anxiety

A look at anxiety in its many forms and manifestations; what is the nature of this specific pattern of extreme fear and worry?

S.A.D.
My alarm had gone off twenty minutes ago and here I still lay, staring at the little black book on my nightstand. It was Thursday that it came into my possession, and now on day two since our introduction it has haunted me with a perverse fortitude. The first night I left it on the kitchen counter, tossing it down with a slap and a two inch slide, the annoyance of it feeding my desire to see it as nothing significant to my life. However when I woke Friday morning it was there to greet me, questioning me as if I had forgotten the day before. There was something teasing about it that morning. But this morning, this morning it was being arrogant. I rolled over, turning my back on it and abandoning it for my morning routine.
By Letitia Parzych5 years ago in Psyche
Insomnia or Genius
I have never been diagnosed with insomnia. As a kid, sleeping and nap time was a breeze. But now at the age of 24, I lie awake at night wondering why I can’t shut my mind off, close my eyes and fall asleep. Sometimes I read till my eyes simply cannot take it anymore—that being 4am in the morning...
By Shannon Preslar5 years ago in Psyche
A Mind Stuck on Terror
When anxiety and depression team up, you can find yourself at the mercy of two unforgiving illnesses. You must deal with a brain that often sees the worst option possible as the most viable and obsesses over just how catastrophic that worst case scenario could be. This can leave you faced with repetitive trains of thought that simply will not stop and that can prevent you from doing day-to-day tasks or falling asleep.
By Alicia Brunskill5 years ago in Psyche
Anxiety
Did you know that there are several types of anxiety? How about that more than three million cases a year are diagnosed in the U.S.? That’s a lot, so it’s safe to say that it’s a common diagnosis. But, what causes anxiety?
By Ashera Storm5 years ago in Psyche
A letter to to the Emotional Self
To Emotional Self, Also referred to as Sensitive Self, Temperamental Self, and Crazy Self. You have been told all of your life that your emotions are too big, too often, and take up too much space. You were told that you simply could not handle any criticism or rejection, and that you gave everyone around you whiplash from going so easily between one emotion to the next. Someone once even told you that there could be no reason for so many emotions, and that you simply must have been crying to manipulate them. You believed that there was something fundamentally wrong with you, like there was something broken inside you, spewing out emotions through the cracks in your seams.
By Mariah Faye5 years ago in Psyche
5 Ways I Overcome My Anxiety Every Day
I could feel that familiar feeling. As I got jittery, my mind wandered uncontrollably. I reached out, grasping at anything I could hold on to, hoping that it was just a fleeting moment. I felt closed in, like the walls were suffocating me, pinning me down with no ability to move. Yes, I knew this feeling all too well. It was my anxiety, greeting me at the door.
By B. Mapenzi5 years ago in Psyche
It's Coming
She needed a break from the glare and the constant notifications. Living in the world through screens, artificial light, and influencers that mold the influenced. She imagined the trees long and high into the never-ending sky. The creatures chatting up a storm, the warmth and soft humidity caressing her skin. She breathed in the moss growing on the north side of the tree, the sweet wood breathing out slow, slow enough for her to feel the gentle rumble of the roots below her feet. Her toes digging into the soft grass, her lungs contracting and expanding.
By Andrea5 years ago in Psyche
5 Opportunities I Missed Because of My Anxiety
My anxiety is a weird creature. Humongous and loud but also nuanced and subtle. It operates within a realm of constant contradiction, trapped between unending longing for more than the present and inescapable fear of what the future may bring. It serves as a springboard for inertia, fomenting my inability and unwillingness to effect meaningful change in my life. I recently began coming to terms with just how much this impacts my experience. Often, in the dead of night, when everyone else dreams beautiful dreams, I mull over all of the opportunities that have fallen through because my anxious mind and chronic overthinking made me a prisoner. I think, what would have been the outcomes of these circumstances if I had stopped for one second and believed in myself? Always one for self-reflection, I made a list of the top five things I've foregone because I convinced myself I wasn't good enough.
By Laquesha Bailey5 years ago in Psyche
New Grad, New Anxiety?
Let me tell you a little story about the first couple months following my graduation from college. I was excited. It was a rough 6 years of pharmacy school, and now I was going to be living in my own apartment in a new town with a job lined up. I was set up for success, right? First, I just have to get my pharmacist license. Easy. The pass rate of the licensing exam was 95% so, there was nothing to worry about. I had been a decent student and I have all the study materials I should need already purchased. I moved in quickly, since I had no furniture yet, and bought myself a mattress with a financing plan the store offered. Thank goodness I had enough credit for at least that. With my mattress and a borrowed folding table with chairs from a friend, I set to studying.
By Julie5 years ago in Psyche
Day Moonbeams
There’s something in the air that drifts, floats, pops into a semblance of a moonbeam. I wine and dine the thought that it could be a flying moat of dust or a piece of cosmic detritus coalescence. I ponder the thought of trash in a meaningful extraterrestrial form for a moment as I follow the thing to its source. It’s a moonbeam, but in the daytime coming through my window. What if we were all on a floating piece of waste in someone else’s day moonbeam? It makes me feel just as small as that little something moving through the air. I am no more meaningful than that collection of skin cells floating through the air above me. Drifting through the dust moats that have a swirling piercing motion about them. That’s what the day moonbeam reminds me of, a ray of sunshine coming through my window. They slump through the holes in my wall without any regard for my furniture, much like my cat. He looks liquid, the way he moves through the spaces between the dust moats and sunbeams. Like a slug, his eyes seem to leave trailing iridescent worms across the floor. He follows those slipping blundering sunbeams to the head of my bed and stares at me with his eyes like the cold windowpane the sliding beam has stumbled through. Sitting there his purring smells like that moat of dust. Like warm hugs, soft blankets, deep motor roars, and the inescapable way the heat waves off the pavement.
By Abraham Mancino5 years ago in Psyche
Black
I googled the definition of suicidal today. It scared me. I would've never thought myself suicidal because I don't consciously think about killing myself. I don't want to kill myself at all. I don't even want to die. But the definition I read didn't mention anything about wanting to do it. It just said that a suicidal person is someone who is deeply depressed and is likely to commit suicide. Likely to. That could mean anything. It could mean that I could just get so deep in my depression that I just up and kill myself one day. That's not what I want. That's not what I want! THAT'S NOT WHAT I WANT!
By Akilah Simpson5 years ago in Psyche
Scattered
Fuck. My mind is a messy, whirling vortex of noise. In the time of writing those first two sentences I have since installed Grammarly on my Chromebook, becomes confused as to how to actually install it on, and started playing an ASMR video courtesy of Calliope Whispers. Whilst finishing this sentence I have since skipped the Grammarly app and simply downloaded the Chrome extension.
By JC Cansdale-Cook5 years ago in Psyche