Do you know the feeling you get before taking a test you didn’t study for? Maybe you’re familiar with the sensation you get when you tip your chair a little too far back, and you can tell you’re about to fall. Try and imagine that feeling of unease, helplessness, fear. Imagine feeling a combination of all those feelings and more throughout the entire day. Every single day. That’s what anxiety is. It’s more than what people realise. People condescend, they think it’s just being scared a few more occasions than other people. It’s not. It’s constantly feeling as though you have a failed class on your report card that you just can't raise, or that you fail at anything you may attempt. It’s not being able to stay home alone without speaking on the phone to someone the entire time. It’s crying because you feel like you’ve let everyone down because you received a B- on a test, and to you, it might as well be an F. Sometimes it’s crying for no reason at all.

There’s always a stigma regarding things like anxiety. People treat you differently, and it can go two paths. Some people will baby you, and treat you like a child scared of a monster in the closet. They’ll take away fun opportunities because they feel like you can’t handle anything without freaking out, like you’re some kind of ticking time bomb, and the smallest thing can set you off. Other people, however, think anxiety isn’t real. They think you’re being irrational, making a big deal out of nothing, or that it’s all in your head. That’s why most don’t tell other people they have anxiety; they hate being pitied, and they hate being invalidated and talked down to.

And for me, it’s very easy to pretend nothing’s wrong. I always try to keep an optimistic attitude, or if I can’t have one, make other people believe I do. I really do. I keep an open mind about everything, try not to focus on the negatives, try to convince myself things will change. But I’m pretty good at pretending, and maybe that’s why nobody believes that I have it when I tell them.

People don’t understand how much anxiety can affect a person. It can stop you from doing the things you love most, or chasing after new experiences. You bomb an audition because you’re so nervous you just throw away your entire song. You fake sick to avoid parties. You’re afraid to get close to people because nobody can see you’re vulnerable. And after a while, you start to feel like you’re holding others back from exploring too.

You try to get help. You see a therapist after you get over yourself and admit you need help. You take medication with side effects, and even though you feel depressed more often than not, and your body’s never quite the right temperature, and you’re not sure how to deal with the migraines you now have every day, you still take it. It feels helpless at first, you feel like it makes no difference to you. It hasn’t helped at all. But you just have to realise, you made a difference by seeing a therapist; you made a difference by trying every prescription they throw at you until you finally find one that fits you. You took a step forward, the only way you can go. Sometimes you have to take one step at a time, no matter how small, to change.