dear white people

romanticization: anxiety pt. 2

Dear everybody,

why does everybody want anxiety? Why does everybody all of the sudden have anxiety? Why does everybody put a nervous sense and the mental illness anxiety hand-in-hand? Why does everybody believe having anxiety will magically make a prince charming appear to save them from some deep hardship and they will ride away in the sunset together? Why?

I've got news for you: there is no prince charming. At the end of the day, you will be the one saving yourself. Can we stop romanticizing anxiety now, please?

I feel like everywhere I go on the social media, a twitter name, wattpad name, tumblr, or instagram name will have anxiety in there somewhere. And I for one, am ultimately confused as to why an illness as harsh as anxiety would want to be publicized, and for two can't grasp the simple fact that it is so glorified.

Let me tell you a little bit about anxiety, because friends, it's not cute. Anxiety is not just a nervous feeling that you get when your crush comes near you, it's not just being called out in class, and it's definitely not a butterfly sensation.

If you are reading this and have not been diagnosed with anxiety, from somebody who has, let me explain to you what it is and compare. Your nervous system acts up correctly and as it should, it works. Being nervous is quite uncomfortable and nobody wants to feel that way. A person with anxiety triggers and stimulates parts of their nervous system that causes panic attacks, stuttering, sweating, head tremors, fast heart-rate, overthinking, chest and stomach pain, all around physical pain, and much more symptoms. The nervous system basically attacks itself, and you are left feeling quite hopeless because it feels impossible to calm yourself down. This is not a person feeling nervous, which feeling just nervous is normal; but this is something mentally wrong with yourself. Your nervous system acts up when you're in an awkward or hard situation, and a person with anxiety does the same thing but times 100. Why would something that evidently leads you into feeling such a worthless state of mind so over-glorified? Why?

Your argument could be, "but it's being normalized which is a good thing." But the way we are doing it is wrong, so that argument is invalid. We want to have anxiety for some odd reason that I'll never understand, ever, and we want to be mentally ill and suffer. It's not something we've just came up with ourselves, it's everywhere! Fanfictions is one of the biggest areas that romanticize and glorify anxiety and other mental illnesses. Wattpad is hard for me to get on because of this. It genuinely offends me when I see a story entitled "anxiety" or "bipolar disorder". My immediate thought is to comment and message the author to get it taken down, but there's so many of them that at this point there's not much I can do.

Please, stop portraying anxiety wrong. Please stop faking it, too. Stop turning it into a belief that it's butterflies around your crush or that because you don't like going to school you're socially anxious. It's not always the case and I don't believe anxiety is as common as our society makes it out to be. Somehow everybody has anxiety, and I don't believe it because anxiety is explained wrong. If we fully understood what happens to a person with anxiety and respected it, maybe all of the sudden nobody would have it. Same goes for depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, OCD, PTSD, anorexia, and bulimia. There's many more mental illnesses, but these ones specifically are the ones our society knows and loves. Sick, right?

If you think you have anxiety, please seek real help. If not properly treated, it will get worse and will be harder to cope with. I'm encouraging everyone who could believe they have anxiety to get it taken care of because it's not fun. It's an extremely hard illness to cope with, but once learned the right coping mechanisms and skills it is manageable and I hope all my readers that suffer from it can truly learn to overcome anxiety or anything else they're suffering from.

But please, stop with the bullshit. I'm tired of it. Not every single person on wattpad suffers from anxiety. It's definitely not as prevalent as we think because of how many people claim to suffer from it.

(remember that anxiety is not just a nervous feeling!!)

If you need help or something to talk to, I'm always here. I'm always a person you can talk to, and because of personal experiences I've educated myself on quite a few mental illnesses, so I understand. I don't want any of you to believe nobody cares or that nobody will understand because that's entirely untrue. I am here for you guys. You're not alone, ever.

this might seem like a lil self promo but i'll leave my social media down below for anybody who wants to or needs to talk. even if you just wanna be friends:) but some people prefer kik or insta dm over wattpad, and i'm one of them tbh.

kik: j666de
instagram: j.x.d.e
snapchat: jade_yeahbuddy