Looking Back At Anxiety

Looking Back At Anxiety is a book I’ve written about how I went about overcoming my anxiety disorder. The book is not a self help book, nor a how to book. It’s simply my experience and about certain changes I had to make that were important for me to overcoming anxiety.

Excerpt 1 (How Anxiety Affected Me)

It wasn’t until junior high school that I began suffering from social anxiety disorder. Junior high school is a time of a lot of change. You’re becoming a teenager and starting to deal with a world of new issues you don’t normally deal with earlier in childhood. Your body is changing, and in addition to the dealing with physical changes, you’re trying to assert some kind of independence and find an identity. I went to a new school with few people I’d ever known before. I immediately had trouble fitting in. This in and of itself is not cause for alarm. It’s normal when you’re changing schools to first feel out the new environment and figure how you are going to fit in. But I could remember not ever getting comfortable. I was extraordinarily self onscious. I was afraid to talk because I thought I sounded weird. My body would tense and I was constantly nervous. I was afraid to talk in class. I had a low soft spoken voice. I didn’t know how to build a rapport with others. I was threatened by others. I had no confidence. I felt that if I tried to be social I would come across stupid. This fear was strong enough to keep me from trying. I was very aware of people’s opinions of me. In my head I thought it was better for me to keep to myself because if people got to know me they’d see that I was a loser or I was not what they expected me to be, and they would not like me as a result. So it was better in my mind for people not to know who I was than risk rejection. This way of thinking is not a recipe for success. I never found a comfort zone. Other kids were finding their place in the new school and months
later I hadn’t found my place and I was left behind as others moved on. Those years are vital to social development. As a result of isolating myself I didn’t grow much emotionally. Experiences help you to grow. I was avoiding anything I felt threatened me. Therefore I stayed with what made me comfortable and stayed away from what I feared.

Excerpt 2 (The First Step)

It is important to realize that any fears or consequences of confronting your fears are irrational. If you don’t have that belief you’ll be trapped. It’s amazing to think that for so long I let my fears rule me knowing that they were not real. The difference between living with the fear and taking the first step towards helping yourself is that simple fact. You would think I was facing death in everyday situations. Looking back now, I don’t know what I was thinking. But when you are dealing with anxiety, you can’t always think clearly because you’re caught up in emotion and the fact that your mind and body are filled with fear. It feels real. But the truth is, your mind and body are lying to you. Just because something feels real doesn’t mean it is. Once I realized that my fears were irrational, I could confront them.