” is both intense and prolonged; a “spiral” is a crisis about one issue, characterized by repetitive and catastrophic thinking, and “spiralling” may feature prominently in crises, but in a slightly funny way. I fear having a true “breakdown,” which suggests, to me, among other things, a failure of speech, but I also fantasize about having a true breakdown for the same reason. I am rarely, if ever, “hysterical”; that’s sexist. “Mentally ill” is, of course, insufficient, though when I have seen other people “in crisis” I have thought I actually understand the term. The concept of “mental health,” did you know, comes from Plato, who said that it could be cultivated through the elimination of passion by reason. Today, good mental health means something like the elimination of both passion and reason.

Unless I’m about to appear onstage, in which case I am “nervous,” I describe myself as “anxious” so that people know I’m serious: this is not a passing worry but a constant state, and if I were to seek a medical diagnosis I would get one, handily. The question “Why don’t you?” naturally arises. The answer is that I do not feel it would help, and might even create more problems than it solves. In medicine, the problem of language is a problem of classification; I do not seek a diagnosis, probably, because I do not want to be trapped in a single term. (I hate being trapped, you might have noticed.) Like everyone else’s, my mind dabbles in an array of mental illnesses to create a bespoke product, and I find all the terms I know either ludicrously broad or ludicrously specific. I learned from Scott Stossel’s upsettingly thorough 2014 book, “ My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind ,” that the term “generalized anxiety disorder” was conceived at a dinner party, in the nineteen-seventies, held among members of a task force working on the DSM-III . According to David Sheehan, a psychiatrist who was there, they were all drunk, wondering how to classify a colleague who “didn’t suffer from panic attacks but who worried all the time . . . just sort of generally anxious.” “For the next thirty years,” Sheehan continues, “the world collected data” on the group’s drunken musing. The point of this anecdote, Stossel establishes, is not to say that generalized anxiety disorder isn’t real but to demonstrate how somewhat arbitrary decisions made by powerful people can shape how we see ourselves. I also don’t mean to suggest that the ideas that we have while drunk are bad—more that drunkenness can give us an admirable economy and frankness, and encourage us to just pick something and go with it, something that some of us, sober, really struggle to do.

An essay like this is supposed to have a narrative. Where does my anxiety come from? Famously, it’s overdetermined. First, my parents: they passed down bad genes, and then they might not have raised me right. To go further I’d have to discuss the ways that they might not have been raised right, and then discuss the ways that they might not have raised me right. Although, like everyone, I have a list of these in the Notes app on my phone, and I update it every few days when a new injustice committed against my past innocence reveals itself, I am hesitant to go down this path, which narrows to a tunnel, which is eventually pitch-dark. The packing dream, a desire to escape my humble origins; the sunburn neurosis, from my mother’s warnings. I am the way I am because my father did this, or my mother didn’t do that. Not a very satisfying conclusion.

What about society? That’s what’s fucked up. In the early two-thousands, a group of academics in Chicago formed a collective called the Feel Tank—an alternative to the think tank, though of course they also opposed “the facile splitting of thinking and feeling.” According to their manifesto, they sought “to understand the economic and the nervous system of contemporary life” by being “interested in the potential for ‘bad feelings’ like hopelessness, apathy, anxiety, fear, numbness, despair and ambivalence to constitute and be constituted as forms of resistance.” One of their early slogans was “Depressed? . . . It might be political.”

Here the concept of normality truly collapses: what is normal—financial precarity, an inability to plan for the future, war—is not good at all. Feel Tank Chicago was established as part of the “affective turn” in the academic humanities, which began in the nineties; this approach to understanding emotions as shaped by power structures has become wildly influential, though it’s not new. For example: the concept of Americanitis, popularized by William James at the end of the nineteenth century, described “the high-strung, nervous, active temperament of the American people,” according to an 1898 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association . The causes—advances in technology and accompanying pressures of capitalism—were much the same as they are today. Wherever the contemporary occurs, anxiety and depression are seen as natural reactions to it, and performances of profound mental discord in response to the news will be familiar to anyone on social media.

If conventional understandings of mental illness tend to make it about you—the chemicals in your brain or the particular contours of your childhood—this conception wonders if you can harness its power to make things better for everyone. Nice. But there’s something a little simplistic about the way one can attribute all feelings of negativity, disconnection, or anxiety to what amounts to a higher power, as anyone who’s read those social-media laments will know. Doesn’t this encourage more bad feelings: solipsism, nihilism, futility? Looking for something to blame may feel better than beating oneself up, but it doesn’t feel good . In her 2012 book, “ Depression: A Public Feeling ,” Ann Cvetkovich describes the Public Feelings Project—Feel Tank Chicago described themselves as a “cell” of this larger group—as an attempt to “depathologize negative feelings so that they can be seen as a possible resource for political action,” but without suggesting “that depression is thereby converted into a positive experience.”

Indeed, the encouragement to understand our suffering as determined by external conditions does not seem to ease it. The comfort of believing you are normal is that you have company in misery and that your condition seems less likely to become worse. But if “normal” is, by definition, something that is getting worse all the time, then your condition is a form of solidarity—not necessarily a source of solace. (And if you derive solace from the solidarity, do you really want to sacrifice the quality that grants you access to it?) For my purposes—which are, I suppose, to understand whether and how I am abnormal without annoying the reader—stories that foreground their protagonists’ participation in public feeling tend to be unsatisfying. If my suffering has nothing do with me, if it’s the expression of social and political conditions, why should the reader, or well-meaning friend, care? This is why narratives that compete directly with the idea of collective feeling and collective resistance, conservative tales of bootstrapping and hard work, are so compelling: they make a lot more sense.

Until the revolution that would be our relief comes, we must “do the work” to get better ourselves. “Have you tried talking to someone?” people ask, when I mention my various issues. Are you that somebody? No: they mean that, in addition to the natural sleep aids, the regular exercise, the healthy diet, the cultivation of hobbies, the having of friends, the practicing of meditation, and the occasional massage, I should go to therapy.

I have tried talking to someone; it’s fine. The responses I get when I utter the magic words “my therapist” are more thought-provoking than any of the personal revelations I’ve uncovered with him so far, though the idea is that you need to do it for years for the benefits to accrue. “I’m proud of you,” friends say. As if it is so difficult to think seriously about myself for hours a day—as if that weren’t what I was doing with my anxiety anyway. These friends will talk about my problems with me endlessly, as long as I am “in therapy.” If I am not, or if I express my doubts about the possibility of transcending the workings of my own mind by paying someone to guide me through the process, the response is unanimous: I must find a new therapist, someone who is “right” for me. They wonder, gently, gently: Is it possible that I, so high-achieving, am unconsciously telling the therapist what I think he wants to hear—deceiving him by being adequately emotional, apparently reflective, in order to give true self-knowledge the slip? Should I not find someone meaner, nicer, female, more intellectual, less intellectual, someone who will not fall for my tricks?

Or: I must try a different therapeutic approach. A bit of research quickly reveals an expanse of options: somatic-experiencing therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, integrative therapy, gestalt therapy, humanistic therapy, psychodynamic therapy, exposure therapy, shock therapy, biofeedback, counselling, coaching, one of the innumerable schools of psychoanalysis. At a wedding, I was strongly recommended E.M.D.R., or “eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing” therapy, in which eye movement is stimulated in an attempt to retrain the brain to respond to trauma. Some of these styles of therapy are more or less the same thing, just with different names, but, given the nature of the enterprise, you have to assume that the selection of one name or another, or a combination of names, indicates subtle differences in method that surely multiply to create different outcomes. Whether you’re supposed to think about outcomes is a key differentiating factor in therapeutic approaches.

