Hello readers,

It is once again the time of the month that I curl up in my bed and relax and I write a blog post that will hopefully give you a piece of knowledge you didn’t know before. I’m here to go on a little rant, maybe its a big rant I haven’t really decided. For those of you know might know me personally you know that I am one of the millions of humans who unfortunately has to live with the haunting and over diagnosis that is anxiety. Whats crazy is that I really don’t think I come off as that type of gal. 99.9% of my life is spent happy crying, laughing or smiling at stupid stuff like the birds singing or the cute couple I walk past every Monday. I will admit I am one to obnoxiously point out the positive things in life. This, however, isn’t how all of my days are spent.

Anxiety stinks. Plain and simple. If you know the anxiety I’m talking about, I’m not just talking about the anxiety you get when you are close to a due date and you haven’t started your 10 page research paper so, oh no, I’m gonna go out anyway, no. I’m talking about the anxiety that makes your head spin, makes you feel like you’re about to vomit, sweaty palms, chills, tears…lots of tears, fast breathing, uncontrollable shaking and sometimes you’re even left with a bit of post anxiety attack depression. I’ve dealt with that kind of anxiety since I was about 6 and it started with small, small things. If I didn’t feel like my socks were on right Id go into a battle with anxiety. What I as wearing, what I looked like, how I spoke to people, large crowds, loud noises, school the list could literally go on forever and some of those things I still have trouble with today.

Ok, so I guess this is going to be along rant but the point of this blog post is that I’m in one of those right now. It’s currently 2:42am. I’m sitting in my bed. I just got over a, what I like to call “mini attack” (those are when you feel like it’s coming so you start your anxiety relief check list. Psychologists are geniuses I’m telling you). I’ve been feeling overwhelmed all day and basically the last two weeks. The month of march was NOT an easy one. Lots of emotions and stress and it’s the end of the semester so obviously I knew one of these bad boys was bound to happen. I spend an hour trying to focus on biology which then led me to give up and then I made a to do list and realized all of the things I have to do and then I wrote down my grades and realized I’m not doing as well as I thought I was and then I realized there’s onLY LIKE A MONTH OF SCHOOL LEFT TO FIX IT AND THEN- WHA PA! Anxiety came up and smacked me right in the face. I really, really wanted to shut down. Reallllyyyy bad. And I really, really want to let myself have an emotion anxiety melt down. Someone once told me “don’t stress over things you can control” (Shout out to James for that, love ya babe!). I’ve learned how to overcome a lot of the things that use to happen when Id get anxiety. Sometimes it takes, me, laying out all of the positive things and all the things I can overcome to move forward and work through my anxiety and other times, it’s better to have those times of anxiety and then realize that, that hour of tears and shakes and confusion were ok, and now we can move on.

I just have a few things to let y’all know about if you know someone who might struggle with anxiety. I say all of these things putting sarcasm aside. When you are confronted with someone who is open about thinking that they might have an anxiety attack soon or are in the middle of one, please, I beg you, do not tell them to “relax” or “chill”. Don’t ever tell them that “it’s no big deal” because in the time of an anxiety attack it feels like every weight of the world is sitting on their lap. Instead offer help, sit and listen, hug them, let them know it will be ok, validate that its ok to feel this way, if its appropriate ask to pray with them (that helps me the most but it’s also something that, at times, is hard for me to do on my own. Times like this I tend to be at a loss for words), ask if there is anything you can do to help and then be there if they ask for one of those things or all of them. I say this as someone who knows. Anxiety is in no way a fear of “not having control”. I’m not a control freak. Anxiety isn’t wanting to give the shot to YOURSELF but just wanting to know exactly when they’re going to give the shot so you feel ready. It’s not a matter of needing to control everything in you life but its feeling like you can see whats going to happen next (although God is in control of that. As an anxious person that’s so cool to me. Especially because I know He’s got my back. See… I’m not a control freak!).

So, to anyone who thinks anxiety isn’t a real thing, or its girls being hormonal or guy being “babies” you’re wrong. This is something that so, so, SO many people struggle with. I would never wish anxiety on my worst enemy. If you or maybe a friend is suffering with anxiety please know I’m praying for you. As a matter of fact, because of my little spill tonight I’m going to be intentionally praying for those who have to deal with anxiety. I hope you know that Gods literally waiting for you to have anxiety so you can cry out to Him and by the way- it feels great when you do cry out to Him.

XX- Liv