I was just walking through the front door of my home on a slightly cold fall day of the 9th grade, when an overwhelming wave of thoughts came crashing down on me. “I have so much to do and so little time,” Was the main thought moving around in my storm of thoughts. I had a lot of homework. For math, I had to do the review problems for the, 100 point, 25 question, function test tomorrow. Also, I had to read a section in my text books for both Biology and History.

I, knowing I wouldn’t be able to focus because I was feeling quite overwhelmed, decided to postpone doing my homework until after dinner. Which I recently discovered makes it
harder to start work on my homework because I will just keep pushing it off
until it’s too late.

I went down stairs to the entertainment center, grabbed my controller and the remote, and start to play some Videogames. Sitting in the recliner, I couldn’t stop thinking about
my homework. I just kept on worrying, “I need to start on my homework.” Finally
after about a half an hour of worrying about my homework I got up, shutdown the
console, grabbed my backpack, and went to my room to work on my homework. I
wasn’t able to really even get started on my homework really because all I
could think about was, “How am I going to finish?”

That night after dinner, I sat down to try and actually start my homework? I start to think, “Where should I even start?” and “How am I going to get this finished?” Sitting there
at the dining room table I realized that there was some kind of lump forming in
the back of my throat and it was growing that felt similar to the lump you get
when you get choked up. I wasn’t upset about anything though so that lump kind
of worried me. The longer I sat there paying attention to the lump in my throat
the more it grew and before long it felt like it was prohibiting my ability to
breath, It felt like there was something blocking my airway. This made me start
to worry even more since it was inhibiting my ability to breath.

The lump just kept on getting worse and at this point I was full panic mode thinking that this thing was going to suffocate me and that maybe it was me having some kind of allergic
reaction. I now realize that I was not really reacting rationally. As I
continued to panic my breaths were becoming more and more labored to the point
that my mom came in to see if I was okay.

Having just got back home from work, see was in her work clothes, pants and a dress shirt, and in seeing my with a flush face a shallow breathing rushed over to me asking in a
bit of a panicked tone,
“Are you choking on
something?”
I, not really thinking I would be able to speak, just responded with a shake of my head try to help my mom from panicking as well not acting as freaked out as I was. She then just
started to rub my back and said,
“Just calm down, you're
okay.”

This moved my focus to
her and before I knew it the lump was shrinking. Finally after what seemed like
forever my breathing returned to normal.
“What exactly just
happened?” My mom asked.
“I’m not sure,” I
responded, my voice still a bit shaky from the whole thing. I then tried to explain
to her, to the best of my ability, what had just happened, even though even I
wasn’t sure.

She then proceeded to take me to urgent care. We checked in sat around for a little then I was seen and the doctor there, after I told him what happened, said he believed I had an
anxiety attack and recommended I go see a psychologist.

A few days later I went and saw a psychologist and he diagnosed me with anxiety and explained anxiety disorder to me. From his explanation I realized that my life was ruled
by anxiety. Ever since this day I have lived my life with the thought of how
things will affect my anxiety and have become a much more relaxed person. I have
learned to cope with my anxiety and now see a therapist every other week to
help me work through any and all problems with my anxiety that crop up.