A psychiatrist might prescribe medication, a fraught topic. It’s hard to write about medication without having taken it oneself, which I have so far resisted. I’ve tried a couple of popular pharmaceuticals recreationally and find I am more afraid of them than I am of illegal club drugs; they really work. While I have no idea what it’s like to be on psychiatric medication long term, no one else can say what it’s like, either; the medications famously interact with each person differently, so there is no way to understand them as an experience except through trial and error. The possible side effects are sometimes just as bad as the symptoms they’re supposed to alleviate. The process of stopping these medications, which many patients want to do , is criminally under-studied and requires a painful period of weaning that comes with prohibitively bad side effects, too. (To start antidepressants is to sign up for some future moment when you won’t want to take them anymore, and to have to decide whether you want to experience “brain zaps” in order to stop.)

At the same time, they often help. Criticize what you believe to be the craven overprescription of psychiatric medication in the United States and someone on the Internet will take personal offense: Wellbutrin saved my life! At the end of Sheila Heti’s 2018 novel, “ Motherhood ,” the narrator begins taking antidepressants, and all her problems—primarily her vacillation about the question of whether to have a child, which constitutes the entire novel, along with a debilitating, weeping sadness around her period—are suddenly solved, with what the critic Willa Paskin called a “lexapro-ex-machina.” The abruptness of the ironic conclusion is itself a comment on the role that psychiatric medication plays in North American life, but this plot point, one of the book’s very few, also demonstrates the way philosophical searching ceases when the anguish that propels it is no longer there. Medication allows Heti’s narrator to ignore the upsetting reality that she could go on trying to decide, or regretting, forever. There is no arc, nor character development, nor point, without anticlimactic intervention.

I once attended a session of what I called jaw yoga, hoping to “manage” my bruxism. It was conducted by a Greek woman named Angela who described herself as a dancer, choreographer, and yoga coach; she was also, incredibly, an actual dentist. At the union of these disparate interests was a passionate belief that the jaw had been neglected in the world of dance and that the rest of the body had been neglected in the world of dentistry. “Once you are grinding and pressing the teeth, your cranium and shoulders, hips, knees and feet are reacting to this pressure,” her course description read, beneath a photo of her lying on her stomach, cupping her jaw in her hands. “Once the skeleton is affected, also the organs are reacting. A chain reaction of organs and emotions is put in motion.” She told us how to identify the various parts of the jaw and ended the class by singing along to a recording of “All You Need Is Love.” As we left, she passed out business cards that read “You are the point.”

It didn’t work, though maybe I should have attended more sessions. A resistance to helping oneself is often a simple denial of reality: I don’t want it to be true that I need help, not because I would like to imagine myself as strong and never in need—a common explanation—but because I do not want to have these problems that are notoriously difficult to solve, about which there is no professional agreement. I do not want to embark on a years-long project dedicated to my own mind. I have other things to think about.

A final worry: Am I being confessional? The great trick of declaring outsized anguish, of being publicly and clinically wrecked by one’s feelings, is that once you do it your feelings set the limits, and no one wants to hurt them. The confession is a simple form of writing. It does not contextualize, illuminate, or complicate. Its main purpose is not the creation of aesthetic beauty out of the materials at hand (life, pain) but selfishness: relieving the confessor’s desire to confess. The form travels in one direction, from me to you, offering no path to analysis, critique, or, God forbid, argument. If the feelings are unique, the confession is justified; if they’re normal, it is, too. One yearns for the breakthrough, the epiphany, the point, that will make sense of it all, and thus cure it. But catharsis for me is boring for you. ♦

This is drawn from “ No Judgment .”

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By Leslie Jamison

By Katy Waldman

By Kristen Roupenian

16 Personal Essays About Mental Health Worth Reading

Here are some of the most moving and illuminating essays published on BuzzFeed about mental illness, wellness, and the way our minds work.

BuzzFeed Staff

1. My Best Friend Saved Me When I Attempted Suicide, But I Didn’t Save Her — Drusilla Moorhouse

"I was serious about killing myself. My best friend wasn’t — but she’s the one who’s dead."

2. Life Is What Happens While You’re Googling Symptoms Of Cancer — Ramona Emerson

"After a lifetime of hypochondria, I was finally diagnosed with my very own medical condition. And maybe, in a weird way, it’s made me less afraid to die."

3. How I Learned To Be OK With Feeling Sad — Mac McClelland

"It wasn’t easy, or cheap."

4. Who Gets To Be The “Good Schizophrenic”? — Esmé Weijun Wang

"When you’re labeled as crazy, the “right” kind of diagnosis could mean the difference between a productive life and a life sentence."

5. Why Do I Miss Being Bipolar? — Sasha Chapin

"The medication I take to treat my bipolar disorder works perfectly. Sometimes I wish it didn’t."

6. What My Best Friend And I Didn’t Learn About Loss — Zan Romanoff

"When my closest friend’s first baby was stillborn, we navigated through depression and grief together."

7. I Can’t Live Without Fear, But I Can Learn To Be OK With It — Arianna Rebolini

"I’ve become obsessively afraid that the people I love will die. Now I have to teach myself how to be OK with that."

8. What It’s Like Having PPD As A Black Woman — Tyrese Coleman

"It took me two years to even acknowledge I’d been depressed after the birth of my twin sons. I wonder how much it had to do with the way I had been taught to be strong."

9. Notes On An Eating Disorder — Larissa Pham

"I still tell my friends I am in recovery so they will hold me accountable."

10. What Comedy Taught Me About My Mental Illness — Kate Lindstedt

"I didn’t expect it, but stand-up comedy has given me the freedom to talk about depression and anxiety on my own terms."

11. The Night I Spoke Up About My #BlackSuicide — Terrell J. Starr

"My entire life was shaped by violence, so I wanted to end it violently. But I didn’t — thanks to overcoming the stigma surrounding African-Americans and depression, and to building a community on Twitter."

12. Knitting Myself Back Together — Alanna Okun

"The best way I’ve found to fight my anxiety is with a pair of knitting needles."

13. I Started Therapy So I Could Take Better Care Of Myself — Matt Ortile

"I’d known for a while that I needed to see a therapist. It wasn’t until I felt like I could do without help that I finally sought it."

14. I’m Mending My Broken Relationship With Food — Anita Badejo

"After a lifetime struggling with disordered eating, I’m still figuring out how to have a healthy relationship with my body and what I feed it."

15. I Found Love In A Hopeless Mess — Kate Conger

"Dehoarding my partner’s childhood home gave me a way to understand his mother, but I’m still not sure how to live with the habit he’s inherited."

16. When Taking Anxiety Medication Is A Revolutionary Act — Tracy Clayton

"I had to learn how to love myself enough to take care of myself. It wasn’t easy."

Topics in this article

• Mental Health

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My Journey with Anxiety and Panic Disorder

In hindsight, I can now see the signs of generalized anxiety very clearly before my first full blown panic attack. I was 21 and seizing every opportunity that came my way: college, new friends, traveling. I loved it all.

In 2010, I spent my Spring Break in Cancun with friends when halfway through our trip, I was pushed off a rocky pier by a wave. Now I’ve always been a worrier, but seeing my life flash before my eyes as I tried to swim to shore must have triggered something. I was in a foreign country. My foot swelled up. I didn’t know how to get help. I thought I’d wait until I got home to go to an American doctor but our flight got cancelled and we got stuck in a remote part of Mexico where few people spoke English. Eventually we got back to school safely but after that I became extremely anxious around traveling.

