Do you ever feel like breaking down?
Do you ever feel out of place,
Like somehow you just don't belong
And no one understands you?
Do you ever wanna run away?
Do you lock yourself in your room
With the radio on turned up so loud
That no one hears you're screaming?
No, you don't know what it's like
When nothing feels all right
You don't know what it's like
To be like me
To be hurt
To feel lost
To be left out in the dark
To be kicked when you're down
To feel like you've been pushed around
To be on the edge of breaking down
And no one's there to save you
No, you don't know what it's like
Welcome to my life
~Welcome to My Life-Simple Plan
Have you ever felt like this before? Well, majority of us, in some point of life, we'll feel so heartbroken and disappointed with everything around us. Do you know what caused this feeling to arise from our heart?
This is known as anxiety. Anxiety is unpleasant feeling of generalized fear and apprehension accompanied by physiological symptoms (Ronald, Ada, Adamec, 2008). According to Williams in the book of Overcoming Anxiety Stress And Panic (2010), anxiety affects us in five areas, people and events around you, altered thinking, altered feelings, altered behaviors and altered physical symptoms.
Upon the encounter with a stressing condition, your reaction to people and events around you will alter. You start to lose interest toward others. You don’t pay much attention to what is happening around you. Your only concern is yourself. You find no more excitement in being around people who are important to you such as family, friends or lover.
Your mind will become your worst enemy. It perceives things differently from reality. You may overestimate how hard situations are and underestimate your ability to take control of the problem. You tend to ‘mind read’ and second guess that people think negatively about you, without knowing the truth behind it. You couldn’t move on from little things that seems to bugging you, although they are not really a problem.
Your feeling will be extremely easy to stir. You may get irritated or angry easily when things didn’t go the way you wanted. Your unbalance emotions will bring tears to you without much effort. Most of the time, you didn’t feel anything at all, as if you lost all the feelings. There’s no pleasure in anything you do.
Apart from that, you will experience rapid heartbeat, headaches, getting fidgety or butterfly in your stomach when anxiety knocks your door.
Your productivity level will drop. You often feel tired and think that everything is too much effort. Then, you’ll start to stop doing things which are important to you. You may avoid things or places that make you feel stress. You will avoid from talking about you own feeling or problem to the ones important to you.
Once you realized any of the above symptoms apply to you, you must know and accept that you are having anxiety. Knowing your weakness is also a strength. Once you know your problem, you should find a solution for it. Avoiding your problems may seems to be the best solution for now but later in the future it will only backfire you.
Get support from your family, friend or counselor. Join support group. There are many other people who face the same problem as you. By working together, you can all overcome anxiety.
The easiest thing you can do is smile, and be happy :)
Disclaimer: I do not own the pictures in this post. Credits to the respective owners.
