142. Conquering Anxiety Once and For All!

Anxiety…I remember being in this place…my heart began beating fast. It felt like there was a 1,000 pound elephant on my chest and I couldn’t breathe. I remember one time, and this was just earlier this year, I was in a crowd where I knew about 95% of the people there. In this crowd, we were asked to find someone and go talk to them. Not a big deal right? Wrong! I started to feel anxiety come on me, I started to listen to all of those negative thoughts going through my head like “who would want to talk to you?” “what would you even say?” “you’re going to be alone.” And I began to panic. I excused myself from the crowd, went into the restroom fighting tears and asked God for help. 

As a teen, I remember lying awake at night, thinking about (or really I should say worrying about) anything and everything. It would literally take me hours to fall asleep, because I couldn’t shut off my brain. It always felt like something was about to happen, danger was going to hit, but I didn’t know where or when or how. 

I was so bad, that if a friend didn’t call or show up when she was supposed to, I would automatically think the worst…and I didn’t know how to stop it! I even remember one time, interviewing for a job. I had my hands on my lap under the table and because of the anxiety I felt, I didn’t even realize I was doing this at the time, but I was scratching my hands with my fingernails. When I got up to leave, I’m thankful the person didn’t want to shake my hand, because my hands were starting to bleed from all the scratching.

Maybe you can relate. Maybe you have been right where I was. I recently read an article about the state of mental health in teens from in the United States and I wish I could say that what I read surprised me, but it didn’t. The article stated that anxiety, depression and hopelessness among teens in the United States is getting worse, not better. 

If you are anything like I was, I tried everything and anything to get over anxiety, but nothing seemed to work. I thought that the only way things would change is if my circumstances would change, but that didn’t help either. It felt like a losing battle. But one thing I learned was that anxiety doesn’t just go away because our circumstances change. 

Anxiety goes away when we learn how to conquer it once and for all!!

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