The next year during Spring Break I traveled to a little island in the Caribbean with my family. I was shaking on the little boat that took us from island to island, convinced it was going to sink and we were going to drown. With this sense of impending doom, I shook and didn’t sleep well and ate little on that trip. I was so relieved when it was finally time to fly home. About an hour into my drive back to school, as my radio died and clouds began to roll in across the horizon, my heart started beating very quickly and my throat went dry, I started gasping for air, afraid my throat was closing and sped to the nearest exit.

Over the next several months I dealt with extremely uncomfortable and terrifying sensations when traveling by car. I had no clue what was going on and I had no idea what to tell people. Even the thought of getting into the car began to cause me excessive worry and physical sensations. As they got worse, I began to think I had a serious illness—maybe throat cancer—and started visiting my doctor, who told me it was just stress. I was given some medication—which I was terrified to use—and that was about it. I thought I was going crazy, I thought I was dying and had no one I could talk to that understood. It got so bad that at one point I started a new job and had difficulty driving to work. I couldn’t get there without having a panic attack. I stopped eating and sleeping. I began to feel hopeless and depressed. 

I went to doctor after doctor who began to use the words “anxiety” and “panic disorder.” We discussed anti-anxiety medications and I sought help from many psychologists as well as psychiatrists. I went through many doctors and medications before I found what works for me. I also began educating myself on these disorders, on what goes on in the brain during these times of misinterpreted fear. I determined my triggers. I began to meet other people like me. I found an amazing program that gave me a support group as well as techniques to work with my disorder, rather than against it. I still experience anxiety and panic attacks but now they are less frequent and less debilitating. I’ve gotten married, moved out, bought my first home, adopted two dogs, started a new job and traveled across the country- all with this anxiety disorder by my side. And of course, my husband, who has been supportive of me from the very start of all this. I literally met him while this disorder was manifesting and while, like me, he didn’t initially understand it, he never wavered in his support. 

I found NAMI through my company who is strongly focused on the mental health of their employees and I am so thankful to have come across it! Mental illness is a serious epidemic in our country and our policy leaders need to address it as such. I had difficulty finding treatment because it was not something my parents were willing to discuss with me. Even if they were, they still have no clue what it means to have a panic disorder. My primary doctor shrugged me off and I felt ashamed and embarrassed, as if I’d done something wrong. Once I was able to accept my illness and move forward with treatment, it became very difficult to afford. I pay $65 for each one hour session with my psychologist and $65 with the psychiatrist just to check in. If I had no insurance, that cost would jump to $150 per each session. That’s a lot of money for a broke college student! 

Now that I finally feel like I’m getting a handle on my own disorder, I see how far our society has to go in addressing this issue. We need funding to conduct more extensive research on neurological disorders, more affordable care, less discrimination and more awareness

I’m persevering because I recognize that I am just as entitled to receiving help as anyone with a physical illness. I have a right to live a happy and healthy life and I’ve taken it into my own hands to see that I get there. There are so many people struggling to live with mental illness that are not as self-aware or educated as me and I want to work to change that. Improving your mental health is a unique journey for each of us and treatment should be treated as such.

If we come together we can make this happen. I truly believe that. 

Duke TIP Navigator

The official magazine for TIPsters in 4th–6th grade

Turning Fear into Confidence—A Personal Essay

October 14, 2020

Facing obstacles throughout your life is inevitable, and the obstacles you overcome can define who you are as a person. Not only will this build character and self-confidence, it will show others how strong you remained and inspire them to overcome their own challenges.

But overcoming obstacles is no simple task. Most obstacles are incredibly hard and testing. Yet, by overcoming them, you will come to understand why they are important. The significance of overcoming obstacles in life is to make you more grounded, courageous, and wise. For me, one of these life-altering obstacles emerged during my undergraduate years.

I had a serious fear of public speaking. There were times where I would struggle with presentations and in-class discussions. When these sessions would take place, my fear built up in a pressure cooker of discouragement and convulsive anguish. I felt humiliated before my teachers, partners, and most of all, my close friends. I soon realized, however, that the same people who seemed to be the source of my fear became my lifeline, their inspirational words filling my mind and heart with positive thoughts.

Seeing my struggles, my peers tried to build me up, to increase my confidence in myself and convince me that anything, including overcoming my fear of public speaking, could be accomplished with enough enthusiasm and belief in oneself.

The obstacles we face in life can distort how we see ourselves and cripple our ability to face our fears. By facing these conflicts head on, though, we can completely flip their effect on us, transforming them into experiences that strengthen our resilience and push the boundaries of what we think is possible to achieve.

Taking everything into account everything I’ve learned from this experience and many others like it that I’ve encountered in my life, it’s clear that obstacles are impossible to avoid, and when you do encounter them, you must view them as learning opportunities. You might just surprise yourself at how easily you overcome them.

This post was written by Duke TIP’s outgoing Marketing & Communications intern, Christina Gordon. Christina graduated from North Carolina Central University in the spring of 2020.

About Duke TIP

The Duke University Talent Identification Program (Duke TIP) is a nonprofit organization that has served over three million academically talented students in grades 4–12 since it was founded in 1980. Collaborating with educators and parents, TIP helps gifted students assess the extent of their academic abilities with above-grade-level testing, recognizes them for their achievements, and provides them with a variety of enrichment benefits as well as accelerated face-to-face and online educational programs.

Anxiety Disorders and Depression Essay (Critical Writing)

Introduction, description section, feelings section, action plan, reference list.

Human beings become anxious in different situations that are uncertain to them. Depression and anxiety occur at a similar time. Anxiety is caused due to an overwhelming fear of an expected occurrence of an event that is unclear to a person. More than 25 million people globally are affected by anxiety disorders. People feel anxious in moments such as when making important decisions, before facing an interview panel, and before taking tests. Anxiety disorders are normally brained reactions to stress as they alert a person of impending danger. Most people feel sad and low due to disappointments. Feelings normally overwhelm a person leading to depression, especially during sad moments such as losing a loved one or divorce. When people are depressed, they engage in reckless behaviors such as drug abuse that affect them physically and emotionally. However, depression manifests in different forms in both men and women. Research shows that more women are depressed compared to men. This essay reflects on anxiety disorders and depression regarding from a real-life experience extracted from a publication.

“Every year almost 20% of the general population suffers from a common mental disorder, such as depression or an anxiety disorder” (Cuijpers et al. 2016, p.245). I came across a publication by Madison Jo Sieminski available who was diagnosed with depression and anxiety disorders (Madison 2020). She explains how she was first diagnosed with anxiety disorders and depression and how it felt unreal at first. She further says that she developed the need to get a distraction that would keep her busy so that she won’t embrace her situation. In her case, anxiety made her feel that she needed to do more, and everything needed to be perfect.

Madison further said that the struggle with anxiety is that it never seemed to happen, but it happened eventually. She always felt a feeling of darkness and loneliness. She could barely stay awake for more than 30 minutes for many days. Anxiety and depression made her question herself if she was good enough, and this resulted in tears in her eyes due to the burning sensation and overwhelmed emotions. In her own words, she said, “Do I deserve to be here? What is my purpose?” (Madison 2020). Anxiety made her lose confidence in herself and lowered her self-esteem. She could lay in bed most of the time and could not take any meal most of the days.

