What is my life???

Mental Health

Not much has gone on in my life recently but I've been wanting to do this for a while.
For as long as I can remember, I have worried a lot about something or another. I feared to talk to adults, strangers, and authority figures. In school, I feared that I would do something wrong. Phone calls scared the crap out of me. Fear has been a constant in my life. I thought it was normal to fear such mundane things, after all, it is all I have ever known.

When I was little, I would smile and hide behind my mom's legs everytime an adult tried talking to me. We all assumed it was a typical case of shyness. And my siblings and parents would talk for me. Take my orders, talk to adults, or even ask someone to get me things. Eventually, when I was told to do these things on my own, I felt dread. My chest felt like it had a hole in it that held a ball of fear and dread. So I whined and complained to try to make someone do it for me, which worked a lot of the time.

School has been a big struggle. I learned very quickly that people make fun of others mistakes. And that terrified me. Also, it seemed that it's bad to make mistakes and if you do, you are dumb. Which is utter bullshit.  But being told to, "avoid mistakes," and, "if possible do it right the first time," sounds like, "don't make mistakes," to me. So when doing homework I would freak out if I didn't know how to do things. I would repeat the same method over and over again. After a few tries, I get a little bit of nausea. When it still wouldn't work I would start getting angry with that ball feeling in my chest. Along with that, it felt like a slow-moving sludge replaced the blood in my veins, which normally only happens is my forearms, sometimes calves. This causes me to either rub my arms to make the feeling to go away or to tense up my hands and repeatedly put my hands into fists. If I still don't know how to do it I end up crying and put myself down.

It's always been a struggle. I just thought that I was just a shy over thinker. And as I got older, the less manageable it was. My 8th grade year I woke up nauseous. I tried so hard to convince my mom to let me stay home for a day. But she wouldn't budge, so long as I didn't throw up or have a fever. It got to the point where I was wishing sickness on myself because that would be a break from school. My freshman year is what pushed me to the edge. The nausea was worse and the gross feeling in my arms and chest were happening daily.

I even did research into what I could be feeling. And I came across something that actually made sense, anxiety disorders. I looked in to the different types and I had parts of several. But nothing that was enough to be considered to have one. But as the feelings worsened, I knew I needed to do something.

After hyping myself up for a while, I told my mom that I feel that I may have an anxiety disorder. I broke down crying because I felt broken and needed help. Fortunately, she responded well. Her best friend has an anxiety disorder. Who told us a good place to go and set up an evaluation. Unfortunately the evaluation wasn't until several months away.

The time between that and the evaluation, I got new worries. After all new things scare the shit out of me. There were many nights of me crying and telling myself that there's nothing wrong with me. I would often convince myself that I was an attention whore who made up my feelings for the attention. And I felt that the therapist would tell me that there's nothing wrong with me.

But evaluation day came anyway and I was a nervous wreck. And I met the therapist who was to evaluate me, Laurie. And by the end of the session she came to the conclusion that I have generalized anxiety disorder. And I felt so happy that there was a name to what I was feeling.

We made appointments with Laurie and I've been going to her ever since. She's taught me a lot. And I've made a lot of progress. My anxiety isn't fully gone, and I don't think it ever will, but I know that I can handle and confront it if need be. And of course I have ups and downs as anyone else, but I'm way beYeah tter off then I was before therapy. I totally recommend for people to look around for a therapist if possible, because it's been amazing. Also to not be afraid to try out a different therapist if you don't click.

Alright so that's it for now. Thanks for reading!