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Everyone feels a certain level of anxiety. From being nervous before a business meeting, to feeling exposed in public, anxiety touches a huge majority of every day people. But anxiety can also be more than a infrequent experience for others, as I personally have come to find out over the past ten years.
With the rise of awareness for mental health, I always thought I was a pretty average, nothing different than how most people felt. I thought most people, or most girls at least, would be uncomfortable in social situations like I was, or other girls were unable to eat comfortably in a group. But after becoming more self aware and from watching people closer, I realized "most people" don't feel physically ill when it comes to social situations like I do. They don't sweat through their shirt when even the slightest thought of being put at the center of attention happens. All people eat food, but having others acknowledge your food consumption was horrifying to me, and I would lose my ability to eat without becoming emotional so I would wait until I was alone to have anything, even if that meant not eating all day.
I blew off my inability to ignore small noises as a pet peeve of mine. And I figured too much noise overwhelmed everyone as it did me. I dealt with these scenarios for year and so much more without blinking an eye that I might NOT be completely normal.
The night of realization came when I was 18, had been going through some major life changes, and was overwhelmed by everything going on. I was painting the cabinets in my childhood home before my parents sold it and I had this bugging thought of my pet cat being dead or almost dead when I knew he was safe, waiting for me at my boyfriend's home. This thought was so nagging and unignorable it brought me to busting into tears. I couldn't reason with myself even when I knew better and I couldn't stop feeling this excruciating weight of death and overwhelming lack of acceptance that my cat was okay. I cried for over an hour and had a panic attack to go along with the tears. I assumed the experience would only occur once.
A year later, I'm working overnight shift as a Personal Care Aide for a home health company. Driving home after a long shift I couldn't shake the feeling of death, I was going to die driving home, someone was going to hit me and I was going to die, I was going to drink some water and choke to death, my boyfriend was going to die, he had choked in the night and I was driving home to find his cold pale body. My mom was going to die driving to work and I wasn't going to know what happened until she was already in the hospital morgue. Every second as I drove my 40 minute drive home from work was filled to the brim with horrific death prised scenes. I was having a hard time breathing and my chest was tight from these thoughts I couldn't reason through. I knew better than what my brain was telling me, but I still couldn't shake the feeling until I got home and finally forced myself to bed for a few hours.
These thoughts and enormous feeling of death haunted me daily, with new twists everytime I tried to push it away. I tried to breath and clear my thoughts but it never worked, and knowing I was right wasn't enough until I saw them again. Every day was a hell for my thoughts but I figured it's just anxiety from sleep deprivation. Wrong.
6 months have past and I have been working from home with a very minimal schedule. I feel happy but death anxiety is still a daily battle. I'm learning this is a real thing, and nothing major (like the norm) has triggered it. I think everyone around me and myself is going to die everyday, even though its untrue. Death anxiety is undiscovered territory for the most part, but it goes hand in hand with my general anxiety levels and the more I learn, the more okay I am with accepting medication methods as a way to balance my concerns to a healthy, stable amount.
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I have never heard of this before, so you have taught me something new. I hope the medication works. Good luck.
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