Madison said that since the sophomore year of high school, all was not well, and she suddenly felt someone in her head telling her to constantly worry and hold back from everything. She could wake up days when she could try a marathon to keep her mind busy. However, she sought help on 1 January 2020, since she felt her mental health was important, and she needed to be strong. She was relieved from her biggest worries, and what she thought was failure turned into a biggest achievement. She realized that her health needed to be her priority. Even after being diagnosed with depression disorders, she wanted to feel normal and have a normal lifestyle like other people.

Madison was happy with her decision to seek medical help even though she had her doubts. She was happy that she finally took that step to see a doctor since she was suffering in silence. She noted that the background of her depression and anxiety disorders was her family. It was kind of genetic since her mom also struggled with depression and anxiety disorders. Her mom was always upset, and this broke her heart. She said it took her years to better herself, but she still had bad days. Madison decided to take the challenge regarding her mother’s experience. Also, Madison said she was struggling to get over depression since her childhood friends committed suicide, and it affected her deeply. She also told the doctor how she often thought of harming herself. The doctor advised her on the different ways she could overcome her situation after discovering she had severe depression and anxiety disorders.

After going through Madison’s story, I was hurt by the fact that he had to go through that for a long time, and something tragic could have happened if she had not resorted to medical help. I felt emotional by the fact that she constantly blamed herself due to her friends who committed suicide, and she decided to accumulate all the pain and worries. The fact that I have heard stories of how people commit suicide due to depression and anxiety disorders made me have a somber mood considering her case. In this case, you will never know what people are going through in their private lives until they decide to open up. We normally assume every person is okay, yet they fight their demons and struggle to look okay. Hence, it won’t cost any person to check up on other people, especially if they suddenly change their social characters.

Madison’s story stood out for me since she had struggled since childhood to deal with depression and anxiety disorders. In her case, she was unable to seek help first even when she knew that she was suffering in silence (Madison 2020). However, most people find it hard to admit they need help regardless of what they are going through, like Madison. People who are depressed cannot work as they lack the motivation to do anything. In my knowledge, depression affects people close to you, including your family and friends. Depression also hurts those who love someone suffering from it. Hence, it is complex to deal with. Madison’s situation stood out for me since her childhood friends committed suicide, and she wished silently she could be with them. Hence, this leads to her constant thoughts of harming herself. Childhood friends at one point can become your family even though you are not related by blood due to the memories you share.

Depression and Anxiety disorders have been common mental health concerns globally for a long time. Depression and anxiety disorders create the impression that social interactions are vague with no meaning. It is argued by Cuijpers (2016, p.245) that people who are depressed normally have personality difficulties as they find it hard to trust people around them, including themselves. In this case, Madison spent most of her time alone, sleeping, and could not find it necessary to hang around other people. Negativity is the order of the day as people depressed find everything around them not interesting.

People who are depressed find it easy to induce negativity in others. Hence, they end up being rejected. Besides, if someone is depressed and is in a relationship, he/she may be the reason for ending the relationship since they would constantly find everything offensive. Research shows that people who are clinically depressed, such as Madison, prefer sad facial expressions to happy facial expressions. Besides, most teenagers in the 21 st century are depressed, and few parents tend to notice that. Also, most teenagers lack parental love and care since their parents are busy with their job routines and have no time to engage their children. Research has shown that suicide is the second cause of death among teenagers aged between 15-24 years due to mental disorders such as suicide and anxiety disorders.

Despite depression being a major concern globally, it can be controlled and contained if specific actions are taken. Any person needs to prioritize their mental health to avoid occurrences of depression and anxiety orders. Emotional responses can be used to gauge if a person is undergoing anxiety and depression. The best efficient way to deal with depression and anxiety is to sensitize people about depression through different media platforms (Cuijpers et al. 2016). A day in a month should be set aside where students in colleges are sensitized on the symptoms of depression and how to cope up with the situation. Some of the basic things to do to avoid anxiety and depression include; talking to someone when you are low, welcoming humor, learning the cause of your anxiety, maintaining a positive attitude, exercising daily, and having enough sleep.

Depression and anxiety disorders are different forms among people, such as irritability and nervousness. Most people are diagnosed with depression as a psychiatric disorder. Technology has been a major catalyst in enabling depression among people as they are exposed to many negative experiences online. Besides, some people are always motivated by actions of other people who seem to have given up due to depression. Many people who develop depression normally have a history of anxiety disorders. Therefore, people with depression need to seek medical attention before they harm themselves or even commit suicide. Also, people need to speak out about what they are going through to either their friends or people they trust. Speaking out enables people to relieve their burden and hence it enhances peace.

Cuijpers, P., Cristea, I.A., Karyotaki, E., Reijnders, M. and Huibers, M.J., 2016. How effective are cognitive behavior therapies for major depression and anxiety disorders? A meta‐analytic update of the evidence . World Psychiatry 15(3), pp. 245-258.

Madison, J. 2020. Open Doors .

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IvyPanda . 2022. "Anxiety Disorders and Depression." June 16, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/anxiety-disorders-and-depression/.

1. IvyPanda . "Anxiety Disorders and Depression." June 16, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/anxiety-disorders-and-depression/.

Bibliography

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Home — Essay Samples — Nursing & Health — Psychiatry & Mental Health — Anxiety

Essays About Anxiety

Anxiety essay topic examples, argumentative essays.

Argumentative essays on anxiety require you to take a stance on a specific aspect of anxiety and provide evidence to support your viewpoint. Consider these topic examples:

• 1. Argue for the importance of mental health education in schools, emphasizing the role it plays in reducing anxiety among students.
• 2. Debate whether the increased use of technology and social media contributes to rising levels of anxiety among young adults, considering the pros and cons of digital connectivity.

Example Introduction Paragraph for an Argumentative Anxiety Essay: Anxiety is a prevalent mental health concern that affects individuals of all ages. In this argumentative essay, we will explore the significance of introducing comprehensive mental health education in schools and its potential to alleviate anxiety among students.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for an Argumentative Anxiety Essay: In conclusion, the argument for incorporating mental health education in schools underscores the need to address anxiety and related issues at an early stage. As we advocate for change, we are reminded of the positive impact such initiatives can have on the well-being of future generations.

Compare and Contrast Essays

Compare and contrast essays on anxiety involve analyzing the similarities and differences between various aspects of anxiety, treatment approaches, or the impact of anxiety on different demographic groups. Consider these topics:

• 1. Compare and contrast the experiences and coping mechanisms of individuals with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and social anxiety disorder (SAD), highlighting their unique challenges and commonalities.
• 2. Analyze the differences and similarities in the prevalence and impact of anxiety among different age groups, such as adolescents and older adults, considering the contributing factors and treatment options.

Example Introduction Paragraph for a Compare and Contrast Anxiety Essay: Anxiety manifests in various forms, affecting individuals differently. In this compare and contrast essay, we will examine the experiences and coping strategies of individuals with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and social anxiety disorder (SAD), shedding light on the distinctions and shared aspects of their conditions.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for a Compare and Contrast Anxiety Essay: In conclusion, the comparison and contrast of GAD and SAD provide valuable insights into the diverse landscape of anxiety disorders. As we deepen our understanding, we can better tailor support and interventions for those grappling with these challenges.

Descriptive Essays

Descriptive essays on anxiety allow you to provide a detailed account of anxiety-related experiences, the impact of anxiety on daily life, or the portrayal of anxiety in literature and media. Here are some topic ideas:

• 1. Describe a personal experience of overcoming a major anxiety-related obstacle or fear, highlighting the emotions and strategies involved in the process.
• 2. Analyze the portrayal of anxiety and mental health in a specific novel, movie, or television series, discussing its accuracy and the messages it conveys to the audience.

