When Anxiety Keeps You From Living Your Life
It’s a debilitating feeling, like there isn’t anything I can do to stop it. That great old feeling — anxiety.
It feels like spoiled nerves in the pit of my stomach over something that isn’t happening. It’s anticipation for something that’s not coming. It’s nervous energy when there isn’t anything to be nervous about. And the worst part is when it’s really bad, I can’t even function.
It keeps me in bed all day because the thought of doing anything makes the butterflies in my stomach flutter so hard it hurts. It makes me stare at my computer screen, empty-headed, unable to accomplish a single thing on my ever-growing to-do list. And then as things start to pile up, I get more nervous over the things I can’t do because I’m letting the work load grow.
It keeps me home from friends and activities I love because of fear of what may happen there, even if there is nothing specific to be afraid of. It makes me do weird things to try to relieve the dull pain in my stomach. It makes me call in sick to work because the thought of work actually makes me sick.
It makes me shake because I’m so full of anxious energy. It makes my mind race with thoughts of everything and nothing at the same time. It makes eating a chore, and makes chores impossible.
Anxiety is sickeningly painful. And when it gets in the way of ordinary life, that is when it is the most painful.
Unsplash photo via Hisu Lee
Brian is a proud Super Contributor for The Mighty, writing stories and articles about mental health/illness and physical/chronic illness. He graduated in 2021 with a BS in Neuroscience from American University in Washington D.C. and was driven by his passion for mental illness research during his undergraduate studies. Brian is now a first-year seminarian at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington D.C. pursuing to become an ordained pastor. He hopes to be a bridge between the science of mental and physical illnesses, personal experience, and spirituality to ultimately help people on their own journeys. In his downtime, Brian is a freelance portrait photographer and enjoys studying the intersections of science and philosophy.
brian-fu