Share Your Experience

Imma gangster

while in a shopping mall with my wife. i was clearly distraught to anyone who may have noticed, however i just took notice of one thing on a shelf to take the concentration off of the crowd. not just anything, something that stood out and interested me so i would actually WANT to study it, hence getting my mind off the anxiety. when i was able to get myself grounded a bit more we continued on (was only able to for a short time), and made it out.

I'm going to be 51 years old soon. I have suffered from anxiety & depression since I was a young boy. I have many, many stories. I don't keep track of how many times I have fallen.

What has worked for me is daily journaling, medication, therapy, and meditation. Meditation, as part of my Religion & Spirituality, is a huge part of my life.

All throughout highschool my social anxiety was really really bad, it didn't help that my teachers loved making us do seminars and presentations ALL the time. While waiting for my turn to go my heart would beat so fast, my hands would become clammy, if someone would talk to me i'd stutter so much before actually making out words and i'd being to feel light headed from irregular breathing. A bunch of people from my highschool that had social anxiety got passes that excuse them from any and all presentations. I was really tempted to get one of these but I didn't see how I would overcome my social anxiety if I just excused myself from becoming social. So I did my presentations, stuttered through my words, spoke extremely quickly, my face was extremely red... presentations were probably my worst experiences in highschool BUT since I kept doing them over and over again I grew a resistance to them sort of and I felt less nervous doing them since I did them so often and now I can do presentations in college with little to no anxiety at all.

This is a great idea for a post ,

Thank you for sharing your experiences here because anxiety really can be so isolating and make you feel like your completley alone in how its effecting you , when in fact there is an army of us out there who have similar experiences and know how tough it really can be and you do deserve to be support for what your going through.

I have experience anxiety for most of my life especially in social situations and is tied with my view of my self image. I get heart palpitations, start to shake and sweat I hate having anxiety attacks especially if it's over going out with friends! I find Journaling, and therapy have been very helpful in helping to control and minimise symptoms of anxiety.