Example Introduction Paragraph for a Descriptive Anxiety Essay: Anxiety can be a formidable adversary, but it is also a source of resilience and personal growth. In this descriptive essay, I will recount a deeply personal journey of overcoming a significant anxiety-related challenge, shedding light on the emotions and strategies that guided me along the way.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for a Descriptive Anxiety Essay: In conclusion, my personal narrative of conquering anxiety illustrates the transformative power of resilience and determination. As we share our stories, we inspire others to confront their fears and embrace the path to recovery.

Persuasive Essays

Persuasive essays on anxiety involve advocating for specific actions, policies, or changes related to anxiety awareness, treatment accessibility, or destigmatization. Consider these persuasive topics:

• 1. Persuade your audience of the importance of increasing mental health resources on college campuses, emphasizing the positive impact on students' well-being and academic performance.
• 2. Advocate for the destigmatization of anxiety and other mental health conditions in society, highlighting the role of media, education, and public discourse in reducing stereotypes and discrimination.

Example Introduction Paragraph for a Persuasive Anxiety Essay: Anxiety affects millions of individuals, yet stigma and limited resources often hinder access to necessary support. In this persuasive essay, I will make a compelling case for the expansion of mental health services on college campuses, emphasizing the benefits to students' overall well-being and academic success.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for a Persuasive Anxiety Essay: In conclusion, the persuasive argument for increased mental health resources on college campuses highlights the urgent need to prioritize students' mental well-being. As we advocate for these changes, we contribute to a more inclusive and supportive educational environment.

Narrative Essays

Narrative essays on anxiety allow you to share personal stories, experiences, or perspectives related to anxiety, your journey to understanding and managing it, or the impact of anxiety on your life. Explore these narrative essay topics:

• 1. Narrate a personal experience of a panic attack, describing the physical and emotional sensations, the circumstances, and the steps taken to cope and recover.
• 2. Share a story of your journey toward self-acceptance and resilience in the face of anxiety, emphasizing the strategies and support systems that have helped you navigate this mental health challenge.

Example Introduction Paragraph for a Narrative Anxiety Essay: Anxiety is a deeply personal experience that can profoundly impact one's life. In this narrative essay, I will take you through a vivid account of a panic attack I experienced, offering insights into the physical and emotional aspects of this anxiety-related event.

Example Conclusion Paragraph for a Narrative Anxiety Essay: In conclusion, the narrative of my panic attack experience underscores the importance of self-awareness and coping strategies in managing anxiety. As we share our stories, we foster understanding and support for those facing similar challenges.

Pros and Cons of Anxiety

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The Issue of Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Cognitive behavioral theory application for anxiety disorder, the problem of social anxiety disorders of teenagers, anxiety disorder among children and ways to prevent it, research of social anxiety disorder: symptoms, causes, effects and treatments, what is generalized anxiety disorder (gad) and its treatment, anxiety, its development, effects, and treatments, how to overcome depression and anxiety, the importance of managing stress and anxiety in early age, potential causes of anxiety disorders, the problem of public speaking anxiety, the way teachers can help their students to overcome anxiety and depression, fear and anxiety in our lives and how to deal with it, the effectiveness of cognitive behavioural therapy (cbt) for treating individuals with depression and anxiety, reflection on how i fought my social anxiety with the help of family, the power of following your fear and anxiety, social anxiety disorder and its impacts on the lives of the americans, types and causes of social anxiety disorder, research of anxiety increasing in the united states, distress and demoralozation of nurses as a source of anxiety and job seniority.

Anxiety is a psychological and physiological response characterized by feelings of apprehension, fear, and unease. It is a natural human reaction to perceived threats or stressors, triggering a heightened state of arousal and activating the body's fight-or-flight response.

Excessive worrying: Individuals with anxiety often experience persistent and intrusive thoughts, excessive worrying, and an inability to control their anxious thoughts. Physical symptoms: Anxiety can manifest physically, leading to symptoms such as increased heart rate, rapid breathing, sweating, trembling, muscle tension, headaches, and gastrointestinal disturbances. Restlessness and irritability: Anxiety can cause a sense of restlessness and irritability, making it difficult for individuals to relax or concentrate on tasks. Sleep disruptions: Anxiety has the potential to interfere with sleep patterns, resulting in challenges when trying to initiate sleep, maintain it, or achieve a restorative sleep. Consequently, this can exacerbate feelings of fatigue and weariness. Avoidance behaviors: People with anxiety may engage in avoidance behaviors, such as avoiding certain situations or places that trigger their anxiety. This can restrict their daily activities and limit their quality of life.

Genetic predisposition: Research suggests that individuals with a family history of anxiety disorders may have a higher likelihood of developing anxiety themselves. Certain genetic variations and inherited traits can increase susceptibility to anxiety. Brain chemistry: Imbalances in neurotransmitters, such as serotonin, dopamine, and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), are thought to play a role in anxiety disorders. These chemical imbalances can affect the regulation of mood, emotions, and stress responses. Environmental factors: Traumatic life events, such as abuse, loss, or significant life changes, can trigger or exacerbate anxiety. Chronic stress, work pressure, and relationship difficulties can also contribute to the development of anxiety. Personality traits: Certain personality traits, such as being prone to perfectionism, having a negative outlook, or being highly self-critical, may increase the risk of developing anxiety disorders. Medical conditions: Certain medical conditions, such as thyroid disorders, cardiovascular issues, and respiratory problems, can be associated with anxiety symptoms.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD): GAD is marked by excessive and uncontrollable worry about various aspects of life, including work, health, and everyday situations. Individuals with GAD often experience physical symptoms like restlessness, fatigue, muscle tension, and difficulty concentrating. Panic Disorder: Panic disorder involves recurrent and unexpected panic attacks, which are intense episodes of fear accompanied by physical symptoms like rapid heart rate, shortness of breath, chest pain, and dizziness. People with panic disorder often worry about future panic attacks and may develop agoraphobia, avoiding places or situations that they fear might trigger an attack. Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD): SAD is characterized by an intense fear of social situations and a persistent worry about being embarrassed, judged, or humiliated. People with SAD may experience extreme self-consciousness, avoidance of social interactions, and physical symptoms like blushing, trembling, or sweating. Specific Phobias: Common examples include phobias of heights, spiders, flying, or enclosed spaces. Exposure to the feared object or situation can trigger severe anxiety symptoms. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD): OCD is characterized by intrusive and unwanted thoughts (obsessions) that lead to repetitive behaviors or mental acts (compulsions) aimed at reducing anxiety. Common obsessions include fears of contamination, doubts, and a need for symmetry, while common compulsions include excessive cleaning, checking, and arranging.

The treatment of anxiety typically involves a multi-faceted approach aimed at addressing the individual's specific needs. One common form of treatment is psychotherapy, which involves talking with a trained therapist to explore the underlying causes of anxiety and develop coping strategies. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is often employed to challenge negative thought patterns and behaviors associated with anxiety. In some cases, anti-anxiety medications, such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) or benzodiazepines, may be prescribed by a healthcare professional. These medications work to alleviate the intensity of anxiety symptoms and promote a sense of calm. Additionally, lifestyle modifications can play a significant role in anxiety management. Regular exercise, stress-reduction techniques like meditation or yoga, and maintaining a balanced diet can contribute to overall well-being and help alleviate anxiety symptoms.

