I am 20 years old.
I am a university student.
I study Politics and International Relations.
I have anxiety.
However, according to Anxiety UK, so do a lot of young people. 1 in 6 young people will suffer from an anxiety disorder at some point in their life. This umbrella term of 'anxiety' can come in the form of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), Chronic Worrying or GAD (Generalised Anxiety Disorder), Social Anxiety, Social Phobia and Selective Mutism. Obviously this list is not exhaustive and is subjective based on what you feel. More to the point, a lot of young people feel this way and can wait an average of 10 years in order to seek help and try and get minimise the impact of their disorder.
Anxiety UK cites that 15.5% of 20-24 year olds have suffered from an anxiety disorder in their life.
So why am I telling you all of this? I never believed that I had anxiety until my second year at university. I then went to see somebody about it, thinking it would lead to a happier lifestyle and a better me. I went for around 3 sessions with a woman who taught me some coping mechanisms and some lifestyle choices I could have made in order to get my life back on track. I left those sessions feeling inherently more positive about everything and was happy for around 3-4 months. Then, it happened again. I was spiralling. I went back to counselling and again adopted the same coping mechanisms and the same choices in order to live a happy life.
I then moved to London to start an internship. Moving to London was a massive deal to me, however, in the first few weeks I was happy. I was thriving. I had a good social life, I loved my work and I thought that everything was finally falling into place. And then it wasn't. I wasn't enjoying my work, I wasn't enjoying my life. I was overthinking everything, over-analysing anything. I started worrying about every detail and therefore making more mistakes and not being happy.
Fast forward a few weeks and here I am. I'm back home and trying to figure things out.
First and foremost, I need to try and tackle my anxiety. I have what's called a GAD (Generalised Anxiety Disorder) it means I overthink everything, worry about everything and beat myself up over the smallest of things. It's a vicious cycle.
This blog is going to be me documenting my progress and hopefully giving tips and help for people who are suffering from anxiety.
*The information on anxiety was from www.anxietyuk.org.uk/