1. Anxiety disorders are highly prevalent mental health conditions that affect a substantial number of individuals worldwide, impacting approximately 284 million people globally. 2. Research indicates that women have a higher likelihood of being diagnosed with anxiety disorders compared to men. Studies reveal that women are twice as likely to experience anxiety, with this gender difference emerging during adolescence and persisting into adulthood. 3. Anxiety disorders often coexist with other mental health issues. Extensive research has demonstrated a strong correlation between anxiety disorders and comorbidities such as depression, substance abuse, and eating disorders. These co-occurring conditions can significantly impact an individual's well-being and require comprehensive and integrated approaches to treatment.

Anxiety is an important topic to explore in an essay due to its widespread impact on individuals and society as a whole. Understanding and addressing anxiety is crucial for several reasons. Firstly, anxiety disorders are highly prevalent, affecting a significant portion of the population globally. This prevalence highlights the need for increased awareness, accurate information, and effective strategies for prevention and treatment. Secondly, anxiety can have profound effects on individuals' mental, emotional, and physical well-being. It can impair daily functioning, hinder relationships, and limit personal growth. By delving into this topic, one can examine the various factors contributing to anxiety, its symptoms, and the potential consequences on individuals' lives. Additionally, exploring anxiety can shed light on the complex interplay between biological, psychological, and social factors that contribute to its development and maintenance. This understanding can inform the development of targeted interventions and support systems for individuals experiencing anxiety.

1. Bandelow, B., & Michaelis, S. (2015). Epidemiology of anxiety disorders in the 21st century. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 17(3), 327-335. 2. Kessler, R. C., et al. (2005). Lifetime prevalence and age-of-onset distributions of anxiety disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Archives of General Psychiatry, 62(6), 593-602. 3. National Institute of Mental Health. (2018). Anxiety disorders. Retrieved from https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/anxiety-disorders/ 4. American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing. 5. Craske, M. G., et al. (2017). Anxiety disorders. Nature Reviews Disease Primers, 3(1), 17024. 6. Hofmann, S. G., et al. (2012). The efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy: A review of meta-analyses. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 36(5), 427-440. 7. Roy-Byrne, P. P., et al. (2010). Treating generalized anxiety disorder with second-generation antidepressants: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 71(3), 306-317. 8. Etkin, A., et al. (2015). A cognitive-emotional biomarker for predicting remission with antidepressant medications: A report from the iSPOT-D trial. JAMA Psychiatry, 72(1), 14-22. 9. Heimberg, R. G., et al. (2014). Cognitive-behavioral therapy, imipramine, or their combination for panic disorder: A randomized controlled trial. JAMA, 293(23), 2884-2893. 10. Hofmann, S. G., et al. (2013). Efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy for social anxiety disorder: A meta-analysis. Psychological Medicine, 43(05), 897-910.

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Your Life Experiences May Have Contributed to Health Anxiety

How dysfunctional core beliefs about health develop and are reinforced over time..

Updated April 9, 2024 | Reviewed by Ray Parker

• What Is Anxiety?
• Find a therapist to overcome anxiety
• Significant life experiences can contribute to the development and maintenance of health anxiety over time.
• Life experiences might include experiencing trauma or adversity, such as witnessing or experiencing illness.
• Core beliefs are deeply held beliefs formed through significant events and continually reinforced.
• Health anxiety is associated with several dysfunctional beliefs about health and illness.

Core beliefs are deeply ingrained beliefs we hold about ourselves, others, the future, and the world. They develop early in life through significant experiences. Core beliefs play a powerful role in how we process information. Once they develop and are set in motion, core beliefs are continuously reinforced throughout the rest of childhood and into adulthood. This is because we selectively attend to information that confirms our beliefs and ignore or dismiss information that does not support them. Due to these processes, our core beliefs only get stronger over time.

How My Life Experiences Led to Maladaptive Beliefs

I am a therapist and treat health anxiety with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). But I also have a long personal history of dealing with health anxiety myself. Thanks to CBT, I am in a much different place today. I've been grateful to be able to help my clients work through similar issues that I have dealt with myself.

That said, let’s take a peek into my own history in the hopes that it might shed some light on how significant events in our lives can shape how we see the world.

For most of my childhood, things were pretty unstable. My father was abusive with substance use disorders: alcohol and meth. One day, when I was 7, my mom and little brother picked me up from school early, and we took off, forever leaving behind my father and the home we shared with him. This marked a positive change in our lives in many ways, but it was not without its challenges. We were hurt and broke, and my mom started getting terrible migraines , which only worsened over the years. Despite countless doctor visits, tests, and medical bills, we were left without an identifiable cause or effective treatment options. When I was 16, my mom died from an overdose of her pain medication .

These experiences as a child led me to develop maladaptive beliefs at a very young age, such as:

• The world is unsafe and unpredictable
• Serious disease is everywhere and unavoidable
• The field of medicine is incapable of treating diseases
• I am weak and vulnerable to disease
• Uncertainty about health is dangerous and unacceptable

Not surprisingly, anxiety kicked in around the first or second grade. While my friends at school seemed to be concerned about "normal" things like whether they were going to be able to play outside or have ice cream, I was crying about nuclear bombs and whether my mom was gonna die in a car crash on the way home from work. In general, I felt unsafe and expected the worst most of the time.

And then, around 9 or 10, the health anxiety came for me. I began to believe that serious diseases were extremely common and that those who weren’t plagued with a debilitating illness were among the lucky few. After all, if my only remaining parent is sick, then so many others out there must be experiencing something similar.

As I moved into my teenage years, and especially after my mom died, I began to assume that if someone is sick, then it is likely to be very serious and eventually terminal. Besides migraines, my mom had everything else going for her in the health department: she was young, took care of herself, had good genes , and followed all of the doctor’s orders. Yet, she still died. So, I concluded that if one is diagnosed with anything, they are as good as dead.

Core Beliefs Are Reinforced for Years

Once these health-related beliefs were solidified, then the process of reinforcement began. Essentially, I would scan my environment and selectively attend to all the pieces of “evidence” that supported my belief system.

• I paid special attention to situations when one of our relatives got sick or when I learned that a friend’s family member was sick or dying.
• I read all about various diseases in medical texts.
• I was overly focused in health class and became especially interested in the most deadly diseases we covered.
• I watched as many tragic movies and TV shows about the sick and dying as I could get my hands on.

I was so busy seeking out sickness and death that I failed to acknowledge that, aside from my mom, everyone in my life was pretty healthy and, well, alive.

Of course, these beliefs just progressively strengthened over the years. How could they not? In the world I had created for myself through all these activities, everyone was sick and dying. I remember, at one point as a teenager , thinking about how lucky I was that I had escaped sickness and death. I laugh at that now. Here I was, a young person with virtually no health issues, and I believed that my survival was some kind of miracle. It demonstrates just how biased and inaccurate my thinking had become through this whole process.

Your Homework

Your own life experiences that contributed to your health anxiety may not be as obvious or cliche as mine. But I am guessing if you did some digging, you’d find some situations or events that have significantly impacted you. Your health anxiety is likely the culmination of a variety of experiences. It can be helpful to understand what triggered the development of inaccurate beliefs. Still, it is much more important to identify what your beliefs are and how they have been (and are currently being) reinforced in your life. I'd like you to try to look at your own life through this lens and see what you find.

Consider the following questions:

• What significant events happened in your life? Did you or someone you love struggle with illness and/or die? Did you experience any adverse or traumatic events? Did it seem as though you were living in an unsafe and unpredictable world?
• How did these events shape your beliefs about health and illness? Grab my guide for a description of unhelpful core beliefs about health. Do you think any of these beliefs were influenced by the things that happened in your life?
• How were these beliefs then further reinforced/strengthened over time? Can you think of examples like those that I gave in terms of how I sought out information that supported these beliefs?

Remember, beliefs are not permanent. They can be reshaped. Doing so involves retraining or rewiring your brain to learn how to process information differently. You first learn how to identify all of the pieces of “evidence” that you think support your maladaptive belief. You then take the opportunity to reframe some of these pieces of evidence and challenge any inaccurate assumptions. Next, you want to develop a new, healthier, and more adaptive belief about health and begin to seek out evidence for that new belief.

Put some thought into this exercise. Gaining new insight can serve a positive purpose.

Brittney Chesworth, Ph.D., LCSW , is a psychotherapist with a private practice that focuses exclusively on the treatment of anxiety disorders through cognitive behavioral therapy and exposure therapy.

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This Is How I Finally Got Ahold of My Anxiety — and How You Can Do the Same

Updated on 6/24/2018 at 4:45 PM

I was always a very nervous, worried child. I constantly made sure the door was locked and the house alarm was on before I went to sleep, I didn't like crowded areas, and I was afraid of pretty much everything.

I was born and raised in New York, and I remember that after the 9/11 attacks my parents were so nervous about how I was reacting , they got me a dog. (Therapy animals are real, people.) They hoped that having a responsibility and companionship would help with my feelings toward the attack.

As I got older, the nerves got worse, and in turn, my worries would turn into anger. I developed a temper and was just constantly out of sorts. I always felt like I had a weight on my chest, would start to cry out of nowhere, and couldn't explain why I was always so nervous.

When I got to my freshman year of college, this was a feeling I couldn't take any longer. I went to the school counseling center and spoke to someone who put a name to this horrible feeling.

I finally had a name for what I was facing.

Anxiety is defined as "a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome." However, as most people with anxiety understand and experience, you can live with anxiety every day even when you don't have an event or something with an uncertain outcome. Anxiety can hit you without any warning, and it can last even well past the expiration date.

It wasn't until after college graduation that my struggle with anxiety was suddenly heightened and I knew it was not normal. It wasn't just the nerves before giving a presentation in front of the class, or even going on my first real job interview — the anxiety I was living with was like a black cloud hanging over my head as I awoke each day and went to sleep each night.

There were days when I couldn't breathe, when I couldn't get out of bed or even log onto a computer. I called out of work sick because the thought of trying to muster up the courage to get on an overcrowded train was daunting. What was the reason for this?

There didn't have to be a reason. That's the issue with anxiety disorders; sometimes you just don't know why you're anxious or why you're feeling the way you are. Even when you know there is nothing to worry about, even when your mind is clear, sometimes the physical symptoms of your anxiety are there and are the hardest to get through.

My anxiety was affecting how I lived my life, and it was creating a problem. I knew I had to take charge somehow because the anxiety wasn't going to just go away. Just as it helped in college, I knew going back to therapy was the first step to taking control of my life. I loved my therapist, a sweet middle-aged woman who understood everything I was feeling. We talked through my childhood, my college years, and everything in between. We talked through my anxious feelings and she helped me understand why I was experiencing such heightened anxiety.

I'm a control freak and like to only do things where I can be in control of the outcome. If I'm presented with something where there is a unknown, that's what really sparks the anxiety. Once I understood more about what triggered me, I was able to control my thoughts and give myself a pep talk. However, even with all the progress I made with therapy, it wasn't enough. My daily anxiety was still there and I knew deep down that I had to get medical help for this.

I was 22 years old and dealing with a debilitating anxiety disorder. I spoke to my normal physician and told her everything I was experiencing, and she was shocked that it had taken me this long to come to her. She said something that has stuck with me to this day.

"No one deserves to live like this. You're only 22 and you have a long, beautiful life ahead of you."

I was put on anxiety medication before my 23rd birthday and I have never looked back. Within a few weeks, my life was different. I felt clear minded, in control, and like a new person. It was the most incredible feeling, to be calm and not anxious on a daily basis. At the times when there was something to worry about, I didn't have the overwhelming, physical symptoms. I was able to clearly think about the issue at hand and deal with it. It was very refreshing to breathe and not have the black cloud hanging over my head.

When it comes to anxiety and mental health, it's important to recognize what you're dealing with and handle it how best for YOU. Whether that is yoga, meditation, or another hobby; maybe those things aren't working for you and you have to go see a therapist or maybe you're like me and need medication. Whatever it is, do it, because no one deserves to live trapped inside their own mind. You can beat anxiety, just figure out what works for you.

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College Essay: Overcoming Social Anxiety

“William, you’re up first,” the teacher said excitedly. 

I was instantly anxious when my ninth-grade English teacher announced I would be the first person presenting. As I walked to the front of the classroom, I was fidgeting and could feel  my face turning red. My classmates’ eyes followed me, looking like they were planning something. I started by introducing the title of the poem I was going to recite. I included some hand gestures and facial expressions while reciting the poem to make it better and less awkward, but I was still stiff. I felt like I did a solid job of engaging the audience and helping them understand the poem. People started applauding for me because they didn’t expect me to be that good because I was a shy dude. I finished by making some personal connections to the poem I chose. I went back to my seat, my face feeling hot because of how red I was. A classmate who sat next to me told me I did an outstanding job. This compliment really made my day because I thought I did OK.  This experience was the moment I realized I had some hope of overcoming my social anxiety. At the end of the presentation I felt like it wasn’t that bad, and I overcame something that was always with me throughout middle school. Now, it could change.

Social anxiety has especially affected me during middle school. I probably first realized I had social anxiety when I had to present in front of the class in seventh grade; I felt a little weird as soon as my classmates’  eyes were on me. In the middle of my presentation, I started crying because my teacher insisted I continue after pausing multiple times because of my nervousness. Since I refused to present in front of the class again, my grade was an automatic zero. 

I finally overcame my social anxiety after joining a program called Minnesota Business Venture, which was recommended by the college counselors. I signed up for it because it was going to help me feel and live a little bit of that college experience at St. Thomas by staying in dorms and learning on campus for a whole week. This program helped with my social anxiety significantly because I was able to see new faces and meet really kind people. Being in an inclusive environment allowed me to express myself better, without being judged or teased. I realized I have had some friends in the past who made me feel like I was kinda worthless. But since my peers from the St.Thomas program helped me and complimented me on my work. I felt like I had worth and confidence in expressing myself.

I noticed how having this social anxiety and awkwardness had really taken a toll on me and prevented me from making friends and feeling comfortable talking. I feel confident now that I’m opening up more. When it’s time to start college, I will be facing many obstacles, but I feel like I just took my biggest obstacle away. Joining a new university will help me start fresh. As I’m becoming  friends with the right people, I will be able to feel more comfortable because I know I am able to socialize with strangers. 

Through this program, an experience of meeting new people, I felt relieved and free. I interacted with random people and made new friends. Now, when I am connecting and collaborating with my classmates, teachers and relatives I am confident, feeling like I’m a new and improved person. What I learned is how putting yourself out there not only reduces your shyness; everyone can go far if they push themselves out of their comfort zone.

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Essay on Anxiety

Students are often asked to write an essay on Anxiety in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Anxiety

Understanding anxiety.

Anxiety is a normal emotion that everyone experiences. It’s like an alarm system in our bodies that alerts us to danger. But sometimes, this system can overreact, causing unnecessary worry and fear.

Types of Anxiety

There are several types of anxiety. Generalized Anxiety Disorder involves constant worry. Panic Disorder causes sudden fear, while Social Anxiety Disorder is fear of social situations.

Causes of Anxiety

Anxiety can be caused by stress, trauma, or certain medical conditions. It can also be genetic, meaning it runs in families.

Dealing with Anxiety

Anxiety can be managed with therapy, medication, and self-care practices like exercise and relaxation techniques.

Also check:

• Speech on Anxiety

250 Words Essay on Anxiety

Anxiety, a common human emotion, is characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts, and physical changes such as increased blood pressure. It is an adaptive response that can be beneficial in situations that require heightened alertness or caution. However, when anxiety becomes chronic, it can be debilitating.

The Science Behind Anxiety

Anxiety is a product of the brain’s complex biochemical processes. The amygdala, a small, almond-shaped structure in the brain, plays a key role in processing emotions, including fear. When a threat is perceived, the amygdala triggers a series of reactions, including the release of adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones prepare the body for a ‘fight or flight’ response, which can manifest as feelings of anxiety.

Anxiety Disorders

When anxiety becomes persistent and interferes with daily life, it is classified as an anxiety disorder. These disorders, which include Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, and Social Anxiety Disorder, are among the most common mental health conditions. They are often treated with a combination of psychotherapy and medication.

The Impact of Anxiety on Society

Anxiety disorders can have a profound impact on individuals and society. They can lead to reduced productivity, increased healthcare costs, and a lower quality of life. Furthermore, they can exacerbate other health conditions, such as heart disease and depression.

Understanding anxiety, its causes, and its impact is crucial for effective treatment and prevention. As we continue to explore the complexities of the human brain, we can hope to develop even more effective strategies for managing this common but often misunderstood condition.

500 Words Essay on Anxiety

Anxiety, a ubiquitous and complex phenomenon, is an integral part of the human experience. It is a psychological and physiological state characterized by cognitive, somatic, emotional, and behavioral components. These elements combine to create feelings of fear, unease, and worry, often coupled with physical sensations such as palpitations, chest pain, and shortness of breath.

The Science of Anxiety

From a biological perspective, anxiety is closely linked to the body’s fight-or-flight response, an evolutionary adaptation designed to protect us from threats. When faced with danger, the body releases chemicals like adrenaline and cortisol, preparing us for immediate action. However, when this response is triggered excessively or inappropriately, it can result in anxiety disorders.

Neurologically, anxiety is associated with hyperactivity in the amygdala, the brain’s fear-processing center. This overactivity can lead to a constant state of alertness, resulting in chronic anxiety. Additionally, imbalances in neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine can contribute to anxiety disorders.

Anxiety disorders, a group of mental health conditions, are characterized by excessive and persistent worry, fear, and anxiety that interfere with daily activities. They include generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, specific phobias, and others. These disorders are often debilitating, leading to a significant reduction in quality of life.

Treatment and Management

Treatment for anxiety disorders typically involves a combination of psychotherapy, behavioral therapies, and medication. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is particularly effective, helping individuals identify and change thought patterns that lead to anxiety. Medications, such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and benzodiazepines, can help manage symptoms.

Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and other forms of meditation can also be beneficial. These practices help individuals focus their attention on the present moment, reducing the impact of anxiety-provoking thoughts.

While anxiety is a natural part of life, it becomes a problem when it interferes with daily functioning. Understanding the biological underpinnings and psychological aspects of anxiety is crucial for effective treatment. By addressing these factors and implementing appropriate therapeutic strategies, individuals suffering from anxiety disorders can regain control over their lives and live with less fear and worry.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

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I got addicted to painkillers after a difficult childbirth. Years later, I'm finally sober.

• Mom-of-three Alex Gardella led a privileged life in Manhattan.
• She became seriously ill with a retained placenta and needed surgery after her last baby.
• Addicted to painkillers, she spent $1,400 a week on pills. She finally got sober after one relapse.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Alex Gardella. It has been edited for length and clarity.

My drug dealer would hide the painkillers between the pages of Vanity Fair , one of my favorite magazines, and slip it into an envelope from USPS . Then he'd drop off the package and leave it with the doorman of my building in Manhattan . I'd tell the doorman to send it up in the elevator, where I'd pick it up.

Minutes later, I'd frantically chop one of the pills with a credit card. I'd snort the powdered Oxycontin through a rolled-up bill.

My problem began in 2020 after complications from a C-section. I bled very heavily after I left the hospital, and things didn't seem right. A week later, my medical team discovered that I had retained some placenta and a piece of sponge from the surgery. I was at risk of a life-threatening infection and needed emergency surgery.

The operation was successful. When I woke up, one of the first things my doctor said was, "Where do we need to send your prescription for Oxycontin?"

My condition was serious enough to warrant strong painkillers and became habit-forming. My opioid addiction lasted more than two years.

Painkillers got rid of my discomfort postpartum and helped ease my anxiety

In the early days, the drug both minimized my physical discomfort and boosted my mood. "You got this," I thought about juggling my family and real-estate agent career.

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However, the prescription ran out after about a month. I was overcome with anxiety. I'd wake up terrified that the baby had died of SIDS. I'd visualize scary things happening to his twin siblings, then 3, like falling out of a window.

For better or worse, I could afford the drug

I self-medicated with alcohol . But it was a Band-Aid. I craved the high I got from Oxycontin — despite the high mortality rates of overdose — and was determined to get it. I knew that the doctors wouldn't prescribe me more, and the simplest route was buying them from the street.

In 2021, I ran into a friend of a friend who put me in touch with their supplier. The tablets cost $30 each, and I'd take six or seven a day. I was in a fortunate — or unfortunate — position to afford them. Nobody suspected.

My husband was more worried than angry when he realized I was abusing prescription drugs

Some days, I'd be sociable and charismatic, especially when showing apartments to prospective buyers. On other days, I'd retreat to my room, leaving my nannies to deal with the kids. One nanny watched them during the day, another in the evening.

We went on vacation with family and friends. I'd make excuses not to go to the beach with them. "I need to stay at home to wash and dry the towels," I'd say before chopping another pill.

Things came to a head a month later when my husband walked in on me and saw me snorting the drug. He was more worried than angry. "I'm disappointed you don't love yourself as much as I love you," he said. If anybody believes in my potential, it's my husband.

He believed me when I said I'd quit on my own. But, of course, I didn't. I became much less inclined after being diagnosed in 2022 with liposarcoma — a cancerous tumor on my abdomen. After it was removed, I relied on a fentanyl drip for pain relief.

A month later, I confided in my psychiatrist about my need to escape reality. She sprang to help. I was given Naltrexone, which reduces opioid cravings. However, if you still have them in your system, it can cause precipitated withdrawal. But I thought I was invincible and took Naltrexone too soon after a fix. I called 911 within three minutes of ingesting the medication.

I detoxed in the ER for four days and attended outpatient rehab for eight months. Almost as soon as I left treatment, I relapsed into drugs.

I overdosed after snorting from a batch laced with street fentanyl. One minute, I was in the back of an Uber returning home from a lunch with a friend. The next I was in an ambulance on the way to the ER again. I reached rock bottom.

At last, I am present for my family

I got sober in February 2023 with the help of Vivitrol , an injectable form of extended-release Naltrexone. Unlike the pill version, there's no option to miss doses deliberately, so you can start taking opioids again. I receive my shot every 21 days. It's changed my life. I no longer have cravings for either opioids or alcohol.

Now, at 36, I'm fully present for my family. We go on adventures together, playing soccer, going to camp, and hanging out at the beach. I no longer hide in the vacation house. I jump the waves with my kids and eat ice cream.

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